G: You seem to believe that human beings cannot design and implement a more efficient and unfair system than the natural system or free market system!
S: I do because that is the hard truth. The cause-effect paradigm leads you to the conclusion that extravagant exploitation of non-renewable natural resources and inefficient use of such materials affects ecology and environment. That is what you have observed from past history. But that does not necessary imply that the rich nations are doing just that, unless you have a cause-effect obsession syndrome. You want advanced West to reduce their contribution to pollution and allow emerging economies to increase their contribution to pollution. So, you fix standards, start carbon credit and start trading in carbon credit. That is a good market system idea, but that cannot solve your basic problem. Ideally, you want an overall absolute limit on each kind of pollution that human beings generate per year or per decade and you want each human being in the world to have the right to pollute only up to a limit determined by the overall absolute limit divided by the total human population. But, this seems so funny that you create the right or entitlement to pollute environment. And, you want to have larger entitlement for Indians and Chinese to pollute!
G: I see the point you are trying to make. It looks so silly. But as human beings we have to do something.
S: That is what you are naturally inclined to believe. Doing something is not necessarily better than doing nothing! Of course, people like you will try to do this. You will do this because of Natural Law that is playing out through your nature and inclination. But other natural forces will also operate. They will operate directly or through other persons with inclinations different from you. The future will be result of interaction of different natural forces. You cannot achieve anything better than what Nature allows you to do.
G: You are coming back to your stochastic destiny principle again.
S: You are absolutely right: that is the ultimate truth. Creation and destruction are natural processes that cannot be controlled by the mere wish of human beings except by chance.
G: But we must be concerned with ecology and environment when we know the truth.
S: If you are by nature inclined that way, you will do just that. In fact, it is the western world that shows greater concern than the poor countries. So the poorer countries want to preach that the already rich countries should develop technologies that would protect ecology and environment. And, they want a fair share of the entitlement to damage ecology and environment.
G: They should.
S: They need not. If we are so concerned with ecology and environment, each one of us should be completely avoiding doing anything that is scientifically proven to have an adverse effect on the environment and ecology. There is no need to seek greater entitlement to damaging environment and ecology. But human beings are naturally conditioned to pick up fights because of self-interest and jealousy. For that you do not need to demonstrate your ability for reasoned argumentation.
G: Are you trying to make an oblique reference to my identity of “ Argumentative Indian”, a la Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.
S: If you think that to be argumentative is a great characteristic, you should be proud of such an identity.
G: Isn’t argumentative a great characteristic?
S: It’s for you to value your characteristics. For me all characteristics are great and powerful: they can lead to great creations as well as destructions. I maybe thankful for just being what I happen to be as a result of the interaction of different natural forces in the past. But past is no more relevant to me except as a pleasurable trip back in time or tools of my natural tendency to play the game of reasoning and analysis. Past, in its various parts, has been contributing to making what I am and what I will be in future. Past is not relevant to me: it is the process that yields the present that I am.
G: You mean to say that you are not an argumentative Indian?
S: I am all that Indians commonly features. I am as argumentative as an Indian can be. But I am also as acquiescent as an Indian can be. I am as religious as an Indian can be. I am as Western as an Indian can be. There is no particular Indian that I think dominates me all the time. The exact process in which the past centuries and millenniums have contributed in my making is not known to me. I cannot be proud about anything that I have not myself done. I can only be thankful to the past.
G: But in our discussion, being argumentative is relevant.
S: I agree. But being argumentative does not necessarily mean that we are rational and reasonable human beings. Being argumentative is not necessarily a virtue. It may merely be a form of easily accessible communication that avoids physical fight, avoids violence to settle disputes and that help people to learn if they wish to learn.
G: Hold on. We have been in argumentative mode since long time. Now you say that we are not rational, reasonable human beings!
S: See. Let us not mix up things, though this is so natural for argumentative people to do.
We are trying to be rational as far as we can. That’s what human beings can do. We cannot ensure rationality. Consider the fact that poorer nations like India and China want to grow fast and catch up with the advanced richer countries, for which they need to consume great amounts of hydro-carbon fuels and thereby inflict a damage to ecology and environment. To minimize the overall damage, the current rate of damage by richer countries therefore needs to be brought down. That is argument for fair sharing of entitlement to damaging environment to ecology and environment.
G: That is true. The richer nations, particularly the USA cannot be allowed to inflict such huge damage as they are doing every year now.
S: This type of argumentation will not solve a dispute. This is another example of Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome. If the dispute and the poor claim entitlement to damage based on population, argumentation of this type will soon end and yield to settlement through wars by the use of money, muscle, technology and intellect. That is what is natural and happening even now.
G: So, you are saying that scientific reasoning with the rich countries will fail to change their behaviour.
S: They will change their behaviour in their own interest, not because of the argument put up by poorer nations. They know that the stock of minerals and fossil fuels are finite and hence will try to find out ways of getting more of their needs per unit of energy or any finite natural resource.They may even accommodate the poor nations out of sympathy. Your argument is flawed and irrelevant to solving the ecological and environmental problem of the World.
G: Why do you say so? You do not agree to fair sharing?
S: To feed the billions of Indian and Chinese, if we use chemicals fertilizers and pesticides, we will hurt ecology and environment more. If we do not want to use polluting chemicals to feed the billions and give them decent dwellings, we will need to cut down forest cover and damage ecology and environment. No civilized person will raise the question as to why poor nations dramatically cut down on their population by half. You can’t stop producing more and more poor people. You do not think of fair sharing of the entitlement to produce numbers and burden our planet.
G: That kind of argument is hitting below the belt.
S: No. It’s the Cause-Effect Inverse to expose the Cause-Effect Obsession Syndrome from which one suffers and as a result produces invalid, biased arguments. You do not like that the issue of population size and its impact on environment and ecology because that is your weakness. If you had fewer numbers to deal with, you would have required much less of energy and materials to make them rich. But even with huge populations, you still like to imitate the life-styles of the rich West and its extravagant use of finite resources that leads to ecological and environmental damage.
G: Then, what is the solution?
S: I do not know. But mere argumentation cannot solve the problem so long as you argue only to promote your interest at the cost of others. That’s not reasoned argumentation; it is mere shouting. You know how much water billions of poor people will require when they become rich. You know how much of non- biodegradable plastic material waste they will generate to damage ecology. Yet you cry that the rich waste is unfair!
G: What then is the alternative?
S: There is nothing. There is no choice. You are destined to shout thinking that you have strong reasoned arguments when actually you really do not have any argument to justify your existence that burdens this planet. That is the natural law operating through you. You produce more poor people and when by natural consequence they become terrorists you justify the growth of terrorism by blaming the extravaganza of the rich West. That poor countries suffer is relevant but their argumentation is irrelevant so far as ecology and environment is concerned.
S: You are saying that whether poor countries remain poor or become rich, disaster is unavoidable.
G: Yes, that is the inevitable unless Nature reveals the solution by enabling scientists and technologists to find new technologies that remove the current constraint on resource availability and environmental and ecological impact of resource use.
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