The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See
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Script
What’s the worst that could happen?
Have you ever found yourself saying that as you try to convince someone (or yourself) to attempt something?
[Angle 1:] But I’m not sure I want to eat the sea slug.
[Angle 2:] C’mon. What’s the worst that could happen?
You don’t really worry that "worst" because you don't think it's going to happen. And if it does, you’ve always recovered in the past.
That thinking has worked out okay for us so far. But, with 6 billion people, and technologies that might be able to change the planet, it’s conceivable that now there may be some “worsts” that we can’t recover from.
Take global warming, for example. If you listen to the “worst” predictions, we may be in store for a nasty future: storms, droughts, floods, epidemics, famine.
But what if you don't think that that "worst" is going to happen? What if it’s not true, or that we’re not the ones doing it?
It seems like a pretty important question to figure out, what with the fate of the human race and all, and that’s probably why there’s some bitter arguing going on about it right now.
Well, what if I told you I think I’ve found an argument that makes that whole bitter question of whether it's happening or not moot. An argument where we don’t need to know whether it’s true but can still agree on what to do or not to do. An argument that leads to a conclusion that even the most hardened skeptic, and the most panicked activist can both agree on.
Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? Seems like it to me, too. That’s why I’m putting this argument out there, to check if my reasoning is delusional. Because frankly, no one I’ve shared it with so far has been able to poke a hole in it, and the conclusion seems inescapable. And terrifying.
[At the whiteboard]
So here it is. When faced with uncertainty, like we have about climate change, it’s useful to look at the different possibilities for the future, and compare them side-by-side.
The first issue is whether human-caused global climate change is real or not. So we have two possibilities for the future: one that it turns out to be false, and one that it turns out to be true.
Here’s a key point: here is where we set aside that whole contentious question of whether the globe is warming or not and whether we're the ones doing it, by acknowledging that no one can predict with absolute certainty what the physical world is going to do. All reasonable people should be able admit that there’s a chance they might be wrong. So we all agree that these are both possibilities.
The other thing to look at is what sort of action we take on climate change. Let’s make column “A” “Yes” for significant action, and column “B” “No” for little or no significant action. So that gives us a grid with four boxes that sketch out four basic possibilities for our future.
What might each these futures look like?
First is the future where we did take action, and climate change turned out to not be real after all. What would be the consequences for that? Well, wasted money largely. This is what the skeptics warn us about. Increased taxation, oppressive regulation, bloated government.
Now for the purposes of contrast, let’s take things to the extreme. What’s the worst that could happen? Let’s say there are massive layoffs caused by draconian regulation, sparking a recession that spirals into a depression that cascades worldwide, and we end up with a global economic depression.
How about this box? We didn’t take action, and we didn’t need to. We made the right decision. Continued prosperity, no big economic consequences. We’ve still had problems, but climate change wasn’t one of them.
How about this box? We took action, and it was a good thing, too, because the doomsayers were right after all. We’ve still got the costs, but all that money and regulation paid off, because we counteracted climate change. It still happened, and it’s a different world, but it’s livable.
Now how about this box? The doomsayers were right, and we didn’t act. Well, if we grant the extreme here like we did up here, this is where it gets really ugly: we’ve got economic, political, social, environmental, public health catastrophes on a global scale.
Sea levels rise 20, 30 feet, entire coastal countries disappear, hundreds of millions of refugees displaced, pushing in on each other, causing widespread warfare over scarce resources and ancient hatreds, entire forests die and burn, massive floods alternate with killer droughts, the breadbaskets of the U.S. and Russia turn to dustbowls, leading to catastrophic famines, dreadful epidemics spread like wildfire, storms like Katrina are the norm, global economic collapse. We’re talking a world straight out of science fiction, a world that makes Al Gore look like a sissy Pollyanna with no guts who sugar-coated the bad news.
