Philosophy

Yes, Carbon Emissions Are Dangerous Air Pollution

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At Drakes Well, I had a long discussion with a guy there who was very much in denial that carbon emissions were a problem. He claimed that Rockefeller invented the term ‘fossil fuel’ (false), arguing that oil still forms at a rate that it will never run out (false). He said that vehicle emissions today are so much cleaner than when he was young that they’re no longer dangerous (false). When I asked him whether it was safe now to stay in a garage with the engine running, he switched tactics.

Since February is national indoor air quality month, now is a good time to consider the consequences of carbon emissions on breathing at home. First, if you have a gas stove, then you’re releasing both fuel and combustion fumes indoors. Next, if you burn wood for heat, you’re doing the same. Smoking obviously worsens air quality. If you idle your car to warm it up, then you’re generating carbon emissions near your home, some of which will enter.

Outdoor air pollution impacts indoor air quality. Droughts and wildfires increase dust and smoke that enter buildings. Heat, smoke and vehicle emissions also increase smog, which exacerbates asthma. Changing our environment this way also increases bacteria, dust mites, fungal infections like Valley Fever, mildew, and mold.

Partly in response to the climate crisis, more homes are insulated and have air conditioning. The more insulation, the more indoor air is recirculated. When properly installed and well maintained, they can help air quality, but when not maintained, they can hurt it. In any case, installing HVAC and air filters gets expensive and consumes more energy, burning more fossil fuel.

Rising carbon in the atmosphere causes huge derechos, dust storms and haboobs to form more frequently and become more intense. Heat pulls moisture into the air, exacerbating droughts and increasing wildfires. Smoke causes lung and heart problems. (February is also American Heart Month.) Loss of forests degrades air quality. Storm surges often release industrial pollutants into the air. All of these effects can combine, health issues can accumulate, and rising carbon emissions will increase all these problems.

We may be able to maintain our indoor air quality by spending more on it, but outdoor air quality matters too, especially for wildlife. We also like to go outdoors for fresh air occasionally, but smog and smoke obscure our views and make it difficult to exercise. My kids spent far more time inside than I did growing up, and we lose something important when we can’t go outside to play. By changing the global environment with our carbon emissions, we are responsible for the impact that has on all the creatures that live outdoors.

If You Really Cared About Border Security, You Would Stop Burning Carbon.

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Because you burn carbon, you exacerbate the climate crisis, which causes rising seas and more disasters. The US is responsible for more total carbon emissions than any other country, creating refugees and increasing migration globally. Maybe you neither know nor care about people in other countries, but your carbon emissions are driving migrants to the US. Nicaragua alone has over 100,000 climate refugees due to increasingly violent hurricanes and severe drought wiping out crops and cattle. These problems increase poverty and weaken their government, causing many to flee to other countries, especially the US. If you don’t want a lot more immigrants in the US, then you should stop burning carbon and vote for carbon reduction policies.

Understand that the unprecedented scale of these disasters is man-made, climate-driven and increasing at a rate that humanity has never faced. The problem is not just the disasters we are seeing now. The problem is that we are continuing to make even more disasters even worse every year. Carbon pollution makes disasters more deadly, driving dramatic diasporas and magnifying violent conflict, which causes wars and even more refugees. Wars burn even more carbon. Burning carbon increases border insecurity globally, so the underlying problems are accelerating.

Already, there are tens of millions of climate refugees globally, in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America. Extreme heat and drought drive violent conflicts in Somalia, Sudan, Syria & Yemen. But in 15 years, the number of countries with similarly extreme climate crises is expected to rise from 10 to 65. Flooding has already displaced millions of refugees in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Many of the countries currently hosing refugees are already suffering or will suffer severe climate consequences themselves soon, including millions already displaced in China and the Philippines. As the climate crisis continues to worsen and intensify, the total number of refugees globally will increase dramatically.

Whether you care about the human suffering or not, more and more climate migrants will continue trying to reach the US every year. Increasing border security is extremely expensive. Last year the US allocated an additional $170 billion for more border fencing, Customs and Border Patrol, ICE, new detention facilities, surveillance, etc. Given that the global climate refugee problem is accelerating exponentially, future costs will continue rising even more rapidly. Spending more on solar and wind would lower both energy costs and future costs of dealing with climate refugees. Fixing the climate crisis is the most direct way to reduce the disasters that drive migrants here.

Refusing refugees is cruel. Desperate people historically have also found many ways to enter the country, including flying and overstaying their legal visas. Deporting long term residents to countries that they haven’t seen since infancy is also cruel and can be quite expensive with airfare and legal costs. Spending more on relief programs like USAID both saves lives and reduces the future costs of dealing with climate refugees. And of course, it is not moral to refuse assistance to hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings who will be displaced by our cumulative carbon emissions.

