Reason

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.

Rational Thinking

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Most humans live in their instinctual feelings: love, guilt, hate, fear, pride, anger, happiness, awe…. Unless something reverberates in our beating heart, the idea doesn’t feel real to us. Logic can seem as alien as Spock. We cocoon in the comfort of our instincts, and our modern technology entertains us with exciting fantasies about alien technology manipulating our brains. Ironically, our cable TV hearth targets our instinctual responses, in order to keep our attention on imaginary loves and fears for profits. Instinctual thinking limits us to recognizing our confusion, delusions, and fear. But then what?

No. If we’re going to solve our trouble with thinking, we need to overcome the limits of our instinctual thinking, ask honest questions, organize how we think, be methodical and logical. We need a far more advanced way of thinking: rational thinking. How do we go about that? Fortunately, rational thinkers keep records.

Socrates began the western history of rational thought by asking questions methodically, and his Socratic method is still employed at advanced universities. His student Plato believed that knowledge acquired through reason is more ideal than what our senses and experiences teach us. And Plato’s student Aristotle tempered that view to organize all thought rationally, whether the ideas came from observation or logic, inventing the scientific method and categorizing knowledge into physics, biology and politics. Aristotle’s logic helped him determine that the Earth was a sphere and that rain resulted from evaporation, around 350 BCE. In China around the same time, Confucius, Mencius & Xunzi similarly codified more rational ways of thinking. Math was already long known to the Egyptians and was advanced by later Greeks like Euclid and Archimedes.

But, most humans still being primarily instinctual thinkers, the ancient rationalism was almost lost after the Visigoths, Vandals and other barbarians sacked Rome, and in the Dark Ages of Europe, when only one story was read, the world turned flat and stupid again. Math continued to advance in the Muslim world, where the Indian decimal system was combined with Greek math and ancient Babylonian formulae. Around 825, the Persian Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi used the Indian concept of zero to balance equations, inventing Algebra. Some 375 years later, an Italian named Fibonacci brought this math to Europe.

The Church was unable to stop the Black Death, and the survivors started to rethink everything. Muslim scholars arrived in Spain and Italy to share their knowledge, and Renaissance scholars dusted off the Ancient Greek tomes and hit the books. The Medici, a merchant family in Florence, funded some of the most important scientists of the Renaissance: Brunelleschi, Da Vinci and Galileo. After exploring Roman ruins, Brunelleschi designed a huge, unsupported dome for the Florence Cathedral, proving that math still works even after being forgotten for centuries. Da Vinci studied human anatomy by dissecting cadavers, describing the nerves that connect our senses directly to our brains.

Then, Copernicus explained that the Earth revolved around the sun—as proposed by Aristarchus 1800 years earlier—, publishing both his observations and the math behind them. The Scientific Revolution had begun. Despite the Church’s opposition—including burning Giordano Bruno, who theorized that distant stars were like our sun with planets of their own, at the stake in Rome—Galileo made more detailed observations, expanding Physics and Astronomy, describing the moons of Jupiter, Saturn’s rings and the Milky Way, before being imprisoned for the remainder of his life. Francis Bacon described the scientific method (2,000 years after Aristotle). Newton reduced Physics to simple formulae, requiring neither God nor magic to employ.

René Descartes wrote cogito, ergo sum, ‘I think, therefore I am’, and, much as Plato before him, Descartes decided to believe only in what was supported by reason. The Age of Enlightenment began. Now, not just the infallibility of Church dogma, but the Divine Right of Kings was threatened. The ancient Greek ideal of Democracy returned. Revolutions followed. Americans who believe that our founders were guided by Christian faith have history exactly backwards. America was founded by rational thinkers, like Franklin, Jefferson and Madison, whose philosophy was explained by their compatriot founding father, Thomas Paine, in his book, The Age of Reason.

Rational thinking survived the collapse of civilizations, barbarian invasions, centuries of religious inculcation, enforced ignorance, public executions, tyranny, torture and wars. In the modern era, irrational fears and fact-free conformity still vie with what Judge Learned Hand called “the eventual supremacy of reason”. Rational thinking has proven itself to be both correct and valuable. Rational thinking is how we solve problems using facts, logic and math.  Rational thinking is what we learn in school and what we use in many professions, such as ecology, economics and engineering.  Boring, repetitive, linear, slow, and pain-staking though it may be, Edison consistently applied rational thinking to develop marketable light bulbs, transmitters, recording devices, movie cameras, batteries, coffee percolators and more in his lab and study below.

The general objective of rational thinking is to get the right answer.  The specific problem and methods vary, but we do not think rationally in order to get the wrong answer.  That would be stupid.  Rational thinking is smart.  The origin of your rational thinking is especially important.  If your thinking begins with a neutral observation, a plain fact, without embellishment, without judgement and without any bias of personal feelings, then you may begin thinking clearly in a rational way.  We gather information, make sure the facts and data are accurate, we use reliable methods, and we check our work.  The reason we went to school, studied, did our homework and passed tests, is so that when we need to solve a problem, we have the skills to think rationally to solve it.  

While others may wallow in their instinctual thinking, many of us primarily think rationally.  Fighting is counter-productive.  People should be more logical.  Facts matter, which is why we keep track of them in history books and databases.  If you want to know which player is better, look at their statistics.  Get the information you need, be organized and think it through step by step.  

