CN: DEPRESSION, APOCALYPSE, RELIGION, MENTIONS OF SUICIDE
Part One
I will start today's episode by asking you to think about two seemingly unrelated topics that might initially feel like they have nothing to do with parenting. If I do an okay job, I'll be able to thread them together to express a profound fear I had before having our child and why I sometimes still feel this fear to this very day. We're going to be dealing with some heavy stuff here. It's existential, and it will cover life and death.
I first want you to think about a beautiful old thought experiment. It's very famous. It's called Pascal's Wager. It was coined by a 17th-century mathematician, philosopher, and all-around precocious mad genius named Blaise Pascal. Many of you will know it already, but the basic gist is straightforward for those who don't. Pascal's Wager is about demonstrating why believing in God is a rational and logical decision. Pascal was trying to express it in terms of the precise vision of Christianity in 17th Century Europe. Still, for our purposes, that doesn't matter.
In the wager, you essentially have two options: either believe in God or not. Both those states of belief have two possible consequences when you die, so there are four possible consequences altogether after death. If you don't believe in God, and there is no God, then you are in the clear. If you don't believe in God, and there is a God, though, you will have to deal with, I guess, Hell and all the eternal horrors that come with it. If you believe in God, and there is no God, then it makes no difference either way – it's the same result as if you don't believe. However, if you believe in God AND God exists, you win the jackpot – you will go to heaven. Pascal's Wager posits that there is no downside to believing in God. You either don't get rewarded, or you do get rewarded. But there is no way that you get punished. The only scenario where punishment is a possible consequence is if you don't believe in God.
I know this sounds like I've gone way off track, but please bear with me because the thing that interests me most about Pascal's Wager isn't the question of punishment or reward (although that has the potential to be a fascinating discussion). What's always interested me is how people are forced into Pascal's Wager against their will, or, you know, without being consulted first. Ultimately, you can only choose to believe in God if someone introduces you to the concept of God and a belief structure. Suppose you are just living your life, and the idea of a loving and vengeful God has never existed in your thoughts. In that case, you can not choose whether or not to believe. Logically, therefore, God shouldn't be able to punish you or reward you. You will miss out on being rewarded when you die, which might be sad. But you will also definitely not be punished.
The moment someone does introduce you to the concept, though, you have skin in the game. You can't unmake that knowledge. That knowledge can not unexist. You can try to kill it or pretend it's not there metaphorically – but that action is a decision. You are in the wager whether or not you want to be, and now you've made your bet.
This happens to nearly every person because almost all societies have some theistic philosophy. To me, it's unfair that the fate of your eternal existence essentially comes down to whether or not someone introduces you to the concept of God. It's unjust that you can do nothing to avoid placing a bet from that moment on. I don't know about you, but I would rather have never known. Not knowing would mean that I'm not part of the wager. While I would have no chance of being rewarded in death, it also means I have no chance of being punished – honestly, that sounds pretty nice to me.
But that knowledge is there. It can't unexist, and I am in the wager, regardless of how I feel.
The second thing I want you to think about is the news. Not all the news – mainly this.
A few months ago, the intergovernmental panel on climate change released its sixth assessment report regarding the state of our planet under climate change. As you heard just before, the results were…bleak. The IPCC is the arm of the United Nations that does nothing but study climate change and releases reports about it. The assessment reports are a big deal because they're not released that often. The last one was released in 2014. The first was in 1990, so there have only been six in 31 years. With each subsequent report, findings have become more disheartening and horrifying. This one was the worst, though.
The Washington Post summarised the report into six key findings:
'It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.' This is the first time that the language has been this firm. By the very nature of the scientific process, there is always a little bit of wriggle room as you can't usually speak in definites. The panel is so overwhelmingly confident that for the first time, they have removed from their language any possibility, however remote, of CC being caused by natural phenomena.
'The last decade was more likely than not warmer than any multi-centennial period after the Last Interglacial. That was roughly 125,000 years ago.'
Even if we hit the lowest emissions scenario estimates, there will be at least 1 degree Celsius of warming — compared to 1850-1900 levels — that will persist for centuries. There's no going back.
'Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.'
'With further global warming, every region is projected to increasingly experience concurrent and multiple changes in climatic impact drivers.'
'Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.'
Our impact on the planet has been so profound that even if we solve the problem now, the earth will still need centuries to undo what we have done. This means that under the most utopian, best-case dream scenarios, where everybody flips a switch tomorrow and everything changes, we will still have increased temperatures, some of which will take centuries to reverse. Try to comprehend that.
But we don't need to engage with utopian scenarios to see how grim things are for our kids and grandkids. The entire foundation of the Paris Accords revolves around preventing warming from going beyond certain thresholds, such as 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees. But those temperatures aren't where we get saved. 2C is the rise that scientists and policymakers have identified as a red line if the planet is to avoid catastrophic and irreversible consequences. To make things worse, experts have repeatedly pointed out that the acceleration in outcomes seen if the temperature rises from 1.5C to 2C is extraordinary. It's almost like an exponential increase. So far, global temperatures have climbed to 1.2C above pre-industrial levels. So, we're 0.3, only a degree away from being in real trouble regardless. But we're also only 0.3C away from hitting a landslide that will increase the destruction with increasing speed as each 0.1C is surpassed.
If we keep going the way we are, it doesn't bear thinking about. At our current trajectory, not only will we surpass 1.5 degrees and 2C, but we'll also pass 4C. If 2C is the red line for the planet, then we probably can't even begin to comprehend the speed and scale of the destruction we'll see at 4C.
