Oil Companies Are Placing Big Bets–With Your Money
My friend Cameron Atwood offers a fabulously rational approach to climate change mitigation as a comment to my post: Understanding the Ties Between Corporate Funding and the Findings of Climate Scientists (scroll down to see it).
Thanks, Cameron. That makes sense to me. But unfortunately, making sense doesn’t win the game here, as the climate disruption scene boils down to this: we’re not gambling our health; we’re gambling other people’s health–mainly, that of the yet-to-be-born. That’s the disgusting part.
Show me someone who worked an honest week and goes “all in” on a high-stakes poker hand Friday night. Is he foolish? Brave? Call him what you will, but he’s certainly not dishonest; it’s his money.
The same can’t be said about the oil companies of the 21st Century. Their message to their shareholders: We’re profiting enormously by producing a product that is fabulously expensive to manufacture, but we don’t have to put most of the costs on our P&L. By a peculiar quirk of accounting rules, we can move all those costs over to everybody everywhere, both now and in the future. It’s a powerful message, albeit sickening.
Craig,
What Cameron is using here is a slightly re-tooled version of Pascal’s Wager. It’s a commonly referenced philosophical tool. It’s particularly useful in talking to right-wingers because Pascal’s Wager is a logical defense of worship and belief in God… and the more intelligent Christians have a soft spot for this reasoning.
Of course, the more intelligent people in our society aren’t the ones we are trying to sway.
*sigh*
As a folllow up, In 2003 I was championing Howard Dean, and I – with my own money – rented a booth at the SC state fair and set up a booth specifically for dean, with all of his talking points and bullet points. We handed out ~20,000 flyers, and I used Pascal’s Wager as my off-the-cuff defense for mitigating global warming every time someone announced themselves as a denialist. Not one single denialist had previously encountered Pascal’s Wager – which I first learned in a bible study group while I was in high school… But I would say that a large portion of those I hit with it were impressed.
I don’t know how many thousands of people you have to talk to to become jaded enough to be casually insulting to the denialist cult rather than honestly optimistic and hoping to change their minds… but I guess I’ve long since passed that point.
I appreciate Cameron – and you by extension – for bringing back that memory… a 10-day period when I believed the world could be changed by the simple means of a person being knowledgeable and willing to argue from a point of authority…
🙂
Good memories.
Ha! Yes, when I read the first paragraph about Pascal’s Wager, I thought to myself: Hey, this is Cameron’s thesis on this topic.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve lost your belief, though I have to agree that it’s hard to hold out too much hope in that direction at this point.