Climate Change: A Very Short Story

Let us start with a very short story. In fact, I intend to confine myself to just this story in this post. We shall return to this story and its characters whenever the need shall be felt. Now, the story.

There were two neighbours P and S. P decided to run a machine for its private use. One effect of running this machine was to make P richer. The machine, however, also poisoned the air whenever it ran. Nobody knew of this polluting effect. But both P and S faced the adverse effects.

How did they mitigate these adverse effects? As we have already said, they did not know the causes of the pollution. So P, being rich, invested heavily in research on air masks, air filters, etc. and ultimately invented, owned and used them. S, on the other hand, being poorer could not afford the new gadgets and facilities. S, perhaps, was poorer because of not using the polluting machine. Since the machine created wealth, P continued to depend upon it. There was more pollution. P continued to invest a fraction of the wealth to overcome the adverse effects. Hollywood does not particularly attract me. Or else, I would not consider it very implausible that P ultimately began to inhabit Mars when the pollution became intolerable. (This, of course, would have to happen before the attack of the aliens, chimeras and monsters)

What about S? With little resources to spare after meeting the bare needs S could not benefit from the use of the mitigating inventions. The suffering of S increased.

Thus, the more P polluted, the more S suffered. P suffered too but depending upon the magnitude of the good and bad effects that running the machine had it was, perhaps, completely possible to mitigate the negatives. Even if otherwise, the bad effects of pollution on P were significantly retarded as compared to that on S.

Then P and S got serious about their conditions. So they studied the problem and discovered that the pollution came from the machines which were put to use by P in a far greater proportion than S.

This was a politically inconvenient conclusion. P would have to stop running the riches-cum-pollution generating machines. P would have to compensate S for all the suffering caused by it to S. And since their study had pointed to a persistence of the ill-effects for many years into the future even if the machines would be immediately banned, P would have to compensate S for many years into the future. That is all common-sense, fairness, justice or any name you like. P knew this. So P decided to disagree (as much as possible without appearing completely irrational) with the findings of the study.

Years passed. New data emerged. Better analyses was possible. And the conclusion was the same. Only, it was more certain.

Does it all appear familiar? Well, the story ends here.