I have a class that focuses on sociology, health, and the environment, I took a similar class with the same prof last semester. She always opens the class with excerpts from Pinkers 2018 book (preface, chapter 1, chapter 10). I felt far more viscerally opposed to his POV last semester. This semester I kinda see things from his POV more. it still feels really couched in enlightenment/capitalistic optimism while also dismissing what feels like justified alarmism regarding the environment.

I think the worst thing is it's such a cut and dry position built on an assumption that everyone IS rational and WANTS TO BE rational that misses the steps needed to bring people with you. It misses that change requires facts and emotions to settle into the zeitgeist. For example, one cannot say "we fixed the ozone layer, why were you so angry about it" when one of the steps to fixing the ozone layer is making people understand why there are changes in refrigerants and aerosolizers. We can't get "here" from "there" without taking the journey together.

Similarly, with the environment, there are people who are bad faith actors (i.e. ExxonMobil and their highly accurate climate change science they refused to acknowledge or change under) or people who have been convinced that the bad faith position is tenable. No amount of rational argument is going to change their position. The ecopessimists, as Pinker calls them, have to be able to make the case or join forces with optimists, or ecomodernists (as Pinker calls them) to be able to effect change.

It's really easy to adopt a stance of "some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make" if it's not your people on the sacrificial community.