Nature's reforms

re: " The girl who could just save the world " (BP, Opinion, October 5, 2019)

Dear editor,

Thank you Wasant Techawongtham for an enjoyably provocative read with the morning coffee in "The girl who could just save the world" (Bangkok Post, Opinion, October 5). But Wasant, we can agree that Ms Thunberg's message is important and still disagree with some of her claims, and certainly with some of the suggested solutions.

There is no doubt that the climate is changing, even without our contributions, that would likely have happened. But Ms Thunberg is right that the solid scientific evidence says that we humans are a major cause of current climate change, which is likely to accelerate irrespective of what we now do. To dispute this, you have to have better evidence than the consensus of experts in the area. The sincerely rabid deniers like Trump do not fit that description of informed dissenter. It does not, however, follow that we should opt for less economic growth. The poor of China and India have as much right to the lifestyle of Ms Thunberg as she enjoys in flitting around the world spreading her message of doom and gloom. We cannot in good conscience tell the poor of the third world to suffer their meagre sufficiency, such an ugly ideological excuse for gross inequality, so that those of us from the first world can carry on comfortably at the top of the pile.

Better solutions might be to charge enough in taxes to offset harms from production of cars, trips by car, BTS trips, plastic bags, planes, flights to environment conferences and the like. But again, we who have the luxury of arguing about Ms Thunberg's message inherited our relative affluence on the back of the past environmental misdeeds pushed onto others in polluted rivers, ravaged forests, and poisoned air, all conveniently externalized economic costs that neither our ancestors nor us paid a just price for. Now coming back to haunt us, these are the costs of our comfortable lifestyles as we sit, using my personal example, in a condo on Silom Road, typing on a computer while sipping the morning coffee enriched with cream, with the air conditioning humming silently to keep everything pleasantly cool. It is not fair to expect the less well off today to pay a higher price than we and our hard working ancestors did. This suggests that the rich world has a moral obligation to pay very substantial tax arrears (not charitable donations, but owed debts) to help bring the rest of the world up to the same high standard of living.

And we should also prepare for the coming global reforms enforced by nature — nature will not be susceptible to any coup by ignorant army generals who think they can thereby steal power, property and prestige for themselves merely by overthrowing the existing rule of law and system of government. Nature follows the rules of physics, and they do not care about any human story, however ancient or silly, told by despotic species to gild their grab for power.

It is perhaps also worth remembering a couple of other truths. First, non-existent persons are not in fact persons, so cannot have the rights of persons. Ms Thunberg is right that her generation of persons has been treated very badly by my generation and the previous few generations who, by the invisible hands that pull the levers of capitalism, made the world what it is today, but the unborn are precisely that: unborn, so not persons. Nonetheless, responsible parents today should perhaps choose not to breed new persons with a diminished future, which the sensible, morally informed women of Japan, South Korea, and even Thailand and elsewhere, now seem to be doing.

My final disagreement is that the world is not in need of saving, only the human species, along with the many other species we are in process of or have already made extinct, might be in need of that. As the Buddha wisely teaches, impermanence is a constant. The planet and life will carry on perfectly well whether we humans exist or not. Indeed, should it come about, many species have very good grounds for looking forward to our self-inflicted extinction. We mammals got our chance to accede to the throne when the dinosaurs were sent by nature into rapid oblivion. Who knows what species might next take the vacated seat?

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 6, 2019, under the title "Nature's reforms" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1765924/natures-reforms