What Al Gore doesn't understand about climate change
This article employs some sloppy logic to climate change to get some unconvincing dilemmas. For instance, it assumes that climate change is all about our ancestors, because its consequences won’t be here until we’re long dead. Now, I have a life expectancy of (roughly) sixty more years of life. Any children I might have will, statistically, probably be alive eighty to ninety years from now. Even by the weakest and most benign of projections, we’ll feel the consequences before then. This is just old men’s logic.
There are more examples of sloppy logic in the article. Take this, for instance:
Few of us feel morally bound to churn out as many children as we possibly can, which means we think nothing of denying future generations the gift of life. If it’s OK to deny them their very lives, shouldn’t it be OK to deny them a temperate climate?
This moralistic argument fails on every count. You can’t deny anyone’s rights if there’s no one to deny. Since, by definition, if hypotethical children are never born, they do not exist, saying we’re denying them anything is like saying we should give human rights to every possible person that might exist somewhere in a parallel universe if we accept the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It simply won’t do.
So no, Steven E. Landsburg, I think you ought to use your primal instincts a bit more and think about your own survival, and the survival of those carrying your genes, that is your children, grandchildren and so on.
Hat tip to phantasmagorical for finding this link.