January is National Trafficking Month, and refugees are among the most vulnerable populations forced into human trafficking operations. So choosing to reduce carbon emissions is choosing to reduce human trafficking. Politicians may talk tough on border security, but if they deny the climate crisis, they may be worsening rather than fixing the problem. You may consider yourself anti-crime, but if you vote for people who call climate change a hoax, encourage cryptocurrencies and have personal history with sex-traffickers, then you are contributing to human trafficking on multiple fronts.

So don’t tell me you care about border security, prove it. Stop burning carbon, and vote for climate justice. Fix the climate crisis to increase global border security and human safety.

Imagining the Road Ahead

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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! I’m introducing two new topics for next year, more at the end.

Nobody wants our climate to destabilize, and yet that is what we’re doing. In my last installment on better thinking, I wrote about how this blog is a product of imaginative thinking, and below are some more specific points.

Rational people base their thinking on logic and knowledge. The Farmer’s Almanac was able to predict the weather for over 200 years with remarkable accuracy simply by carefully recording weather patterns. Seasons used to be stable enough to plan your crops well. But, in a sign of the times, the old Farmer’s Almanac is going out of business. I don’t know whether climate change had anything to do with their decisions, but accurately predicting weather based on past history is now unreliable. (And, now that the National Center for Atmospheric Research is going to be closed, both climate and weather forecasting will suffer.)

In early June of 2022 I visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, and as I was driving back to California, the weather changed. There was a late season heavy snowfall in the mountains, followed by heavy rain. I remember thinking that the return to warmth and rain would melt all that late snow very quickly, so I decided not to dawdle. A few days later, the Yellowstone River washed out a whole bunch of roads after I passed.

They called the Yellowstone event a ‘500 year flood’, trying to put the event into historic context. But terms like ‘100 year floods’ no longer make sense, because the climate has already changed so much that the floods happen far more frequently either than expected or than they ever did in our written history. A biennial ‘25 year’ flood is oxymoronic.

Bereft of precedents, we need to use our imagination more when we plan the road ahead. You may have planned to retire to some beachfront property like the Outer Banks, but rising seas and more severe storms may make that much riskier than expected. Or maybe you planned a cabin in the woods, but increasing wildfires risk that dream as well. Or maybe you planned to move to a desert retirement community, but rising heat waves and diminished water are making that unsustainable. Or snorkeling coral reefs, now irrevocably damaged. Or seeing glaciers, now disappearing. Of course, there will still be plenty of beautiful places to visit and wonderful experiences to have, but our poor carbon choices are diminishing some of them rapidly. So we need to think ahead.

And it’s not easy. The most arable land in Canada is already farmed for crops like wheat, and much of the rest of the soil is a poor thin layer over the rocky Canadian Shield. So any fertile farms lost to sea level rise in Alabama are not going to be replaced in Labrador. And warmer average global temperatures do not mean an end to winter. Winter is caused by our tilted earth’s angle to the sun, so Greenland will still be dark and mostly uninhabitable for long winter months. Instead, some places in the southwestern US may become practically uninhabitable for long hot summers.

Seasons will continue and will increase in importance as weather becomes more extreme. In the long evolutionary fossil records, the species that are small, light and highly mobile tend to do better than slow moving, heavy creatures that spend all their time in one place, especially in times of climate change. Obviously, being the first species theoretically capable of diverting an asteroid, it’s shameful that we’re not trying harder to avoid the mass extinctions that we’re going to cause with our carbon emissions.

Considering all this I am writing two new monthly series for Saturdays next year. At the beginning of the month I will recommend which national parks to visit in which months, with a few adjustments for the changing climate. And mid-month, I will write about relevant climate consequences. I encourage you to use your imaginative thinking to make the most of your road ahead.

Great Artists Steal

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When I first heard the quote in 1983, it was attributed to Victor Hugo (1802-1885), not Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and it was phrased as “poor artists imitate, good artists copy and great artists steal”. To me, it meant that a lesser artist doesn’t even have the skills to reproduce another artist’s work well, that a good artist has the skills to match the original artist’s work, and that a great artist can steal the essence of another idea and make it their own surpassing the original artist’s work entirely. Despite the invention of the Internet since then, I have not been able to find that particular line in any writing by Hugo, but I have found reasons to give him partial original credit nonetheless.

In February 1846, Victor Hugo observed a thin young man being arrested for stealing a loaf of bread, and he realized that the man was the “specter of la misère, of poverty”. Hugo thought deeply about theft, motive, desperation, and justice, and he wrote extensively on social injustice for the rest of his life. Ten years after witnessing the young man’s misfortune, writing in exile, Victor Hugo immortalized this indelible inspirational image in his novel, Les Misérables, making it the fateful event in his character Jean Valjean’s life.

“In days gone by, to live I stole a loaf of bread; today, to live I will not steal a name.”

Years after Hugo’s death, his compatriot Anatole France wrote another of my favorite quotes, doubtless inspired by Hugo’s ideas on theft and injustice.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread”.

