William D. Nordhaus mythologizes our struggles against climate change as a battle against a colossus. His Nobel prize-winning work comes complete with an image of Francisco de Goya’s El Coloso, a painting of a giant, half mist-obscured guy with fist raised.

Humanity’s tendency to distribute vast sums of money, ultimately, finite resources, to non-welfare sources is a depressing state of being. The explanation that we do so in the name of economic competition does nothing to lessen the impact. Some might respond to this by claiming that collaborative efforts are extant, but the paradigm of capitalism still dictates that these collaborations tend to be in the context of broader competition. Whereas, a broad context of collaboration, in which we compete to perform beneficial acts, would much better serve our constitutions and thus allow for greater happiness. We waste our funds, and thus the exhaustible resources on which they are predicated, on campaigns, warfare, and luxuries. Though Nordhaus has imagined a sort of goliath, we make a wretched David. We are not skilled and agile, taking advantage of cleverness and deadly accuracy. We are distracted, narcissistic, diseased, inebriated, publicly palming our genitals, stumbling up the lane, unsure of the time of day, groggy, hallucinating, confusing statues of our own creation for living titans… 

We have been doing nothing to treat that greedy parasite invading our mental tissue. Well, we have some adaptive tendencies, but they are counterbalanced by self-poisonings and recklessness. We vaguely ponder the advice from the expert we consulted last week–lying down on the sidewalk now; some time has evidently passed since our most recent memories of cognizance–he suggested a treatment plan that we could afford. One that would not threaten our slush fund. The debauchery could continue. We would in fact be able to do a great deal more of it, if only we treated ourselves well enough to last longer than we were expected to do at our current rate. Steady as it goes, you’ll be snorting and fucking into your 90s, probably. But that’s the game, ain’t it? You’ve known you might get burnt since you first touched the stove. No risk, no rewards. One way or the other, you’re bound for the dirt, as spent as you could be. A life well reveled in.

Something seemed disingenuous about the man, so we rebuked his offer, which fairly outraged him, for he had thought his pitch to be such a sure thing. It was, after all, the basis of his practice and his practice was thrumming along lucratively. But he had not met one so contrarian as we. Perhaps he affronted us by implying that we had some financial limits, that we could not summon almighty heaps of cash if we got locked into our “zone”. That the Gods of gambling would betray us in the end. We had been up so high before. We always had what we needed as long as we had the proceeds for another ante. Thinking otherwise was the only true poison. 

We see his supervisor. Right now. Walking down the street. Coincidence. No, not merely coincidence. The eminent one coming right toward us. A manifestation of serendipity. Deus ex machina, come to tell us we have a bed waiting for us in the clinic. This healer confirms the offer from the previous expert was not as beneficial to us as it could have been. That other expert was fired, could practice that crap medicine someplace else. The new doctor wants to tell us about another plan for our care. This one will cost us our slush fund–though no private practice will accept the proceeds–we only need put it towards our own well-being. The upside is it will cost us no more than that, and the gloomy luxuries it afforded. We would have to work hard. The therapy is not easy, but a full recovery was all but assured this way. We would not risk losing ourselves to the parasite. 

More time has passed. We realize we can heal. We do not even relish those old ways; they had become a habit. We were fulfilling an identity rather than forging one. Now, we could be ourselves. We are ourselves now. No longer does the plural “we” indicate union with a parasite, nor inclusion in some cult of sin. Now we experience unity. 

Parables are a crude form of fiction, I admit. They bastardize art, converting a genuine exploration of the mind into a mere rhetorical tool, an extended analogy. Perhaps they can serve as the basis for more genuine creativity, but, alas, in this case, I feel the need to do the bare minimum, to forsake art in the name of messaging. 

We have before us three different paths; 1) the one we follow, 2) the supposedly economically efficient one, and 3) the ambitiously humane one. 

Accepting the approximately 3 degrees C global warming plan as the wisest option of managing abatement and damages costs is the equivalent of accepting the disgraced doctor’s therapy. This is Nordhaus’s proposed trajectory. It flirts with dangerous tipping points which would take our fate out of our own hands. This course only seems sagacious to perhaps an economist who is unused to questioning the necessity of our capitalist system, and rather studies its workings to make projections as though its continued existence were guaranteed. 

That’s not my role. I am here to point out that it need not be that way. There is an extraordinary amount of frivolous wealth with which we can finance a transition to cleaner energy. We can abate emissions down to 1.5 degrees C of prospective global warming still, as I write this. It will cost more, but there are slush funds, after all. It’s true that much of that wealth is consolidated under the legal ownership of select individuals. Furthermore, economic liberty has been touted as the greatest moral good by those who would benefit from such principles. They claim the “right” to control that wealth, to spend much of it on expensive trifles. Many who do not stand to benefit from such a manner of triaging human rights have been thoroughly convinced, indeed, cannot imagine another way. But what is right about such a system, while the planet’s wellbeing suffers? It is only right by the code of capitalist economics, interspersed as it is with precepts of amorality argued for with moral fervor; arguments that business should not mind the social contract, that business should proceed as best suits business. Somehow, this is regarded as pragmatic, though it produces a ceiling of happiness that only a broken slave would accept. Or for those in that slim margin of exceptionally fortunate financial circumstance, perhaps it is the ceiling of happiness best represented by one who has submitted to an ideology of cruelty–a world in which spiritual wellbeing and empathy are fool’s errands, where the only reason to live is material. What pitiful soul would accept such limitations on our collective experience? 

Nordhaus’s model suggests we could have a more humane plan. It would somehow require that the slush funds of the bourgeoisie be hardened into resolute action for the protection of our most vital asset, our planet. I don’t know if that is something we will accomplish–though I have the ability to imagine the expert’s righteous supervisor, the truth is, humanity is still on the curb, mulling its options while contending with the malaise of self-imposed helplessness. 

I don’t have entirely negative views of Nordhaus’s work, to be fair. I just want to characterize the identity of a mankind that chooses to go the optimal cost-benefit route, despite the unnecessary suffering that would ensue, and despite how little actual sacrifice people would need to make in order to achieve a more humane path. To use another (I promise, briefer) analogy, humanity is skimping on safety features in the new family home so that it can maintain its blackjack and hookers habit.

According to a statement from Oxfam in 2020 (apologies in advance if you’ve heard this before, but it demands repeating), “the carbon emissions of the richest one percent are more than double those of the three billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity during a critical 25-year period of unprecedented emissions growth.” 

Perhaps there is not enough time to fix capitalism entirely. But people can start to adopt an adult, commonsense attitude toward balancing their enjoyment in life with associated environmental damages. We will benefit from this to whatever degree it occurs. This should be a new aspect of our era’s mindset. Drooling over the financial excesses of the world’s wealthiest people should be viewed not only as pathetically envious vapid materialism, but also as a factor that enables the destruction of our environment, and therefore precipitates human suffering. It’s not scandalous coercion to apply social pressure to the super wealthy to get them to curtail their frivolous emissions and to invest in the health of the planet. It is, however, a scandal that one should have to say as much.