Russian Roulette is a lethal game. A player places one bullet in a chamber of a revolver, cocks the pistol, presses the muzzle to his temple and pulls the trigger. If the revolver has six chambers, the probability of death is precisely one in six. If he uses a ten-chamber revolver, the probability is one in ten.
No sane person presented with an invitation to play Russian Roulette would accept, even if the odds of winning were nine in ten, and even if the potential winnings were substantial. The costs of losing are too great. We face enough risks every day on the highways. There is no point in making our lives even more risky.
Then why do otherwise reasonable people persist in activities that endanger life on earth? It is almost certain that the probability of climate disaster already exceeds one in ten. As the world warms, the probability of calamity will climb continually as long as nothing is being done to curb the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It will eventually become 1.00: certainty.
The media have recently published evidence that BP and Exxon knew several decades ago that carbon dioxide from the burning of petroleum fuels would cause the temperature of the earth to rise. Nevertheless, they hid their discoveries from the world and continued pumping and selling oil as though the risk didn’t exist. The CEOs and boards of directors were not stupid or ignorant. It is fair to say that they knew exactly what was happening, or remained willfully ignorant.
Keeping the danger secret, knowing that greenhouse gases had the potential for doing great harm to the entire planet, constitutes a moral failure of unspeakable proportions. There is something about commanding a large corporation that short-circuits the moral sense of its practitioners. The failure of capitalism is its inability to comprehend its mutual dependence upon society. It is designed to expand indefinitely, even if it destroys society and anything else that might impede that expansion.
The oil industry is not unique. Its forebears did everything in their power to defeat any restraints on their business. It is not hard to remember the worst examples: asbestos, DDT, lead paint, cigarettes, PCBs, thalidomide…the list is endless.
And then there’s always what I call the Hezekiah[1] principle: “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone.” Grab everything you can and leave the problems to the next generation. I’m sadly coming to the conclusion that concern for the distant future is not a part of our mental wiring. On the savannahs of Africa, concern for distant generations was of no help in keeping the individual or the tribe alive. Most threats to survival came either suddenly, like a lion in the bushes, or slowly, like famine or pestilence, disasters over which they had little control. Worrying about what might happen a hundred years in the future was a hindrance when all the brains and muscles available were needed to survive in the present.
Elites, who usually are well-educated, are no better and often worse in this respect than ordinary people because they have power and consequently feel no responsibility for anyone or anything beyond maintaining and increasing their power. Historically, elites usually contribute to and ultimately bring about the downfall of nations and even civilizations by their oppression of the poor and what is left of a middle class. When society starts to fall apart their rapacious avarice drives them to seize anything they can get their hands on, which brings about collapse.
Then the Ostrogoths and Huns march in and the game is over.
The way the world is going now, we do not have to worry so much about the Ostrogoths and Huns, but whether predators and victims alike will be around much longer. Our environment is not delicate; it is we humans who are delicate. Even if global warming cooks us to a crisp, the environment will continue, transformed, but still here. It’s as though it has contracted a fever. But the fever will go away when the next ice age descends upon the planet, and the earth will prepare for new and different forms of life.
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Hezekiah (715–686 BCE) was the 13th king of Judah. The biblical story is that he displayed his vast wealth to a visiting Babylonian ambassador and was shortly thereafter confronted by the prophet Isaiah for showing off his wealth. Isaiah told him that because of his sin, his kingdom would be conquered by Babylon, but only after his death. Hezekiah rejoiced that he would be spared. The death and destruction to come would be suffered by his children, not him. ↩
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