On Change
A short and simple essay I wrote for “Climate Change — Are Tomorrow’s Needs More Important Than Today’s Reality?,” to join the panel at NUS last year (Feb 2020) [was not selected, but I wanted to share my opinion here as well, with small edits]
TOGETHER, STRONGER and BETTER FUTURE
It is a fact that since the late 19th Century, our planet has been warming due to rapidly increasing surface temperature. However, people dare to ask to make a choice between these two: today and tomorrow. It is possible to awake human wisdom by creating new opportunities working together today to build the future. In fact, without a proper tomorrow, today will not be completed. Idea of a large economy is only a dream in the absence of future.
Firstly, climate change driving factors and economy are intertwined. Today and tomorrow have taken into consideration for the economic development. However, there is a fallacy that tomorrow is a long way in terms of climate change, so that today’s economic challenges are more important than tomorrow’s nature. Consequently, the effect of global warming on tomorrow is overlooked by today’s economy-makers. In fact, today and tomorrow are not apart from each other in terms of economical concepts, so do quality of the world we live in. Furthermore, economy is a machine running in both short and long term. If the essential parts of the machine required for the long-term run are broken, short term benefits will not be long-lasting, and be even harmful. In such scenario, additional precautions should be considered, which takes enormous effort and time to re-build it. As a matter of fact, climate change has not had only impact on short-term economy, but also, and especially, on long-term economy. Thus, without a foreseen and collaborating tomorrow (with today), today’s (economical) joys will mire down.
Although, some people believe that mankind is such an evil to this world, there are also many good examples within mankind who consider all the options available/create solutions to the problems. Nonetheless, there is no such person can be defined as solely good or bad. On the contrary, the limits of being good or bad are mostly defined by actions which are time and context dependent. For instance, a leader who wants his/her country to be great may chose a path which releases more carbon dioxide to the world, and drives to climate change. Even though people of future are likely to call him/her as bad leader, people of today may call him/her good. However, if another leader chooses another path with less carbon releasing option, which is even better. The intention to resolve will not only improve the goodness but will also create opportunities for the people of future including people of today. If people are open-minded enough to accept the challenge and approach it with different perspectives, the results will be beneficial to all. Hence, not the better of today for the local, but “the better” for the future for the whole is able to overcome “the negative” of past and present .
In the context of Nash Equilibrium in Game Theory, to reach the best tomorrow by destroying the today’s nature in one side and the economy led by human beings in the other side resemble non-cooperative games in the equilibrium since no side has a real intention to make any change in the given strategy. To exemplify, every economy or economical improvements focus/es on “the prettiest one”, in our case they are the best today, in the room, which is in fact a long-term commitment. Even if it seems that some economies have higher change of winning this game today, they will not. The problem arises due to limited resources of the nature. If there is no tomorrow, today is nothing but just a “moment to enjoy”. To the contrary, if economies do not insist on having the blinders on state against the environmental effects of focusing on “the prettiest today”, and cooperate, everybody will win.
To sum up, today or tomorrow is not a Trolley Dilemma challenge in the context of morality for economies, so do countries. They constitute a whole, indeed. Since what is in the past is in the past, today is our only option to have a future, and maintain and improve the moment we live in. As in the case of Nash Equilibrium, the solution is hidden in the cooperating and synergistic actions of mankind. It is possible if only new perspectives are considered to work in collaboration to invest in the future. If the future build by today’s reality is not good for our older self, our children, and people on earth; what’s the point of the importance of today’s reality?
NOTE: When I wrote the essay, I had not had enough time, so I wrote it in few hours. Then edited just before the deadline. So, there were lots of grammatical errors and incoherence in the essay. That’s why I need to upload the edited version here. The essay is very simple, however the purpose my blog is to write and share for the sake of writing and sharing =D
