Op/ed Friday: Global warming is like an unintended pregnancy

November 4, 2016 by Joshua
in Inc.com, Nature

My Inc.com article today, “How Global Warming Is Like an Unintended Pregnancy,” began

How Global Warming Is Like an Unintended Pregnancy

It’s inevitable. Our choices and behavior still affect future generations. Do we give up or take responsibility?

A lot of people, especially engineers who act like they “know the science behind it best,” at least in my experience, point out how global warming will have serious effects no matter what we do today.

They conclude that since it’s inevitable, we can’t do anything and might as well enjoy ourselves. Here’s one example: James Lovelock: ‘enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan’.

We had fun enjoying ourselves without thinking of the results of our actions and ended up with a result we have to take care of for a long time. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, especially with this post’s title?

You can use whatever mental model you want, but I’m tending to look at global warming like an unintended pregnancy.

How you model things determines what you see about them and how you react. We didn’t want it to happen, but it did. Since we don’t expect global warming to destroy all of humanity, there are unborn people we could take care of.

Do we want to act responsibly or not?

Read the rest at How Global Warming Is Like an Unintended Pregnancy.

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