Hugo was a strong lifetime advocate of two sometimes opposing positions. First he believed that ideas are inevitably free, writing that “an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted” and that “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come”. And second that artists deserved credit for their work. Hugo co-founded the movement for intellectual property to be protected by international copyright, believing that ideas added something of value to the world, constructively.

Anatole France, by juxtaposing “majestic equality” with the poverty-driven crime of stealing bread, distilled Hugo’s original epic rant about how the law unjustly criminalizes poverty and adds an unfair burden upon the poor in an unequal society into a quotable thought-provoking insight. Hugo perhaps would have been flattered by the imitation of his observation, and Hugo understood that each value-added portion of an idea deserves recognition. When someone merely takes another person’s idea without attribution to sell as their own, that’s plagiarism, which Hugo fought against.

But Hugo also certainly knew that it is the truth of the idea that gives it its power, which raises the question of whether the artist truly owns the underlying truth of an idea or not. Does the whale’s song belong to the scientists who recorded it, the artist who first set it to music, the company that now owns the digital rights, or to the whale? Often, theft is essential for ideas to be free.

While I believe the debate over stealing ideas began in France, it was the Harvard-educated poet T.S. Eliot who first framed it well in English when he wrote the following.

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.”

Here is the essence of value-added creativity. When an artist steals an idea and transforms it into something unique, better or at least different, then they deserve recognition for adding value. They are helping the idea evolve and improve, if it can.

Make no mistake, most stealing is terribly uncreative. Digital piracy alone is worth hundreds of billions annually, and the pirates are literally producing copies, by definition uncreative. Shoplifting isn’t original. And wage theft happens like clockwork, paycheck after paycheck.

The motive for most theft is instinctual—I want it—, or rational—I can take the money without anyone knowing—, but the motive for common theft is neither moral nor creative. In contrast, the motive for an artist to steal an idea is that they recognize that an idea still has untapped potential, and that they have the unique skills or viewpoint to express it in a new, different and better way. The artist works to free the idea by helping it evolve.

Pablo Picasso certainly exhibited this artistic felonious habit in his work, taking ideas and transforming them into something unique and utterly different, so there’s something appropriate about crediting the great artist with the quote. But I still think Victor Hugo deserves credit, since he helped us understand that good people sometimes have to steal for good reasons, that laws can be inflexibly misused by the powerful against the powerless, and that ideas are an irresistible force that cannot be imprisoned.

Detail from ‘Man Controller of the Universe’ by Diego Rivera. He recreated the mural in Mexico City after the original in Rockefeller Center in New York City was destroyed by his patron who did not appreciate Rivera’s subversive Communist message.

Improve Imaginative Thinking

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Rules are the first casualty of imaginative thinking, so let’s first fail to define the indefinable and then delve deeper to extricate our best ideas from social constraints. 

We’ve explored instinctual, rational, and moral thinking, but imaginative thinking is wholly different. Root thinking begins instinctually and drives us to act. Rational thinking is taught in school and is used to succeed. Moral thinking—sorely lacking these days—is desperately needed to improve our decisions. Yet imaginative thinking is the rarest, most valuable, least valued and most misunderstood.

Imagination imagines, wandering and wondering—ideally taking on a life of its own—creatively, destructively iconoclastic, unpredictably novel, exploring and ignoring limits.  Applied imaginative thinking—creative thinking and invention—is how we come up with new ideas; the goals vary, from understanding the truth, to creating a beautiful work of art and to finding a simpler, more elegant solution to a mundane old problem.  But in its purist form, imagination is unburdened by reality: a spark, a thread, a blank slate, a new world or multiverses. Yet since imagination is limitless, it tends to draw ideas from all types of thought, which causes problems right in the beginning.  

Most people use their imagination to imagine what they desire, which is driven by their instinctual needs.  Advanced creative thinking evolved from this type of fantasizing, but when only used in service of instinct, imagination is limited to serve our basic needs and is reduced to being an extension of our primitive nature.  When an animal uses tactics to hunt, that is instinct, not rational thinking.  Similarly, visualizing our urges is instinctive, not imaginative thinking.  Instinctual desires are basic, common, constant, repetitive, and ubiquitous, the most direct path to satisfying a need as opposed to the originality of uniquely creative ideas.

Motive matters. Freeing our imagination from our basic instincts is just as important as learning to think rationally or morally.  Freeing your creative mind in this way allows you to do much more than simply satisfy or stimulate yourself.  Human passions may fuel imagination, but if the goal is only to express those emotions, then that is all you will get.  If the goal is pure imagination, art for art’s sake, or a single idea, then imaginative thinking can be used for any dream. Imaginative thinkers are aware of instincts but are not bound by them. Unconstrained, they may choose to reveal conflicts in the human condition in order that we may see ourselves anew and change. If the goal is to create something novel, a child’s escapist dream can mature and develop into an elaborate new vision for humanity.