Part Two
We planned on having our daughter. It took preparation and medical advice, and interventions. It was a very conscious decision, and now that our daughter exists, we couldn't live without her. She seems pretty happy with the whole existence deal if her laughter and gorgeous personality are anything to go by. But I'm still mindful that there's probably going to come a day in the future when she's going to realise that she didn't get a say in her existence. That she was brought to life without ever being introduced to the concept of life.
In an ideal scenario, this realisation will come from a place of unparalleled joy. She will be so grateful for something that she will go down a gratitude rabbit hole. Hopefully, she'll realise that if she didn't exist, she would have missed out on all the unique experiences we will have hopefully had by that point. I like to think that she will be overwhelmed by the existence and all the wonderful, rewarding things that go into every second of everyday life. She'll be happy that all those trillions of chemical reactions happened and led to her existence.
But I worry that she will be more like me, and it will not come from a place of happiness. Instead, I'm worried it will come from a place of despair, dread, or fear. Perhaps when she has to make an indescribably difficult decision about something. Or maybe when she suffers loss in a way that she's never felt before – where the pain becomes all-encompassing and creates an unrealistic, but still compelling, tunnel vision. I fear that in these moments, she will realise that if just one of the billions of tiny chemical reactions that were required to bring her to life didn't happen, she wouldn't be here. That she'll suddenly realise if she hadn't been born, she wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of existence. She would be none the wiser about all the beauty in life, so she wouldn't know she was missing anything.
Ultimately once you create a life that can't be undone, we all die, but dying isn't the same as never existing. Dying brings a lot of other existential questions and all the baggage that comes with those. For a start - Pascal's Wager. If we were never born, we would miss out on all the good things in life, but we wouldn't know any better. And then we would miss out on all the bad stuff too. As bleak as this sounds, never being born would be easy. It wouldn't even be easy. It would be nothing.
I'm incredibly nervous talking about this because when I've broached it with people, they have looked at me like I was crazy or that I'm talking about wanting to die. They've implied or downright stated that there is something wrong with me for questioning whether or not it's fair to put existence on to others because life is a gift. And I'm not saying that it's not. In all honesty, I might have taken it years ago if you had come up to me and offered me a chance to opt out of the wager – not to have existed. That wasn't me wanting to commit suicide. I was thankfully never in that dark a place. But if someone could have guaranteed that I was never born, I probably would have accepted. Today, I'm 100% certain I wouldn't turn down the opportunity at existence. But, we don't get that opportunity, and that's what I get stuck on – particularly when we move from the philosophical out to the real world. Because, frankly, there isn't much to be hopeful for now.
I mentioned I worried her realisation about existence might come from a sad place. I deliberately left out a pretty great example of what she could trigger this realisation, though, because I struggle to think about it without feeling guilt, fear, anxiety, and loss.
As we live our lives right now, we are facing a cataclysmic event that, as a global population, we're not doing much about. And this isn't meant to be a soapbox. This isn't a climate change podcast, and I'm not an environmentalist. I miss plastic bags and car driving, and I love air conditioning. But climate change is the elephant in the room, dying from a lack of food and water that we don't want to acknowledge. It is affecting us now, and as we continue, it will infringe on us more and more and more.
Some people might try and plead ignorance, but I know I can't. I'm 36, and I've learned about climate change since 1996 when the movie Waterworld came out. Waterworld is a ridiculous film, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that it is where I first learned the concept of melting ice caps. This means that idea was so well known it was considered prime material for a blockbuster film that, in 1996, was the most expensive production in cinematic history. Or, to look at it another way, the idea was so mainstream a quarter of a century ago that an 11-year-old in New Zealand could understand the basic concept without even having access to the internet.
We see the damage every day in small ways but also significant ways. According to the WWF, temperatures have increased in NZ by 0.9˚C since 1900. This has led to South Island glaciers retreating, while at the same time, New Zealand ports have measured an average of 16cm of sea-level rise over the last 100 years. As a simple personal example, I remember being in the USA with my family in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd hit and was considered one of the largest Hurricanes in US history. Floyd was 930km in diameter. Hurricane Sandy, meanwhile, decimated the East Coast in 2012. Sandy was so destructive because it was a whopping 1800km in diameter - double the size of a storm thought unthinkably expansive just 13 years earlier.
We will continue to see so much damage throughout our lives because of climate change because it is real, and it's happening. Realistically, though, do any of you feel any slight hope that it can be turned around?
I am absolutely terrified. Not for myself. I've had a good life. But I'm terrified of what my daughter is going to experience. I'm frightened that one day she will ask me why if we knew the world was burning, we thought it would be a good idea to bring her into it without her being able to choose. I won't have a good reason to give her other than we wanted her in our lives and that when we had her, she made us realise that we were incomplete without her.
I can't go back in time and give her the option of accepting life. I can't sit and explain that if she wants to join us, she will enter a world experiencing a rapid environmental decline that most people ignore. I can't tell her that change is probably a delusion because we live in a world with unfettered capitalism – an ideology that, by design, clashes with the concept of long-term sustainability.
We are, in most conceivable scenarios, in a lot of trouble. I guess her life is in the hands of the world, and even if there is change, she will bear witness to ever-increasing global trauma and devastation levels.
I am so grateful to have her in our lives; I wouldn't have it any other way. I hope that we do turn the ship around and that we get to give her a life full of love, gratitude, and the beautiful experiences that she deserves. But with my vulnerability cap on right now, I can't tell you if I think it was fair for us to bring her into existence. I hope she doesn't hate us when she's older if the worst-case scenarios are the ones that become our reality.