A 21st Century Wager

Escherichia coli cells, if left to grow in a beaker of nutrient solution, will grow and grow and grow until they produce so much toxic waste that all the cells die.

Implying that mankind is not dissimilar to these bugs is not a particularly sophisticated analogy, but perhaps we are not such a sophisticated breed. When it comes managing our consumption and growth, and thus inevitably our own downfall, at the moment we appear to be employing little more forward planning than a beaker of insentient cells.

Today, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reported that the UK government is failing to meet 12 out of the 13 emissions targets it set itself, one year after pledging to be the “greenest government ever”. Check out their climate change tracker, which shows just how well the David Cameron’s government is doing at discouraging investment in green tech in the UK. Across the North Sea, Germany has confirmed it is phasing out nuclear power by 2022, in response to the Fukushima incident, despite only currently generating 17% of its energy requirements through renewables. This seems an odd response when, as of yet, no people have died of radiation poisoning in Japan (as far as I know). Especially when you consider that 11 people were killed directly in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and that vast numbers of people of people are killed every year by cardiopulmonary diseases caused by air pollution. No one seems to be making any similar endeavors to ban oil or coal combustion by 2022.

You can demonstrate with simple maths that if you put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (CO₂, methane) the Earth has to get warmer.

This is of course a hugely simplified model, but it illustrates the point. If you increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, you must increase the Earth’s temperature. This is unless you simultaneously increase the Earth’s reflectivity ( “albedo”), a large source of which is the shiny white ice caps. Which are, um, melting.

Yet we keep burning fossil fuels and pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere. Just like E.Coli pumping toxic waste products into their little beaker-based worlds. This downright puzzling journey of self-destruction we are all embarking on brings to mind philosophical wager penned by the French scholar Blaise Pascal in 17^th Century. Pascal examines the rational course to take with regard to belief in God:

God is, or He is not

A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.

You must wager. It is not optional.

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.

You could replace the word “God” with the word “climate change” in this wager and come out with the same result.

In acting to prevent climate change, properly, and full-heartedly, we have nothing to lose. Fossil fuels are running out, and are becoming increasingly expensive and dangerous to obtain. Increased CO₂ in the atmosphere is acidifying the seas, leading to coral bleaching and collapse of fish stocks. Air pollution produced by burning fossil fuels kills an estimated 2 million people every year. Even if the devastating temperature increase predicted by the little equation above, and the world’s leading climate scientists, turns not to pan out, by reducing CO₂ emissions we have nothing to lose. On the other hand, if the scientific consensus is indeed right, we gain all. We gain the Earth.

The 2010 meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Cancún, Mexico, failed once again to produce any international legal agreement on CO₂ emissions. All eyes should be on the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference (November to 9 December 2011, Durban, South Africa) – the last chance to secure an agreement before the Kyoto Protocol, and its tiny pledged reductions in CO₂ output, expires in 2012.