Rational thinkers are productive but follow standard procedures, limiting their capacity for change. Rational thinkers judge imaginative thought solely by its productive utility or output value, and they dislike budgeting time or resources on vague concepts or chaotic individuals. They seek to control the production of ideas, defining subcategories of creative thinking, invention and brainstorming to harness imagination to create, invent or solve their priorities, counting the number of bad ideas identified and evaluated, preferably producing at least one quantifiably useful insight per day. So, invention and creativity often become budgeted, programmatic efforts to produce quantifiable results on schedule. There is little that’s creative about a brute force evaluation of a large number of committee-brainstormed suggestions to fit a limited set of concrete criteria. Also, rational people are typically the least qualified for evaluating creative thinking, since they often lack the imagination needed to understand, appreciate or apply a new idea.

Imaginative people who enjoy new ideas for their own sake often struggle to operate within corporations and bureaucratic organizations, especially when they receive no credit for their ideas. Chaotic daydreamers with vague concepts are anathema to their rational bosses, until the day one comes up with a new competitive advantage for the whole firm. Imagination is disruptive to routine, but an idea can add more value in an instant than a division of diligent workers do in a year. Imaginative, out-of-the-box thinking necessitates removal of limits, which contradicts the standard operating procedure of rational business people. So, imaginative employees often need to find a perceptive advocate for their approach, to explain the potential reward of a new idea for a relatively low investment of time and resources, and to demand appropriate credit for a successful result. Visionaries often have to start their own businesses.

Imagination is often amoral and especially dismissive of conventions and customs.  Moral thinkers typically evaluate imaginative thought by its risks and benefits to society, and, as self-appointed guardians of righteous behavior, they often clash with new, unproven ideas. But imaginative thinkers are often seeking good ideas and positive solutions, just in different, unconventional and creative ways. Society develops moral rules which are internalized by people, but even the most well established social rules must be improved through innovation. Otherwise civilizations stagnate and can become oppressive in pursuit of stability, where consistent conformity leads to small-minded dull routine. Think of how a comedian can newly capture a common daily scenario that makes us suddenly realize its absurdity and laugh. One imaginative person can shatter the self-imposed constraints of a civilization, giving it the freedom to grow into a better one.

Our civilization does not make imaginative thinking easy. We ridicule and ostracize people who think different, assign ownership of ideas to corporations that may bury them to protect profits, and we pass laws prohibiting uncomfortable changes that challenge the status quo. In theory, the possibilities of imagination are endless, but in practice, the world places constraints upon us.  At work, creative people may be expected to produce innovations on schedule, within budget, conforming to specifications, using preferred methods, following brand guidelines, in Compliance, after gaining agreement of all stakeholders, with input from senior leadership.  If there are only a few ideas that will fit, then it is not particularly creative to pick one.  Rational thinkers may believe they understand the problem better and may try to impose their solution upon you.  Moral and instinctual thinkers may also believe they know best. 

Imaginative thinkers must both rise above instincts and keep rational and moral controlling forces at bay. Imagination can create something out of nothing, while unimaginative others remain stuck in ruts, plod through 10,000 sequential failures, or miss the point entirely. A good idea requires looking at the problem differently than before, taking a new approach or testing a tenuous new connection. A good idea may appear to come out of the blue suddenly, but usually a good idea is the result of a unique perspective or uncommon thinking.  Imagination uncovers secret shortcuts through inspirational, non-linear leaps, invisible and unknowable to others. Often such thinking requires walking outside, sleep, or focusing on seemingly unrelated ideas. Daydreaming at work is cause for dismissal, but once you come up with a new solution to an intractable problem, everyone follows and claims credit.

We need to reorient our lives, our work and our society to encourage imaginative thinking. Creative thought burns calories, and imagination requires effort and time.  Imaginative thinkers need independence, space to do their thing, and access to whatever fuels their ideas and inspires them, without interference. Realizing a dream may require new media, new technology or shattering a sacrosanct symbol. New ideas need inspiration, including varied viewpoints, diverse experiences and old forgotten ideas.  Ideas yearn to be free, realized, rediscovered, shared, stolen and reimagined. But imaginative people need recognition for the value of their contributions, champions to help bring their ideas to fruition and protection from small-minded, fearful bureaucrats, thieves and corrupt controllers.

But the magic begins when we give ourselves time to dream, so first, imaginative thinking must be a personal priority. I live my best life when I lead with my imagination and let everything else follow.

This Blog

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This blog is a creative exercise. The whole idea of trying to visit parks and world heritage sites by electric vehicle wasn’t suggested to me by anyone. Deciding what to write about and how to present it takes imagination, from what stories I decide to tell and which photos I choose to take and use.

Travel requires imagination. My itinerary has been anything but straight, as I often feel myself driven by curiosity, picking my spots by theme or asking ‘what if I try this way’. Even within parks, visitors must choose how to spend their time, so I often let my imagination take the lead. Should I bike, hike or kayak?

History requires imagination. How are places connected? More than once, I’ve asked whether or how one historic figure knew another and learned to piece together disparate parts of our American story. What was it like for natives, patriots, pioneers, and slaves? What were people thinking for history to unfold the way it did? What can we learn that informs our decisions today?