This is how to succeed at work and in life.  Status matters less than income, and income matters less than savings.  You decide what you eat by cost, time to prepare, variety, nutrition and sufficient calories.   When you attend social events, you seek out those who are informative, especially in a way that might profit or benefit you.  Marriage is desirable for many reasons: two can live as cheaply as one, two heads are better than one, you can share life’s burdens and each of your strengths will compensate for the other’s weaknesses.  You want your children to be well-educated and financially successful.  You are planning for your retirement and even your death. 

Rational thinkers view their way as correct and believe that the world would be better off if more people thought rationally. Yes. Rational thinking may not feel real to instinctual thinkers, but air travel is a reality. And to rational thinkers, physics is what makes the world go round.

The Trouble with Thinking

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The trouble with thinking these days is that few do it correctly. First, most Americans are chemically impaired, irrational or misinformed. Second, modern conveniences help us do many things every day without thinking. We act habitually, instinctively and follow others, and when nothing goes wrong, we declare ourselves ‘smart’. Third, we don’t know what real thinking requires. For most, ‘thinking’ starts with an unconscious desire, is validated by a childhood belief and is rationalized by something we once heard somewhere. However common, that’s mush.

Don’t feel bad. Few, if any, were taught how to think both methodically and comprehensively in school. Even well-trained academics are often either one-dimensional thinkers or at best employ self-developed, mismatched thinking techniques. After obsessing over mistakes for years, I finally recognized how haphazard and contradictory our way of thinking has become. So, on alternate Thursdays, I’m going to write about thinking: how to do it better, how to make fewer mistakes, and how better thinking is the way to a better future.

[That’s it really, but, if you want to read more, I belabor the point below.]

Most Americans are exposed to chemicals that reduce our cognitive skills. Self medication with products containing THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, is even higher than prescription antidepressants which have also soared, with over 20% of seniors consuming cannabis and 60+ million Americans consuming CBD. Long term exposure to THC can cause problems with memory, concentration, IQ, and ability to make decisions. 1/2 of American adults today were exposed to unhealthy amounts of lead as children, from leaded gas fumes and leaded drinking water pipes, lowering IQ a few points. And 2/3 of American adults drink alcohol regularly. Obviously all that presents an obstacle to thinking clearly.

But, even if folks got off dope and booze, most would still do the bare minimum of thinking. Our modern convenient lives are filled with routines, absorbing views from others and our habitual responses. Like Forrest Gump in the Army, not thinking is the path of least resistance. The Age of Reason lacks followers. We have returned to an age of Mob Rule, where illusions and emotions drive society. It’s very easy to become deluded today, surrounding yourself with whatever views you like: most Americans believe in aliens or ghosts, many believe in conspiracy theories, and unrealistic expectations are common. Critical thinking, weighing evidence and predicting consequences are ignored, and instead decisions are made by general feelings.

The climate crisis is a good example. Scientists agree that humans burned so much fossilized carbon from eons before we evolved, that we have caused global average temperatures to rise to levels that drive and will continue to drive mass extinctions for long beyond our lives, leaving our descendants to face unprecedented challenges to life on earth. That’s a fact. But even people who claim to be rational, logical thinkers find ways to downplay that threat and avoid taking action to help solve the problem. ‘Alternative facts’ are available online, you can simply refuse to believe evidence, or you can just ignore it and distract yourself with entertainment.

It’s easy and fair to blame politicians, biased media, hostile foreign governments and corporate lobbyists for lying to us. But how did we get to the point where most adults can’t tell fact from fiction, can’t see obvious consequences ahead, and can’t imagine how to solve basic problems like reducing carbon pollution? We can no longer simply raise a problem, discuss honestly, brainstorm and agree on the best solution. Sure, it’s a failure of leadership, but we’re all failing to face the truth and act appropriately. At this point we must admit we all have trouble thinking.

I will tell you the truth.  I am neither an expert in human psychology nor intelligence.  But I have way too much experience making and struggling with mistakes.  Determined to understand what went wrong, I obsessively analyze my own mistakes, specific historic mistakes and the broader, general mistakes humans make.  Frustrated, I travel, visiting sites of beauty and pain, of conflict and success, and of nature and destruction.  Each day trying to see a better way.  Isolated both by choice and by my own mistakes, eventually my view became as clear and honest as a distant peak on the horizon, emerging from the mist and hit by the sun above the wilderness.  

So now I have a few worthwhile thoughts about thinking. Unfortunately, my realizations come a bit too late for me.  Too late to save friendships, my first degree, marriage or my career.  Too late to discuss with my father.  But not too late for you to benefit, if you continue to read this blog.

We do not think how we think we think. Because we think wrongly, we make predictable mistakes. And we become depressed, which also decreases our cognition. But we could change how we think. We can become aware of how we really think and exercise more control over unhelpful ways of thinking. Better thinking could solve problems, help us make better choices, and help us come up with better ideas.  Then we would all feel better about ourselves and our future, instead of medicating ourselves into false comfort in an increasingly troubled world.

While we quickly agree that others need to learn how to think better, our vanity makes us reluctant to believe that our own way of thinking could possibly be improved. I challenge you to read my insights about thinking on alternate Thursdays. Why do I care? I believe we’re on the same side, and I want us to stop making so many mistakes. So I will write for you, so you will think better.  Thanks.