Long Tails and Ethics: Thinking about the Unthinkable (2010)

Abstract

W e have long lived in the faith that “nature does not set booby traps for unwary species,” as Robert Sinsheimer (1978) once noted. Whether nature does or not, we humans do, and we have nearly trapped ourselves by exploiting large pools of carbon found in soils, forests, coal, oil, and gas. The result is a rapid change in the chemistry of the atmosphere, leading to rising temperatures, destabilization of virtually every part of the biosphere, and the looming prospect of global catastrophe. The effect of climatic disruption now gathering momentum is a tsunami of change that will roll across every corner of the Earth, affect every sector of every society, and worsen problems of insecurity, hunger, poverty, and societal instability. We live now in the defining moment of our species that will determine whether we are smart enough, competent enough, and wise enough to escape from a global trap entirely of our own making.