When I drive, I find my time full of thinking. The whole idea of dividing how we think into four distinct ways of thinking, each with different motives, techniques and goals, came to me while driving. New ideas require imagination, time, and a curious mix of concentration and inspiration, that I find on the road.

Most people, I fear, lack imagination. When in their comfort zone, they take in new information easily. But outside of that, they lack interest, and they resist new ideas, particularly challenging new perspectives or uncomfortable facts they never want to consider. Some are simply busy, preferring to delegate thinking to others who make it their business to tell people what to think.

But life requires imagination. Living well, especially in a diverse and rapidly changing world, requires curiosity, an open mind, empathy, and persistently trying to find your own way. Imagination can prepare you both to avoid problems and to take advantage of opportunities. Every day is a new kaleidoscopic puzzle we need to navigate through as best we can, and for that, imagination is our best friend.

Imagine

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No rules. Draws from everything, takes form out of nothing. Beyond the linear comprehension of rationality. An unexpected new path, free from past dogma. Reverberates in the human heart, soothes the savage beast, and lifts our souls to the stars. From the simplest dots on canvas to the grandest rock operas, the rarest and most wonderful way to think is imaginatively.

Imaginative thinking is how we come up with new ideas.  It is creative, unpredictable and ignores rules and limits.  We seek inspiration to leap somewhere new, to create something meaningful where there was nothing before.  We take an uncommon approach, use our unique perspective and think differently. The goals of imaginative thinking vary, from exploring a mysterious secret, to creating a beautiful work of art and to finding a simpler, novel, more elegant approach to solve a mundane old problem.  Inventors, artists and extraordinary children live and dream in this realm of possibilities when asking ‘what if?’  

Ideas can be miraculous things. Tiny seeds planted in childhood subconscious can grow into lifelong quests to change the world. A slightly different perspective, frustration, rebellion or eye for beauty may motivate an imaginative person to break all customary practices and start something new. Centuries may pass while ideas languish misunderstood or unappreciated, for it takes imagination to value ideas well and fully.

Imagination can be a complete escape from the human condition, creating an alternate universe where instinct, morality, and rationality are all entirely re-imagined.  Imagination is the spark of ideas used in all the other ways of thinking, but the other ways of thinking might never conceive of the idea on their own in a million years.  

Imaginative thinking has different motives and objectives from other ways of thinking. It creates art for art’s sake, Poe’s poetic principle. It may plumb the darkest corners of our animal instincts, but only in the interest of extracting a pure essence to enlighten humanity. The rational accountant may disapprove of paying for an elaborate lobby fresco, but if beautiful and beloved, the work of art may eventually be worth more than the office building that houses it. The moralist may initially take affront to a controversial contemporary art installation outside his cathedral, until the artist shows that the art also serves a higher purpose.

Imaginative thinkers are exploited by the rational, even as they are dismissed as unreliable, unrealistic dreamers who do not understand the real world.  Moral thinkers often disdain them as conceited, childish troublemakers, as much as they love their songs and sculptures. Instinctual thinkers fear they are being mocked or ridiculed, while yearning to possess the magic they sense.

Imaginative thinkers imagine their perspective perfect and believe that the world would be better off if more people thought imaginatively.  

Anything you want to do, do it
Want to change the world?
There’s nothing to it

There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you’ll be free
If you truly wish to be

— ‘Pure Imagination’
in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

The Moral Case for Climate Action

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Rational thinking, which has been engaged in debate about climate changing carbon pollution, imposes certain limitations that often hinder action. Scientists, who warned us of the climate crisis now upon us, rationally recommended reducing carbon emissions quickly to avoid irrevocably changing our climate from the one that sustained us since our ancestors were indistinguishable from chimpanzees. But the rational approach is also to conduct a risk assessment and cost benefit analysis of best options, despite the unprecedented threat to most living species.

The risks are difficult to quantify. Supercomputers forecast weekend weather with varying accuracy, and now we are modeling global climate changes and their effects on equally complex systems over the next century, without any way to check our work. Economics dramatically discounts distant future damages, so we underestimate the costly burden we are leaving for future generations. The scale of the solution is also daunting. Global energy production and use needs to transition quickly away from fossil fuels that have dominated energy for over 100 years. How could legislation pass quickly, broadly, effectively and globally enough to fix the problem? How much would it all cost?

Smart rational thinkers quickly determine that the unknown risks themselves argue for immediate action, that the costs of accelerating our energy transition are logically less than adapting every system to an increasingly hostile climate, and that the long-term benefit of green energy is a cheaper, cleaner, healthier and more abundant future.

