Another barrier broken: Man with no brain is now a professor at USC

[His idea for winning over the hicks in flyover country: Tell them that spending $45 trillion on a hoax is like brushing their teeth]

When I was spending a lot of time at USC this spring, I talked at length with Jim Haw. He is a Professor there responsible for their undergraduate environmental major. In our talks about climate change politics, he stressed that a politically neutral way of discussing the issue was as "climate hygiene". Just as you have to brush your teeth and take a bath, you have to take certain steps to make sure the climate system is healthy. This "spin" on this hot button issue shifts the focus from whether a given person is a "good person" or a given company is a "good company" to a less judgemental worldview of simply engaging in day to day steps (like brushing your teeth) that become part of our routine.

But think about it, if 300 million Americans each brush their teeth for 10 minutes a day, then we sepnd 3 billion minutes a day brushing our teeth and that equals 5 million hours. If we value our time at $15 an hour, then we are spending $75 million dollars a day to brush our teeth or 27 billion dollars a year on this activity. So even, "small investments" add up to look like they have large price tags but nobody debates the merits of brushing your teeth. Could climate change mitigation have been converted into a similar activity in terms of it being second nature that we engage in it without debating its merits or politicizing the entire topic?

Jim Haw > USC College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences

Ray R. Irani Chairman of Occidental Petroleum Chair in Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Studies