“Essentially, overshoot is a crisis of human behaviour,” says Merz. “For decades we’ve been telling people to change their behaviour without saying: ‘Change your behaviour.’ We’ve been saying ‘be more green’ or ‘fly less’, but meanwhile all of the things that drive behaviour have been pushing the other way. All of these subtle cues and not so subtle cues have literally been pushing the opposite direction – and we’ve been wondering why nothing’s changing.”
The paper explores how neuropsychology, social signalling and norms have been exploited to drive human behaviours which grow the economy, from consuming goods to having large families. The authors suggest that ancient drives to belong in a tribe or signal one’s status or attract a mate have been co-opted by marketing strategiesto create behaviours incompatible with a sustainable world.
“People are the victims – we have been exploited to the point we are in crisis. These tools are being used to drive us to extinction,” says the evolutionary behavioural ecologist and study co-author Phoebe Barnard. “Why not use them to build a genuinely sustainable world?”
Just one-quarter of the world population is responsible for nearly three-quarters of emissions. The authors suggest the best strategy to counter overshoot would be to use the tools of the marketing, media and entertainment industries in a campaign to redefine our material-intensive socially accepted norms.
Only real use I can imagine for these is wildland firefighting. I figure it's supposed to be used for reducing risk to firefighters when the time comes to create backfires in the path of a wildfire. Can sit in the truck with a remote control and send the robot dog to walk a few miles setting a line of fire.
Checked company website. Looks like they also market it for agricultural use and deicing. From a childhood spent farming, I can see how it might be useful in agriculture. Every year farmers need to set fires and burn what remains of fields after harvesting crops like grain. A few times over the years I witnessed people get themselves in dangerous situations (trapped in the middle of a fire or their pickup truck trapped) after the fire spreads in unexpected directions. Being able to stand back at the edge of the field and remotely set the fires could be useful. The risk of burning up a $9,000 robot dog is a lot cheaper than a human life or $60,000 pickup truck.
https://throwflame.com/products/thermonator-robodog/