Global Warming and Uncertainty: Link and discussion of essay by Danny Sahar

03Jan08

Essay by Danny Sahar on “Do You Believe in Global Warming?”

To summarize: We are not certain. We may never in our lifetimes be able to be certain. So what do we do about it?

The essay conveys my sense of the research on the issue.

How do I, as an individual, take what responsibility is mine? If you believe in the state, what should it do? If only as a species we can ’solve’ global warming with teamwork, how would we go about that in a free society?

Being a strict anarcho-capitalist in the face of such a problem is tough. I think I could certainly make the case that: If the world were entirely stateless, we’d solve this just fine. But the world has groups of people that call themselves ‘governments’, and they have guns and goons. So what can I do?

An essential question is: Can such a problem as ‘the possibility that we may be causing global warming’ be solved to anyone’s satisfaction within the current systems?

If its possible that governments could take up policies that addressed this concern such that I would feel satisfied with the resulting ‘care’, would I be happy? No, because I recognize that other people’s positions may be more strong than my own, and that I cannot determine which position is right. So if I felt that reducing carbon emissions by 95% would basically take care of the problem, policies that would achieve this goal would be doubly wrong!

1. They would use force as a means.

2. They lack any certainty.

Lets try some mental test-cases, focusing on the certainty aspect.

If the only way to prevent a giant earth-eating space monster from devouring our planet is to get 90% of people to fast for a day (go against their short-term interests), how do we make this happen? Does it legitimize force?

In such a black / white scenario, the temptation to use force for compliance is very strong. If everyone can see the monster, and it says: “Fast for a day, or I eat everything”, and we have every reason to believe that it will follow through: It has eaten other planets that did not comply. It has shown itself to be logical and non-sadistic, amoral or moral. If we have engaged it many times and its always held to agreements, even when it could abrogate without consequence. In other words, if each of us had every reason in the world to trust the space monster, how would people act?

Certainly some people would find fasting tough going. Maybe some people would want to fast, but lack the self-control to do it, even if they fully believed they would die if they ate? I’m not sure. Maybe people would create “lock yourself it” shops so that people could isolate themselves from temptation, if they wanted to do so. How many people though would say “Screw you Space Monster! I’m going for some donuts!”?

I mean, here we have an intelligent being manipulating us for some reason. We can ascribe responsibility to it. Being angry with the ‘injustice’ of the monster does seem to make some sense. Would such a monster be merely sadistic?

Lets change the monster into a mindless horde of space-amoebas. One for every person on earth (big coincidence). The amoebas are shown to attack intelligent creature only. They detect these creatures only when they are eating. But if they are eating, a single amoeba flies to the scene, devours the person eating, and 10 other people at random, for good measure. Everyone believes this is totally true. We have piles of evidence. People have seen it happen before, etc.. So we only have to make it through a single day of fasting and we’re alright, and 10 other people are alright too.

Now clearly we’ll be very concerned that other people also fast. Its a game theory exercise of some kind. If the creatures will only devour the eaters, then no problem: Let everyone decide for themselves (unlike seat-belt laws). The temptation to protect others against their will is there, but its not powerful.

The farther we magnify the effect, the more tempting force becomes I think. If a single person breaks the fast and 100000 people die, I think we can legitimize force. But is this a long gray line? Is it true that while decisions only affect ourselves, we’re at perfect liberty (or rather should be, since there are plenty of laws that go against this idea), but when our decisions affect many others that we should not be at liberty?

If global warming were totally clear and ‘proven’, wouldn’t people just want to take actions for their own long-term interest? Clearly not everyone. But the real difficulty, beyond the serious uncertainty with the issue, is in the operation of effects. More later.

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Tags: AnCap, certainty, coercion, global warming, morality, politics, scenario, Science, uncertainty, voluntarism