Now obviously, I’ve simplified. As a general rule, any diagram with smiley faces has probably glossed over some complexities. But if you take pencil and paper yourself, and add back in the complexities--put in odds here, play with the mild cases on each side instead of the extreme ones--I think you’ll see that the following argument still arrives at the same conclusion.
You can think of the argument as row-thinking vs. column thinking.
Our future will fall roughly in one of these four boxes. But since climate change might or might not be true, we can’t know for certain which row that box will be in. The laws of physics alone will determine that, and we just need to wait and see how it turns out.
What we can know for certain, because we control it, is which column the future will be in. So it’s a bit like buying a lottery ticket. We choose ticket A or ticket B, and then wait to see where in that column the future ends up landing.
If we choose ticket A, we are determining that our future will be somewhere between the extremes of global economic depression, or a different, but livable, world. So here’s a scenario where we made a mistake--we acted when we didn’t need to--and here’s the cost of that mistake--global economic depression. This is the risk of choosing ticket A.
That sounds like a pretty scary risk, so let’s see if we have a better option. If we take ticket B and it turns out to be the right choice, then hey presto--we’re happy. And if choosing ticket B turns out to be a mistake, then what is the cost of that mistake? The End of the World?? Well, the end of the world as we know it.
The planet will still be here, the human race will survive, but this is a very different, much more hostile place. This is the risk of taking ticket B, either by deliberate choice, or--and here's a scary part--by default of inaction while we’re busy trying to guess which row the future will fall into.
Notice it incorporates the risk up here of economic collapse, as well as some extra bonus features.
And it gets worse: in the last five years, we’ve learned that it’s plausible that this might happen abruptly, in a very short time period: perhaps as short as a decade or two. So we’re not just talking grandkids here. We’re talking you and me.
Now don’t take my word for it--don’t take anyone’s word for it--do this exercise yourself. Pay attention the next time you hear something about climate change and ask yourself: are they talking about guessing which row, or are they talking about choosing which column?
I think you’ll see that no matter how you construct it, you arrive at the same inescapable conclusion. When faced with uncertainty about the future, the only rational choice, the only defensible choice--really, the only choice--is to take column A, in order to eliminate this possibility.
Because the risk of not taking action far outweighs the risk of taking action.
So there’s my silver bullet argument.
Imagine if everyone was familiar with this grid! We could stop shouting at each other about which row the future might be in, and instead start deciding which column it will be in. Imagine a discussion where we've stopped the name calling and changed it into a level-headed debate about risks and costs. Don’t we deserve that?
Now imagine a world where we’ve ended up here, and you think back to today, this moment, when you first saw this grid and understood what the possibilities were. How tragic would it be to reflect on how we could have eliminated this as a possibility, but we didn’t, because we were afraid this might cost too much? How heartbreaking to realize that you didn’t act, because you were waiting for certainty--an impossible certainty--about which row was the true one?
Let’s face it: the issue is complex, and our lives are busy. Who’s got time to try to figure out which expert is right? And so, here we sit in column B, waiting to see what the future holds.
That is what I find terrifying.
[Back at the desk.]
So what do you, personally, do about it? Well, finally, here’s some good news. In fact, it sounds too good to be true, because it's stunningly easy. Ready? What you do is: spread the word.
Because the only way we really get into column A is by changes in public policy, and those only change when enough people demand it. So you do what you can to spread an awareness of this argument, to build up a public demand for column A. You make it a part of your thinking, your conversations, and you forward this video on to others, so that it changes their thinking. And they forward it to others, and they forward it to still others. Imagine that.
In today's age of information, you can change the culture, you can change public policies, and--remarkably--it starts just with a few clicks of the mouse, and some conversations.
So I’m asking you, who I’ve never met, but whose fate I’m still tied to: if you think I’m wrong, please show me where--politely. And if you can’t find an error in my assumptions or logic, then help spread the word. Forward this to others, talk about it.
Anything less, and--intentionally or not--we are choosing column B. And why does that terrify me? Because we only get to play this game once.
Think it won't happen? Maybe. How lucky do you feel?
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