Going off the Rails: Anthropogenic Climate Change as a trolley problem
The Philipa Foote's trolley problem creates an artificial situation of choosing action, or inaction, with no good outcomes. It is at best an inexact analogy as we are riding on the trolley. If the term anthropogenic is an appropriate adjective for the climate change happening around us, then perhaps it is better to say we are that train.
At the least, we are on the trolley, and we have the choice of jamming on the breaks, causing the vehicle to jump the tracks, injuring many riders and killing others. We can choose to let the cart continue on its way, until it jumps the track and injures many riders and kills others. Finally, we can slow it to a stop, while we build a replacement that won’t endanger us. Then the question is how long can we take to brake. What will case the least disruption(the fewest injuries), knowing the longer we wait the more likely that a wreck will result.
For the purposes of this thought experiment, I will not engage with those that think the trolley can continue, or even accelerate. That is wishful thinking. We do not have time to entertain reductio ad absurdum arguments.
Indeed, time is the question. If we were to stop all fossil fuel use tomorrow, much of the human species would be starving in days, weeks or at most, months. We are that dependent on fossil fuels to cultivate, fertilize, transport and store food. Yet to continue on the path as we are going on would lead to a planet unable to sustain human civilization, and quite possibly any human life. The climactic effects of fossil fuel use will destroy agriculture as we know it by making much of the earth’s arable lands unusable. The time frame for this process is measured in decades to centuries.
This time frame seems long when human life occurs in temporal frames of days, weeks and months. Our economy tends to measure value in quarters, three month periods. Our lived experience is on a shorter time frame. If we don’t eat for a day, or have water for a few hours, we begin to suffer. For many, though we may save for the future, we are focussed on the rent or mortgage due at the end of the month. The trolley wreck of climate change seems too slow. Few can ignore the immediate catastrophe of loosing one’s house, due to unemployment, against the long term goal of sustaining of the climate.
How we understand these time frames is the key to selecting a time frame for change. How we disburse the pain of reducing fossil fuel consumption, and so atmospheric CO2 concentrations and catastrophic climate change is a temporal question that varies with wealth, power and privilege.
Ronald Wright’s description of how the Mayan civilization collapsed after a successful 800 year history offers a parallel perspective on an advanced civilization that doubled down on the meaning of their success, and so wrecked themselves. How we experience time as agents is worth considering in order to reveal the often unperceived effects of climate change.
