"The center sees the future as continuous with the present. It has numberless ways of discounting information to the contrary. It expects disturbances and setbacks i the normal course, but it also expects to weather them. in the long it is optimistic. the border foretells imminent disaster. It does not believe in the long run, and in the short run it is pessimistic. Paradoxically perhaps, it is optimistic about the perfectibility of human nature. since the border is committed against institutions, it must fall back o faith in human goodness as the basis for good society. When its prophets inveigh against human wickedness, they are calling upon the people to return to their essentially human power of moral regeneration. The center does not worry about possible irreversible damage to nature emanating from its own technology but rather about the possible irreversible destruction of its social systems (page 122~123, Risk and Culture by Mary Douglas & Aaron Wildavsky)."
"The more that a public interest group is organized as a hierarchy, the more it believes there is time for reform...The more hierarchical the organization, the less it bears a message about catastrophe and the less it is cosmic in its portent...(Page 126)"
Does that partially explain why it is so difficult to move collectively for climate change??
P.S. Here is a book review from NYT in 1982 about the book. The reviewed thought Douglas and Wildavsky negatively described the environmentalists as sect. I don't think that was the case. At least the authors were not as unfriendly as the reviewer described.
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