Climate Change and Pascal’s Wager

Whenever the subject of climate change comes up, I am reminded of “Pascal’s Wager.”   Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, formulated his wager addressing the question of whether or not God exists. 

Essentially it states:  It’s better to live your life as if there were a God, then die and find out there isn’t, than to live your life as if there weren’t a God, then die and find out there is.  Kind of hedging your eternal bet.

Applying Pascal’s logic to global warming and climate change:  It’s better to act now as if climate change does exist and find out years from now that it doesn’t, than to do nothing and find out years from now that it does.

At the just concluded Paris Conference on Climate Change scientists in 195 countries, including the United States, have overwhelmingly agreed that climate change is, indeed, is a fact and we must start doing something about it now.    Of course, as with everything since Obama was elected, if he supports it, the Republicans are against it.  But then, a lot of Republicans believe the universe is 6,000 years old, the earth was created in six business days and evolution is simply a theory and not a fact.  I don’t have a lot of respect for Republicans’ scientific credentials.   Evidently American Republicans don’t mind appearing stupid before the whole world.

We all know that for our conservative politicians the interests of Exxon-Mobil and the Koch brothers take precedence over science.  And it is hard to whip up enthusiasm among the public since nearly everybody living today will be dead before any catastrophic events take place unless, of course, you live on an island in the middle of the ocean or are a polar bear.

The Republican are always complaining about Obama not showing leadership and that America must be the world leader.  Evidently that only applies to starting wars, invading other countries, telling others what government system they should have and “bombing the hell out of them.”  However, when it comes to something constructive like climate change the Republicans seem willing to concede that leadership to China.

There are also other conceivable benefits to addressing climate change.  Just as space research produced a considerable number of technological advancements benefiting the public overall, research into renewable energy and other energy saving measures—like battery developments—could provide many benefits not directly associated with climate change.

So the issue is not whether global warming is real or not but how effective the fossil fuel industry and their Republican political puppets will be to insure today’s profits no matter how many islands may sink or polar bears may die in the future.