If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is....
..."God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all."
Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. "That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.
Okay - so where does global warming come in?
Suppose for the moment that global warming is illusory, or perhaps that it be real, but not caused by man's activity. What is to be lost by acting as if it were real & man-made?
What is posited as the human-related cause of global warming? The increase of the greenhouse gas carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere which results from burning fossil fuels. What is the cure implied by this supposed cause? Burn less fossil fuel.
What other consequences result from burning less fossil fuel?
Well... we'd have far less strategic interest in the Persian Gulf region, for a start. Why do we worry about Arabia, Iraq, and Iran? Because they sit on the largest oil reserves in the world. If we weaned ourselves from oil, we'd have little or no strategic interest in the region.
Would this be a bad thing? No!
Are there any other consequences attending our acting as if burning fossil fuel causes global warming, and therefore decreasig our use of and dependence on fossil fuels?
Well... it's hard to argue that there's an infinite supply of fossil fuel. There may be lots of coal & lots of oil, but the supply is NOT infinite. At some point in the future we - humans - will have to face a scarcity of these fuels. Why not start now? To the extent that we start weaning ourselves from fossil fuels now, today, we will be contributing to the general welfare of our posterity. We're doing enough to make our posterity's life hard already - saddling 'em with an unprecedented national debt comes to mind. Why not do something that'll help 'em?
So - even if global warming be illusory, or be real but not the result of human agency, acting as if it IS real and IS caused by human agency is not a bad thing!
Same basic logic as Pascal's wager... (and probably subject to many of the same criticisms!)
and - I almost forgot: there's always a chance that global warming is being caused (or at least accelerated) by our buring fossil fuels! Cutting back might just help...
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