August 12, 2022
Dear Interested Readers,
What Do We Owe The Future?
Future people count. There could be a lot of them. We can make their lives better.
That quote is part of Ezra Klein’s introduction to an interview with futurist Will MacAskill the author of a soon-to-be-published book, What We Owe the Future. He is a founder and activist within “the effective altruism movement,” and a philosopher who teaches at Oxford. If you are unfamiliar with the term “effective altruism” it is pretty much self-explanatory, it means getting measurable results from charitable activities. If you want to learn more, listen to Klein’s podcast or click on the link to the Wikipedia description of the movement. MacAskill is getting a lot of press. There is a long article about him and the movement in this week’s New Yorker. Finally, you might read an article from Time magazine that was published this week. The author of the article, Naina Bajekal, writes:
The greater good has been the focus of his [MacAskill’s] work for more than a decade, since he helped start the effective altruism (EA) movement, which aims to use evidence and reason to find the best ways of helping others, and to put those findings into practice. EA holds that we should value all lives equally and act on that basis. It is the antithesis of the old do-gooder’s credo “Think global, act local.”
His new book, What We Owe the Future, argues we should expand the moral circle even further: if we care about people thousands of miles away, we should care about people thousands or even millions of years in the future.
That sort of thinking reframes many of the issues of the moment. For many years I have been concerned about the future just over the horizon. I care about what might happen to my children and their children. MacAskill’s long view makes my concerns look like they are stuck in the moment, but even with my shortsighted perspective, there is a real reason to question just how moral our decisions are today if they leave the next few generations a world full of problems that could have been avoided.
More than my own desire for “creature comforts,” I want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be adults in a world where everyone has “enough.” I want them to live in a country where everyone has adequate housing, meaningful employment after all the education they want, guaranteed access to high-quality healthcare, and the opportunity to pursue what is interesting and adds value to their lives. That wish list may represent a pollyanna desire for a utopian future, but I often fear that we are on a road that leads to a much darker reality, a future that will ultimately be dystopian for everyone. So, if my tendency is to conceptualize the future in terms of the next two or three generations, I feel puny when I consider that MacAskill, with startling hyperbole, carries the concept of our obligation to care about the world we are passing forward in the future to hundreds if not thousands of generations. His view of our obligation to distant generations is almost beyond imagination. His sense of obligation to our descendants in the distant future is both thought-provoking and frightening when we consider what we are doing now.
Looking backward, I once was startled to learn that “the dead” are a minority. I was told it was a fact that there are more people alive today than have ever lived and died since our species emerged from East Africa about 200,000 years ago. My first facetious reaction to that fact, if it is true, was that not everyone could have had a past life. The chaos of the current moment must be derivative of the fact that the population has a lot of “first timers” since there could not be a majority of old souls.
MacAskill’s radical ideas about our moral obligation to the future should be heightened by the enlightened self-interest that we are in the midst of our planet’s sixth extinction, and our species could join the thousands of species that have recently passed out of existence. The sixth extinction that some scientists say we are experiencing is different from the previous five because it is an “Anthropomorphic” or if you prefer an “Anthropocene extinction.”
Jill Lapore, the Harvard historian who writes very interesting books about everything from Wonder Woman to a challenging recast of American History, has a short essay this week in the “The Talk of the Town” section of the New Yorker that discusses our role in extinction and the interesting but unrealistic hope about “de-extinction.” She reports that the World Wildlife Fund estimates that a third to half of all non-human species will be extinct by 2050. She concurs with the implication that this extinction, unlike the previous five, is a process rooted in human activity. With all that “extinction” aren’t we also vulnerable?
If we go as a species this time around it will be our own fault, and not the result of a collision with a meteor, or an atmosphere full of ash from volcanic eruptions. If humans join the departure to non-existence it will probably be the result of global warming and our other abuses of nature. We are well on our way to that dystopian moment when there will be more to worry about than the search for dry land above rising sea levels.
