Science and greed…Imran Jan

We live in a world dominated by climate change, even though we have a tendency to ignore it. The hurricanes, the cyclones, the wildfires, the extreme heat, the glaciers becoming a thing of the past, the warm clothing becoming almost obsolete, and a variety of many other aspects leave no doubt that climate change is here with us. And while it may sound like an unwanted guest, it is not, however, uninvited. Some of the beautiful weathers that we have experienced, some of the most beautiful regions that we have known about and perhaps visited, some of the islands still on the surface of the earth today will become things of the past in our very lifetime.

I remember my graduate studies in Peshawar back in 2007. I used to travel from Charsadda to Peshawar by coach, and they used to call it the flying coach due to its speed and agility to maneuver through the traffic. After the end of business, everyone returned to Charsadda from Peshawar in the same coach. Those coaches had dedicated routes and our way back home was only through those vehicles.

The store of climate change is no different. The greed that brought us here is also arguably the only driver that will drive us out of this quagmire. Throughout human history, science has prospered mainly due to capitalist tendencies in the background. Research labs today have to be funded. The scientists working there are driven by their passion to find what they are in pursuit of but also because there are monetary benefits tied to it. Their work has to lead to a paycheck.

I had applied to purchase Tesla’s famed Cybertruck back in 2020. Tesla is going to offer me the truck’s delivery very soon. But I may not buy it after waiting for almost 4 years because the price is enormously high. It is over 130 thousand dollars. While I believe in all cars becoming electric and the entire electric grid becoming clean so that we don’t have to burn fossil fuel, I am not willing to take a financial toll for it though. And that is the rationale of an overwhelming majority. People watch Netflix, for example, not because it is better for the environment to avoid driving that gasoline car to the local DVD store, but because it is cheaper and more convenient for them. At the end of the day, dollars and cents drive this.

More importantly, using clean energy and mass producing electric cars have to become more profitable than gasoline run engines for corporations to go all in. The desire for more stuff and the desire to make more money off of that gave us the industrial revolution. The corporate greed created mind blowing scientific inventions. Capitalism and the greed associated with it gave us a lot of cool gadgets and tools that made our lives comfortable and entertained.

Some big companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and others are eyeing civilian space travel not because that saves the planet or finds another home for humanity but because they know there is an enormous amount of money to be made from this. It has to become profitable for corporations to create and use clean energy, to find the next home for humanity in our solar system, and to turn this existing habitat for humanity into a healthier place for all.

Greed will help us steer out of climate change. Greed is the kind of motivator that would have to be channeled in changing how the business of the world is conducted. Major innovations didn’t attempt to change human desires or wants, they just changed how those desires or wants are met. Netflix changed how people watched movies. Apple changed how people used computers and smartphones. Amazon changed how people bought things. And they made a lot of money doing that. Someone would have to find the same formula for climate change. The next batch of billionaires would have to come from the fight against climate change for climate change to go away.

Courtesy The Express Tribune