An Interesting argument about Global Warming
Friday, June 15th, 2007If you have any doubts about whether humans should pony up and pay what it takes to stop climate change, you need to watch Bill's video. His argument is clear and concise and cuts through the acres of social and political crap that often seems to cloud this issue. Essentially, Bill (aka mav7469) presents a truth table and illustrates 4 scenarios:
| Yes, we act | No, we do not Act | |
| False | Wasted cost,possible global depression | Lucky us, Global Warming never happened. it's all good! |
| True | Lucky us! Global Warming is averted :-) | Environmental, economic, political and social catastrophe on a global scale |
After presenting these 4 options, he concludes that our only logical choice is to act to stop global warming. This is because it appears that all things being equal, the cost of acting and being wrong is far less than the cost of being wrong by not acting on climate change. He's right. "Wasting" money to reduce emissions if we don't have to is a much better outcome than global environmental, economic, political and social catastrophe. Bill's argument seems to be air-tight.
While he convincingly presents the 4 possibilities and his arguments are sound, they do not consider the complications that arise from illogical and selfish human thinking. For example:
- Since we know the poor will be more adversely affected by climate change than the wealthy, rich governments and individuals may gamble they will come out ahead by doing nothing.
- Even though spending the necessary money to halt climate change is logical, it will be hard to know for certain that our money will not be stolen or squandered.
In other words, Bill has defined a convenient and useful truth table, but the truth about climate change is much bigger — and much more "inconvenient" — than 4 boxes. But don't listen to me — (trust me, no one does!) — just watch the video and let him know what you think:
