You heard it here first – Friedman on Cheney

In Thomas Friedman’s Wednesday column in the New York Times, he reiterates a point that I made several months ago: climate change and nuclear proliferation present similarly grave threats to humanity’s future on Earth.  Furthermore, as Dick Cheney apparently preceded both of us in pointing out, the catastrophic nature of certain potential outcomes from climate change or nuclear proliferation, even if such outcomes are unlikely, makes preparation for – or aversion of – those outcomes imperative.

Dick Cheney, of course, was merely using the “one percent doctrine”, as Ron Suskind called it, as an excuse for doing whatever he wanted.  What’s shocking is Cheney’s inability to see that his own argument applies to global warming.  How can so many people who believe we should hunt terrorists to the ends of the Earth just to avoid the small possibility of a nuclear attack not believe that we should convert to a green economy to avoid the small possibility that humanity will be wiped out by extreme weather?  The reverse question applies, too: how can so many environmentalists not believe every person entering the United States should undergo a full body cavity search, or that we should occupy every nation that even might be harboring terrorists?

Is it possible that people just don’t understand the one percent doctrine?  My own previous explanation may have gotten lost in verbiage, so here’s a simpler way of thinking about it.  Suppose you have a farm with a thousand apple trees.  If you lose more than five hundred trees in a given year, you will go out of business.  Now suppose there was a pestilence going about, and you estimated that there was a ten percent chance that you would lose a hundred trees… would it make sense to buy insurance, at slightly unfair odds, against the pestilence?  No, because even if it hit, you would only lose a hundred trees, and you could just hope to have better luck next year.  But what if there was a two percent chance that you would lose five hundred trees?  Then it would make sense to buy insurance, even if the odds were slightly unfair, because you’d want to avoid the possibility of going out of business.

In just the same way, nuclear proliferation and climate change call for an aggressive response.  Sure, the recent revelations of fraudulent scientific activity cast doubt on years of global warming research, but to the average citizen, shouldn’t it appear that there’s at least a chance that there’s enough other research out there to indicate that global warming is real to justify action?  If there’s a one percent chance that the scientists aren’t lying, don’t we have to take the threat to humanity’s existence seriously?

Real Big Problems

We’ve got problems.  In writing this blog, I’ve focused almost exclusively on what might be called political and cultural issues, to the near-total exclusion of issues that are perhaps of a far more pressing nature.  The issues in question are global warming and nuclear proliferation.  (I can sense you clicking away already.)  Why is it that these issues arouse so much less passion, in the vast majority of people, than, say, gun control or abortion?

I suspect that the answer is that these issues are not moral issues.  Nobody’s soul is at stake here, and with the exception of a few extremists who insist on blaming large corporations for everything, no one is at fault either.  An issue where we can’t invade someone, fight someone, arrest someone, or at least publicly humiliate someone, is a boring issue.

Furthermore, there is the epistemological question.  How do we acquire knowledge about global warming and nuclear proliferation?  What are we to believe?  What are the solutions?  Since a number of the parties involved in the climate change debate, and to a lesser extant the weapons debate, appear to be operating from a position of intellectual dishonesty – and actual dishonesty – it’s hard to know what to believe.

Nonetheless, I would consider these two issues to be some of the most important issues facing us today.  Unlike healthcare, gun control, the depression, or Kanye West, these two issues present a serious threat to all human life on Earth.  It seems to me that no matter what anyone believes about these issues, a risk-cost analysis would make a fuller understanding of these issues an imperative.  (A risk-cost analysis would integrate the costs of various outcomes on a political issue over the expected chance of those outcomes coming to pass.  Issues with the potential to threaten the existence of the human race, even with a miniscule chance of actually coming to pass, should swamp out all other issues, due to the nearly infinite cost of those issues.)  Even if some people think there is virtually no chance of a lone crazy person acquiring the potential to destroy the world, we must ask ourselves: how could we stop such a person?  Can we stop such a person?

Look at climate change from the perspective of the common person.  What does he know?  He knows that the Earth is probably getting warmer because of greenhouse gas emissions.  He knows that green nuts think driving is bad for the environment.  He knows that he’s always being encouraged to conserve energy.  But he also knows that energy consumption is what makes possible nearly every comfort of his lifestyle.  He occasionally encounters green activists panhandling for money on the street, but he has no rational reason to contribute, because no one else is, and he knows that half-measures and individual charity won’t solve a problem of this magnitude.

Is this mere apathy?