Debates over why climate change isn’t higher on Americans’ list of priorities tend to center on the same culprits: the doubt-sowing remarks of climate-change skeptics, the poor communications skills of good scientists, the political system’s inability to address long-term challenges without a thunderous precipitating event, the tendency of science journalism to focus more on what is unknown (will oceans rise by two feet or by five?) than what is known and is durably frightening (the oceans are rising). In analytical mode, we are not always adept at long-term thinking; experiments have shown a frequent dislike for delayed benefits, so we undervalue promised future outcomes. (Given a choice, we usually take $10 now as opposed to, say, $20 two years from now.) “We tend to always wonder,…What’s that person’s true preference? What do they really want? I think that’s the wrong question, because we want it all.” (Elke Weber) When I (Jon Gertner) raised the issue of possible ethical dilemmas with Weber, she countered by claiming that government constantly tries to instill behaviors that are considered to be in society’s best interest. “There’s no way around it,” she told me. “We’re always trying to push some agenda.”