Of Golfers and Our Global Crisis: Pascal’s Wager Re-visited

Just before the December holiday break, I asked the students in my environmental studies course how many had kept up with the news from the first week of the Copenhagen climate summit: more than 15,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries; 900 people arrested; the tiny nation of Tuvalu nearly shutting down the conference on two occasions in its exasperation; preparations for the arrival of presidents and prime ministers during the second week.  Just a blank stare from my senior-level students – my environmental studies students!  Then I asked how many knew about the allegations against golfer Tiger Woods.  Every single student raised his or her hand.

I was flummoxed.

Already we had discussed the pros and cons of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol with its binding emissions targets.  We had discussed carbon sequestering, deforestation, climate change, and even assisted migration for species otherwise facing extinction in their rapidly changing native environments.  But no recognition of the Copenhagen summit?  As their environmental studies instructor, had I failed to keep them abreast of this important international gathering in Europe?  Had they not heard one scrap of news about the summit?  Had we – teachers, parents, religious leaders, politicians, and businesspeople – been overly provincial in the education of young people here in the Valley?  After all, we live in a global economy with all sorts of gadgets to ensure those instant international connections.  Or … was this just the nature of the adolescent beast to overlook the imperative and be drawn toward the inconsequential?

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said of the all-important Copenhagen conference, “We need to step back from narrow national interest and engage in frank and constructive discussion in a spirit of global common cause.”

Twenty colleagues and I just published a book called Gaia in Turmoil (MIT Press, 2010).  Its subtitle captures the theme of the volume: “Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis.”  In it we state unequivocally that “Industrial nations must have their emissions peak by 2010, and thereafter begin to decline at an average rate of 4 percent per year – that is, at a faster rate than the global emissions are presently increasing.”  2010 is now!  Time is of the essence with the first few decades of the 21st century crucial for a sustainable retreat from our dependency on nonrenewable, carbon-loaded energy resources.  “If the emissions do not begin to decline until 2020, the decline rate will have to be an almost unachievable 8 percent per year.

The inevitable conclusion is that a meaningful response by all nations must be set in motion immediately if there is to be hope of success.”  In fact, our little book was referenced during the climate debate as one contributing voice about the issue.  Thomas Lovejoy, biodiversity chair for the Heinz Center in Washington and creator of the “Nature” television series, asserted it’s a provocative book “essential for real citizenship” that illuminates the destructive trajectory on which our species has set our planet; but also recommends achievable solutions.

What about the naysayers in the international debate about climate change?  I’ve heard all sorts of claims: coal-fired power stations emit very little pollution, Al Gore’s award-winning movie was a “sci-fi horror film,” the current global warming trend is a “natural” process, researchers have given up the “purity of science” to forward a global warming agenda “simply for the research money,” and the “global warming hysteria” looks like “criminal fraud,” and other equally madcap assertions.  What if such head-in-the-sand attitudes are wrong?

We all lose with multi-generational consequences.

On the other hand, what if such attitudes of denunciation are correct?  What would be gained anyway by the promotion of a more cautious, frugal, and simplified lifestyle, especially among the developed nations of the world?  It would be a re-interpretation of Pascal’s Wager.

In his 17th-century Pensées, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that, if reason cannot be trusted, then it is a better “bet” to believe in God than not to do so.  A person should wager as though God exists because living life accordingly has everything to gain and nothing to lose: “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.  Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”  The wager assumes conscious decision-making.

Similarly, in our day, is it not a better bet to believe that current global climate change is caused by, or at least accelerated by, selfish human choices with grievous ecological and cultural consequences?  If we wager such causes, and their long-term consequences, are the horrible reality of conscious decision-making, and we decide instead on a more prudent approach, then won’t the entire planet benefit from our responsible stewardship?

The naysayers about climate change have never addressed the negative prospects of their speculative wager.  What if they are wrong, and yet we have embraced their awful skepticism as our modus vivendi throughout the developed world?  The multi-generational consequences of their stance are too horrible to contemplate.

Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, we seem consumed in voyageur-like fashion with the exploits of our sports and film stars: golfing, as it were, while the planet overheats.  Rather than being consumed by guilt for our wayward nature, let’s wager on a successful – and sustainable – strategy for our global economy.  An immediate investment in clean energy seems a winning and irrefutable policy for local, state, and federal governments, along with a conscious decision to abandon nonrenewable, carbon-laden resources.  National and international “energy and conservation” policies are now in order.  Like it or not, we are part of a global economy with global responsibilities.  Let’s stop acting like grumpy, reckless, and ill-informed adolescents who bemoan the adults who regulate our petulance.