Time is running out if we are to avoid much more hurt than the current inconveniences of fires, floods, hurricanes, and heat. We are still watching the preview, but the main feature is coming faster than we have been telling ourselves. This week we learned that the Arctic is warming four to seven times faster than the rest of the globe. This accelerated warming may be a partial explanation for the recent increase in violent weather. We have known for a while that Antarctica was also warming at a faster pace than the rest of the world. We are caught in the middle as the poles go faster than we have wanted to admit.
My oldest son and his family live in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. Fortunately, they live close to the highest ridge in Dade County. “Tiger Tail,” the main thoroughfare along “the ridge” at an elevation of thirteen feet above sea level is just a few doors up from them. Less than a city block and about twelve feet of elevation below them is Bayshore Drive which will probably be underwater before my granddaughter is as old as I am.
The next community over from Coconut Grove is Coral Gables. A few years ago, during one of my regular visits to the area, I was cruising the Internet and discovered that the city officials of Coral Gables “know” that sea levels will rise and their town will be a lot like Venice where the streets are waterways. The area has Republican leadership. Maria Salazar, a Republican, is the Congresswoman for Coral Gables and both of Florida’s senators and governor are Republicans, and like Mitch McConnell, I imagine that they have poo-poohed the necessity of policies to manage carbon emissions which are the origin of much of the rise in temperature, and the root cause of rising sea levels. It is interesting that when the threat might affect tourism and property values at home, then local plans are made while national and international efforts are contrary to the party’s position. The town of Coral Gables already has a plan for when the water rises. Check out the “Surging Sea Risk Finder” for Coral Gables. Is it talking out of both sides of your mouth when you deny global warming for political purposes and make a plan to deal with it at the same time?
It is the nature of medical practice to be focused on our individual patient’s current symptoms and risks. Our days in practice are filled with helping the patient in front of us and the other individuals in our practices for whom we have a professional obligation. Perhaps it is an unfair generalization to say that most of us who are focused on the challenges of providing care to individual patients treat the issues of public health, the environment, and the risks to future generations as secondary concerns that should be managed by other professionals. MacAskill’s position seems to suggest that even though you are, or in my case was, a medical professional doing important work that leaves you exhausted at the end of the day, you share with everyone else an extended responsibility to future generations. Continue to consider that thought even though you may not agree with it in part, or in the whole, while we look at the remarkable events that occurred this last week.
It seems possible to me that we can explain much of what we call our partisan divide by whether or how we think about the future versus our financial concerns of the moment. Last Sunday, after a marathon session of debate and voting on amendments, the Democrats in the Senate without a single Republican vote passed The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 which is really “the global warming reduction effort, healthcare improvement, and new tax bill for big businesses that don’t pay taxes bill.”
The House will probably vote on the bill today. Barring any unforeseen developments, it will not be long before President Biden signs it. It is a cachectic version of Biden’s “Build Back Better Bill” that Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have reduced to about a third of its original size by refusing to vote for almost all of the immediate benefits for the poor children of the country and other supports to the improvement of the social determinants of health. Whether the bill will do anything to curb inflation is a matter of debate.
Despite the disappointment that exists because it is not what it should be, there is no question that the bill is a major accomplishment in the effort to reduce global warming. The bill will also be a boon to efforts to insure continued access to healthcare for many poor people while it simultaneously uses the purchasing powers of the federal government to lower the cost of many drugs and cap the out-of-pocket expense for drugs for those on Medicare at $2000, but unfortunately for people not on Medicare, the price of insulin is likely to remain a sin. In a baby step toward economic equity, the 700-plus billion dollar price is more than financed by a new tax on corporate profits and a new tax on stock buy-backs by corporations that foster economic inequity. Economists are predicting that over the next ten years the bill may reduce the deficit by as much as 300 billion so the name is not entirely a joke.
The best description of the bill and how consensus among Democrats was achieved that I have heard or read was on the New York Times podcast “The Daily” on last Tuesday. Click here to hear the thirty-minute program or peruse the transcript. Alternatively, you might read a New York Times article co-written by Lisa Friedman and Emily Cochrane entitled “What’s in the Climate, Tax and Health Care Package.” Ms. Cochrane was also one of the voices on the “Daily” podcast.” The first two paragraphs of their article sum up the situation succinctly:
After months of painstaking negotiations, Democrats are set to push through a climate, tax and health care package that would salvage key elements of President Biden’s domestic agenda.
