Quote:
Originally Posted by Ark2
You also said that you look at action on climate change as something akin to Pascal’s Wager. So that we are clear, Pascal’s Wager concerns the belief in God. If you believe in God and it turns out that God exists, then you are granted eternal happiness. If you believe in God and it turns out that God does not exist, then nothing happens. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in God and it turns out that God exists, then you suffer eternal damnation. If you don’t believe in God and it turns out that God does not exist, then once again, nothing happens. As such, it is a safer bet to believe in God. Agree?
If so, for taking action on climate change to be akin to Pascal’s Wager, you are stating that to act on climate change and have climate change in fact not be a serious problem would be no different than to not act on climate change and for climate change to not be a serious problem. So once again, I ask you, what do you believe the sacrifices are of acting on climate change now?
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I'm not quite sure I follow. All I said is that it seems to me that the cost of the carbon tax is trivial compared to the potential worst case scenario of climate change, which I believe is the mass extinction of humans. I do not believe that scenario is likely but I think it is a possible, very low-probability outcome, with the probability slowly and gradually increasing every year as the planet gets warmer. If you don't believe that to be the worst case scenario, I totally understand why you may think the carbon tax is too burdensome. I personally think climate change turning out to be not so serious a problem is also a possible, albeit low-probability outcome. But as a generally circumspect person, I want to take action to guard against the worst case scenario. So perhaps you should ask yourself what you think is the worst-case (but still potentially possible) scenario of climate change.