But the default position of many mediocre rational thinkers is analysis paralysis, to balk at the scale of both the problem and the solution. When the full extent of a problem’s risks are unknown and the solution is too large, expensive and difficult to execute, then the rational choice appears to be inertia. This suits instinctual thinking too, as we have a natural bias to conserve our limited energy and avoid problems. Do nothing, at least until the problem becomes unavoidable. Then rational thinking is sadly put to use in its most common application, rationalizing a decision already made. Oh, maybe it won’t be so bad. The climate has changed before, and scientists often turn out to get things wrong. We have air conditioning. The excuses are endless.

Moral thinking requires honesty, courage and a bias to act. While rational thinking is selfish, moral thinking is selfless. Moral thinking requires us to do what is right, even at great personal cost. Moral thinking does not discount the value of the lives of our children, grandchildren or future generations. Rationally, we seek ways to benefit financially. Morally, we seek ways to help others. Rationally, we obey the law to avoid punishment. Morally, we know that it is wrong to kill, and carbon pollution is killing the vast diversity of life on earth. Rationally, we weigh the cost of the solution to us. Morally, we weigh humanity’s responsibility for causing the problem. For rational thinkers, the scale of the problem causes hesitancy. For moral thinkers, the global extinction-level-event scale of the climate crisis demands a response great enough to fix the problem we caused. While rational thinkers will not have enough information to make a decision until it is too late to do anything, moral thinkers demand we solve the problem now, before it becomes even worse. We know the scientists are correct, we must take up the burden placed upon our generation, and we must act before it is too late.

Our instincts also hold us back. We distrust that foreigners will cooperate. We look for ways to shift the burden onto others. We are lazy and prone to procrastinate with wishful thinking. ‘Maybe someone somewhere will somehow solve it someday’. Moral thinking has a long history confronting such human weaknesses. An ancient Chinese proverb says that “you can’t put out a fire nearby with distant water”, meaning fix the problem now with what you have on hand, before it becomes worse.

The climate crisis can be depressing and demotivating. But moral thinking teaches us not to give up in adversity and to stand strong for a just cause, despite public apathy or disapproval. Courage is created by the moral certainty of righteousness.

”We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;”

— 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 KJV

Proverbs teaches us that the wicked stay down when they stumble in calamity, “though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again”. The climate crisis is real, our fault, here now, everywhere, worsening, and is catastrophically consequential, so we must act now.

For World Ocean Day this past June 8th, my sister and I watched the premiere of David Attenborough’s Ocean at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford. Although I learned even more about the scale of environmental devastation we are wreaking in our oceans, Attenborough persuasively argued that our positive conservation-oriented actions can still make a difference. He used examples of how marine sanctuaries like the Channel Islands can recover quickly, bringing broad, positive spillover effects far beyond their boundaries, as life finds a way to try to survive. The widespread bleaching of coral reefs can be slowed and mitigated when reefs are protected from overfishing, as healthier ecosystems are more resilient, buying precious time and hope for some species.

We are hardly aware of and barely comprehend all the diversity of life on Earth, yet our actions will either save them or extinguish them forever. What right do we have to end species we don’t even know? Why do we do so little, when we must do so much, to fix what we have already done? How can we justify our inaction to ourselves and to future generations? What comfort is there in a walk through a forest, when we know that it will soon burn, because of the carbon cars we continue to drive? If you claim to love nature, animals, flowers, food, beer, wine, coffee, outdoor sports, fishing, and all the seasons that we enjoy, then you should be taking carbon-reducing action now to protect what you love for the future, or you are a hypocrite.

Maybe we won’t solve the whole problem in time to prevent the worst damage, but we won’t solve anything with a bad attitude. We can improve the odds of survival for species even with small acts. Anyone reading these words is living in humanity’s most perilous time for life on earth. What you choose to do or not do may help determine which forms of life will be on earth ages from now. Act on your carbon choices with the care and consideration deserved, as you carry the future of life on earth in your hands. Morally, we have no choice.

Speaking Out

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[Good news! I will philosophize less often for the rest of the year. So when I miss a Thursday post, you will have more time to think and act on your own.]

Moral thinking, unlike philosophy, demands action. Figuring out the right thing to do and why, has no purpose if nothing is actually done. While in some cases doing nothing is the best course, moral thinkers benefit from a bias to act. Our focus on solving a moral issue builds a moral case which most frequently contains a moral imperative that compels people to effect change.

Sometimes it is too late to prevent a tragedy, but moral thinking then demands that we learn from what happened, that we speak for the dead and that we act both to prevent any recurrence and to hold those responsible to account. In 1889, the Johnstown Flood killed 2,208 people. For their own convenience, a small group of extremely wealthy industrialists modified a private dam unsafely, without paying to reinstall pressure relief valves & pipes or reconfigure spillways. Due to weak liability laws on negligence, none of the members were ever held accountable. But liability laws were changed after the tragedy, due to public pressure, and they are now more strict. We all benefit when we learn from our mistakes.

There is a new, dangerously foolish and ignorant policy now being applied to our national parks, that asks citizens to report any national park unit that provides information that is “negative about either past or living Americans”. Apparently, those in power view the purpose of national park units to be solely positive propaganda outlets designed to boost patriotic fervor.