The legislation, while falling far short of the ambitious $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act that the House passed in November, fulfills multiple longstanding Democratic goals, including countering the toll of climate change on a rapidly warming planet, taking steps to lower the cost of prescription drugs and to revamping portions of the tax code in a bid to make it more equitable.
Mitch McConnell was not a happy dissenter and expressed concerns that were held by the fifty Republicans that opposed the bill. His comment on the bill was reported by Salon.
“The American people are clear about their priorities,” McConnell said in a statement insisting that Americans don’t care about the environment. “Environmental regulation is a 3% issue.” As people in his state are still burying the drowning victims, McConnell argued that what they are really worried about is “inflation, crime, and the border.”
So, there are things to celebrate at least for now. Will it be enough to make a difference that people will feel in their pocketbooks, their healthcare, and in the effort to prevent people from being at risk of eventual extinction? Maybe, but all of these gains could be reversed within a couple of years through some combination of the work of a conservative Supreme Court and the recapture of both houses of Congress and the presidency by a party that has shown no interest in the well-being of future generations other than to prevent abortions.
Go figure. Much more remains to be done. There is not yet the certainty that we will sustain the acceptance of the need to address the painful reality of global warming which is a threat to the health and existence of every person and act on what Al Gore called an “inconvenient truth” almost twenty years ago. Is four-dollar gas such a big problem compared to having our homes burned and flooded while guaranteeing that our children and grandchildren will have good reason to curse us for our stupidity and lack of concern for the world they will inherit?
Beautiful From Above, And Nice Below
The header for today’s letter was lifted from another remarkable drone video production from my very talented Neighbor, Peter Bloch. Over the last two weeks, he has produced two stunning productions. The first video is entitled “Lake Light #1” which was the origin of today’s picture. The second video is “Lake Light #2.” They could easily be called “First Light” and “A Little After Sunrise.” Each clip is about two minutes long. The beauty these videos reveal is almost enough to encourage me to get up early.
What I love about these videos besides their striking beauty is that the drone was probably flying over my house when the pictures were taken. We live at the west end of the lake. As you can see from the picture, there is a long peninsula that divides the lake. The peninsula was formed by the melting glacier that was here about 12,000 years ago. It is a composite. I have been told by a geologist that it is part drumlin and part eschar.
Pictures don’t always accurately reveal reality. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but my side of the lake is a little smaller than the east side which is also twice as deep. My end of the lake was a “dam” of glacial silt that was the final component of the lake’s formation. It’s amazing to me that the whole scene is so “recent” in origin.
I thoroughly enjoy where I live even though the weather this last week has been hotter and muggier than at any time since we bought the place in 2008. Over the eight years since we have enjoyed full-time life here, the culture and community events have been as pleasurable as the natural environment. This last weekend was the first time since COVID that we had our annual “hospital days” celebration. The weekend is a fundraiser for the local hospital and includes a circus and carnival on the town green, a mini-triathlon, and a parade.
The parade has dignitaries, floats, antique cars, fire engines, the actors from our summer theater, musicians, and local civic groups marching together. The marchers give out candy and other delights to the children in the crowds along Main Street. I marched with representatives from my church along with people from other local churches that have banded together to form Kearsarge Regional Ecumenical Ministries (KREM). I have described the work of KREM before. KREM provides emergency financial support to any person in need. Recipients are never asked whether they have a religious affiliation and they are never proselytized. I first marched in the parade in 2019, and after the COVID hiatus, I was delighted to march down Main Street waving to friends and family again this year despite the fact that it was very hot.
It has been so hot that it felt like summer would never end, but mid-week the weather changed and we are thankful to be back to perfect days with temps in the mid-seventies, and nights in the high fifties and low sixties. It is a painful reality that despite the recent heat wave, summer will be fading fast. The pro football preseason games are starting. School children are gathering their supplies, and picking out new winter jackets. A month from now it will be fall. Be sure to get outdoors this weekend and enjoy the fading summer.
Be well,
Gene
