Intriguingly Fifa 14 Ultimate Team Coins a third way that ao suggests to get humansto use less energy is by artificially making us more altruistic and empathetic. "Many environmental problems are theresult of collective action problems, according to whichindividuals do not cooperate for the common good," he says, adding:"in a number of cases, the impact of any particular individual'sattempt to address a particular environmental problem has aneggible impact, but the impact of a large group of individualsworking together can be huge."
ao quotes from studies suggesting that these factorshave biological underpinnings. The hormone oxytocin seems to maketest subjects more wilng to share money with strangers, as wellas reading other people's emotional states. Testosterone, on theother hand, appears to decrease aspects of empathy. By tweakingthese hormones carefully, we could make humans more kely to acttogether for a common good.
The real question is over ethics in all of this. Before you start getting yourhackles up on that one, ao says that any pocy built aroundbioengineering should be optional: "As we envisage it, humanengineering would be a voluntary activity -- possibly supported byincentives such as tax breaks or sponsored health care -- ratherthan a coerced, mandatory activity."
ao argues that bioengineering is less risky, in thegrand scheme of things, than geoengineering is, and that humanengineering can also make other approaches -- behaviour changes andmarket solutions ke carbon trading -- more kely tosucceed.
That doesn't mean it doesn't involve risks at all, though.Hormone tweaking can have unintended side-effects, and a communitythat's more empathetic and altrustic could be taken advantage of byothers who have less scruples.
ao's response to these criticisms? "These risks shouldbe balanced against the risks associated with taking inadequateaction to combat cmate change. If behavioural and marketsolutions alone are not sufficient to mitigate the effects ofcmate change, then even if human engineering were riskier thanthese other solutions, we might still need to considerit."