If you go to the Oklahoma City National Memorial, you will learn about two Americans, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who committed a heinous act of domestic terror. Must the affiliate park unit now cease saying anything negative about them? Should the 168 bombing victims—including 19 children—memorialized there now be forgotten, because leadership in DC will no longer allow the story of the bombing to be told fully? Must future students lose the opportunity to learn about this tragedy and the anti-Semitic, white supremacist ideology behind it?

On “December 7th, 1941–a date that shall live in infamy—”, 2,403 Americans were killed in a sneak attack on Oahu by the Imperial Japanese Navy. 21 US ships were sunk or damaged in the devastating battle at Pearl Harbor. Are we no longer allowed to remember that critical loss? Is it verboten to study the mistakes made in lining up 8 battleships in a small harbor on the eve of war? If you go to Hawaii and visit the USS Arizona are we no longer permitted to recognize the sacrifice of the 900+ crew members still entombed on the ship underwater? Are they now to be considered “suckers” and “losers”?

On July 17th, 1944, 320 people were killed in a munitions accident at Port Chicago in California. Rather than learn from their mistakes, the US Navy protected the white officers in charge and imprisoned the African American workers. Less than 4 months later, almost 1,000 were killed in an extremely similar accident at a US Navy base in New Guinea. More people die when the lessons of history are ignored.

The US Army lost twice at Manassas during the Civil War, and the first loss could only be described as grossly incompetent. Are the park rangers no longer permitted to criticize the poor military tactics of the Union Army leaders there?

For that matter, are they still allowed to discuss the cause of the Civil War, slavery? Perhaps all the Civil War battlefields and military cemeteries should be paved over and signs put up saying, “nothing bad involving Americans ever happened here”? If current leadership insists that there were “fine people on both sides”, perhaps the Civil War should be renamed the Civil Conversation?

And are Civil Rights and race riot memorials to close? What about the history of equal education? If no Americans ever did anything negative, what was Brown v. Board about? Why did Eisenhower have to send in the 101st Airborne to integrate Little Rock Central High? Why did so many people walk from Selma to Montgomery? Why were four little girls bombed at a church in Birmingham? Who was MLK? The refusal to make any moral judgement against any Americans, past or present, means that we must accept murderers, terrorists, insurrectionists, and racists and not criticize them, even if they are the most evil of criminals. Must the KKK’s violent history be respected, while massacres of Native Americans must be erased?

What greater affront to moral thinking can there be than to deliberately erase our history?

Authoritarian Kings once demanded that they be portrayed in the most flattering light. Then King Charles I of England was executed by a Parliamentarian revolutionary named Oliver Cromwell. A famous portrait artist had drawn a flattering portrait of Cromwell, before inviting him to sit for a more complete portrait. Cromwell saw the other picture and famously demanded that the artist paint him as he really was, “warts and all”.

Whitewashed history is a lie, which is designed to mislead us. Real events must be studied as accurately as possible in order to inform us. Every generation must go back to history to gather the lessons they need to inform their moral thinking for the decisions that must be made tomorrow.

”The past is never dead.
It’s not even past.”

William Faulkner

Improving Moral Thinking

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[Apologies for the long post. My next on this topic will be much shorter.]

Perhaps the most woefully neglected aspect of our thinking trouble is our moral thinking. Most often we begin thinking about the morality of an issue with our minds already made up.  Our gut may have decided on the issue instantly.  Your boss may have already told you that the project is good, and that if you do not see it that way, you can look for employment elsewhere.  As Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Of course, most believe ourselves moral—even some professional criminals claim to follow a code. Some instinctual thinkers follow their hearts, making moral choices based on sympathy or disgust. Some follow the crowd, believing that their church provides sufficient moral guidance, that the path they were taught years ago is righteous, and even that everyone should follow that path as they assume the beliefs of others are wrong. Rational thinkers learned that rational, self-interested choices benefit society optimally and that all problems have rational solutions. A few believe that their worldview justifies acts that others believe are abominations.

All of those folks are wrong, at least in part. It is not moral to pick and choose which rules to follow, according to your convenience. Instincts are often deeply biased and can result in ugly vigilantism. While many religious traditions are filled with valuable moral lessons, blindly following one faith while denying all others has resulted in centuries of bloody religious wars. Rational government scientists conducted an unethical experiment for 40 years until 1972, and rational pursuit of profit has caused pollution killing many humans and other species. Any act of terror is unfair to the innocent victims, and as a rule they do not achieve any positive goal.

Many lazy, soft-headed ‘thinkers’ have given up on moral thinking, using excuses that there are no universally agreed upon moral facts and that all morality is relative. Some self-serving cynics use these excuses as permission to do whatever they want, consequences be damned. Nonsense. I already presented an incontrovertible moral baseline for humanity, the side of life, and next I explained it’s logical corollary, that life requires diversity and that the purpose of knowledge is to pursue the same universal moral objective to further life. This simple moral framework, based on the Golden Rule, makes many moral choices obvious.

