I sometimes joke that the best time to get going on your New Year's resolution is June, in part because you are free at any time to get a fresh start, and in part because it is demoralizing to watch your resolve wilt away by the first week of January. Still, the concept of the New Year's resolution is fascinating, for it gets to the core contradiction between our ability as humans to think and plan long-term and our seeming inability to behave accordingly. The examples are innumerable: we know it is imperative that we save, yet we buy that shiny new TV; we want to lose weight, but we can't do without that piece of cake; and more broadly, we (most of us) know that climate change is an existential threat, yet we repeatedly fail to take the individual and collection action needed to do something about it.