No other way of thinking is disqualified before it can defend itself.  I see no perfect rational utopia, yet people still try to think rationally.  Instinctual thought is riven with conflict, yet people still make gut decisions.  Dismissing the reality of moral thinking appears to be an instinct-driven defense, by people who do not want to feel guilty or who want their self-interested way of thinking to prevail.   

Real moral thinking requires making moral determinations for moral reasons. If a culture has a traditional practice that causes severe pain to children with long-term suffering as adults, solely in order to enhance the power and control of one gender over another, then it is morally wrong, on the basis that it destroys much of the enjoyment of life from one group without improving life significantly for others. It does not matter how many people support the practice, what the laws or government say, or what the cultural or religious tradition of the country has been for however many centuries. The practice fails the basic premise of allowing life to thrive fully and joyously without unnecessary cruelty.

Simply because a cultural practice exists, does not mean that it has a moral right to continue. Our country has a long history of racism, including genocidal war and slavery. Many books and laws were written in the past attempting to justify these official policies, and the policies were popular in (unfair) elections. The cultural heritage of slavery does not, in any way, justify its existence morally. When foreigners complained that our institution of slavery was barbarically inhuman, they were not culturally insensitive, they were correct. The purpose of moral thinking is to challenge all policies on moral grounds and to change immoral policies, no matter how popular or profitable.

Once we view moral thinking as independent from other ways of thinking, such as instinctual or rational, then we can separate those feelings or arguments when making moral decisions. We can recognize an argument as being based on a common human desire and judge the morality of that desire as we judge the morality of the issue. Perhaps a common human behavior is no longer useful in modern society, is obsolete and deserves to be forgotten. We can recognize a rational argument for profitability or efficiency and still dismiss it as not relevant to the moral choice. Once extraneous ways of thinking are identified and treated separately, then moral thinking becomes clearer.

The primary problem with moral thinking is that people begin with the wrong type of thinking. If you try to make moral decisions with rational thinking, your decisions will be cold, profit-seeking and cruel, even if you use euphemistic terms such as acceptable collateral damage, euthanasia or eugenics. If you try to make moral decisions with the instinctual goal of reinforcing your own power or that of your group, then your decisions will be self-serving, not moral. Such mixed-motive thinking is confusing and often wrong.

Moral thinking should take into consideration human needs and desires, without allowing them to drive the decision, and it must often overrule short-run wants for long-term good. Moral thinking should be driven by the broadest love of life and humanity, while firmly able to deny base instinctual desires or herd behavior. Moral thinking should be as critical of bias and skeptical of ulterior motive as any scientist, while having the courage to defend the powerless few against the powerful majority.

Moral thinking should understand relevant rational assessments such as numbers of people involved and economic costs, without allowing strictly rational analysis to drive the decision, and must often overrule short-run profits for long-term good. Moral thinking must be as adept at analysis as rational thinking, but use that analysis to achieve a moral result, not the most efficient solution.

Moral thinking must learn the lessons of the past to avoid repeating those mistakes in the future. Most mistakes are not original. We have a long history of human error to teach us. Many old texts have profound moral lessons that only require some effort to apply to current problems. Each generation needs to go back to historic and even religious texts to reinterpret the old lessons for their new problems.

Religious beliefs may vary or be relative, but they are not the same as moral thinking.  Some religious texts reflect centuries of accumulated moral thinking, worded by our inspired ancestors for future generations to make better choices.  Just as engineers don’t reinvent the wheel, moral thinkers use the best tools they have.  Sometimes a moral decision is as simple as recalling a dictum and applying it.  But usually moral thinking requires more than looking up the answer in a book.  If you begin with a commandment already chosen, then you are simply applying a religious rule, not necessarily thinking extensively about the morality of the situation.  Your religion may require unquestioning obedience, but moral thinking requires more.  

Morality requires both flexibility to respond to new situations and backbone to stand on principle. One way to achieve this is to use techniques which were designed to facilitate good moral decisions. You might put yourself in each position and imagine how you would feel. You might ask whether one side would be equally happy to switch sides with the opposing party or if that would seem unfair then. You should prefer to take the long view and be the voice of silent future generations.

To summarize the key take-away, clear moral thinking should begin with a quick check that none of the other ways of thinking are driving it.  The method will almost certainly require a review of the facts, an exploration of the possibilities, and an understanding of what people want.  You need an open mind, not an empty one.  But the moral intent needs to be pure.  If you start with the belief that economics must decide the outcome, then that may be rational but not moral.  If you start with the belief that what pleases the most people will be best, then that may be popular but not moral.  If you start with your own idea in mind, then no matter how much you like it, it may not be the best solution for others.  You must commit to find the best long-term outcome in the most important respects, without regard to greed, fantasy, pride or other vices.  Well begun is half done, but moral thinking requires discipline, honesty, and may require significant time and effort, before you are prepared to make the best choice possible.