Yet in the climate casino, the stakes are rather different. The risks are greater with a modest upside. Should we double down on growth, going for the extra GDP margin, allowing increased climate risks? Well, suppose we gamble and get lucky. The warming trend is contained, and what is the “upside” for having taken greater risks of calamity? More work. We keep working ever harder, with the same long hours, getting a bit richer than we’ll anyway become. But suppose by comparison that we instead decide to play it safer, cutting back the workweek and taking other cautious measures, being pretty damn sure of climate security. The “downside” for our relative precaution? Less work! We become less rich than we otherwise would. But that’s fine by the surfer. Many, maybe most, of us will be just as happy to leave the climate casino and gamble (or gambol) out in the waves (or in skydiving, the stock market, or a real casino) during our extra time in leisure.*22

  The Awful

  If that’s already a good enough reason for caution in the climate casino, there is of course another: the sheer awfulness of what ensues, should our luck go south.

  When Graeme relayed his optimism about the creation of new waves with rising sea levels, he seemed unnerved. He was looking to me for validation. Because he’s a beloved friend, I found myself wanting to be conciliatory. I admitted that the Machine would probably get good again, at least for a while, after sea levels rose to some modest extent. I even agreed that if we get really lucky, the increase won’t be so dramatic. Maybe we’ll only lose spots like Deserts, which need the lowest of the low tides. Still, although I didn’t make a big stink at the time, the way I really felt was exactly as Graeme’s perturbed countrymen: the whole thing is a complete disaster.

  To be more precise about my immediate sense of the matter, what I was thinking was that if things keep going as they’re going, the whole thing stands to be an unmitigatable complete disaster. Graeme is probably right that rising sea levels won’t bring the End of Surfing as Such. But it would surely bring the End of Surfing as We Know It, and I just couldn’t see any overall way of looking at things, any master cost-benefit calculation, in which a global surfing dystopia could be said to have worked out okay in the end. If there’s any upside, it just wouldn’t matter; it’s finally irrelevant.

  Think about how you’d feel about the death of your child. Say your child was killed in some wrongful accident, and you now stand to win $50,000 or $500,000 in a wrongful death settlement. Would you console yourself with thoughts about the money? You surely wouldn’t say to yourself, “Well, if my child hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have got the money, which I’m really glad to have.” You instead say something like “I’d give it all back in a second to have him alive.” You’d say the money is irrelevant.

  That’s the idea behind the more extreme example that flashed through my mind when Graeme and I spoke. When we consider the Holocaust, there’s something terribly wrong with considering all of the good things that might have come of it. That’s so even if the presumed good things really are good things, things such as your very existence. Maybe your parents wouldn’t have met in an alternative history in which Hitler never comes to power, and you, as the particular individual you are, are never brought into being. Still, in finding the Holocaust horrible, and thinking it should never have happened, you don’t thereby have to regret that you are alive, as though your existence, too, should never have happened. You just don’t have to think of yourself at all, and probably shouldn’t. When considering that kind of terrible event, you are beside the point. After weeping and sorrow, the appropriate response to reflection upon the Holocaust is not any kind of cost-benefit calculation, not pros and cons, but silence.

  Something like that was my immediate reaction to Graeme’s comment: it just won’t change things in any grand reckoning that a few surf breaks somehow survive, while a few other new ones are temporarily created (and then perhaps swamped again), if most of the world’s surf breaks really do become swampy, unsurfable crap, indefinitely. If a surfing cataclysm really comes to pass, it will be the Desecration of All Things Good and Holy. In an event of such extraordinary gnarliness, there will be no relevant upside to be spoken of.

  Of course, if the Machine did come back to life, surfers would be all over it. I’m sure few surfers would be so inconsolable about the loss of the other waves that they couldn’t bring themselves to rapturously enjoy what spots remain when the conditions came together. Given the joy of surfing excellent Indonesian waves, the crew might take a few days to relapse into a despondent state. What’s harder to see is how serious surfers would be other than inconsolable the rest of the time, even if they found a supposed substitute activity. (Wave pools inland are now producing very good waves, but the thought of only surfing wave pools is itself disturbing.) While most surfers won’t die because of rising sea levels, the loss of the world’s good and half-decent surf breaks really can feel deeply personal, in a way akin to death. It can feel as though life has lost its point. I’m sure there are lots of ways to be happy. But what is the point of being happy if you can’t go ocean surfing, if the world has become an utterly befouled mess?

  The concern here is to protect what is valuable, in a way that should silence certain purely self-interested calculations. I have to admit, I have consoled myself in the fact that I for one will be dead by the time things really go south. But I don’t have kids, and of course the consolation weakens for those who care about the future being left for their children and grandchildren. Timing-wise, a lot of us have been breathtakingly fortunate to have been born into the wake of the Industrial Revolution, to enjoy both prosperity and leisure. And cosmically unfair as it may be, for many people roughly my age and older, chances are good that we’ll carry the lightest of burdens to prevent the catastrophes that the Industrial Revolution is slowly visiting upon vast numbers of living and future people. We’ll be long gone, having enjoyed what has been a pretty kick-ass party, having taken no real responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves. So maybe surfers aren’t the most altruistic lot, but when the question is how to feel about the whole course of world history, I’m sure most surfers will agree that their personal fortunes aren’t entirely relevant. Most surfers feel fortunate and deeply grateful to have wound up surfers. They love and cherish the good waves they’ve tasted or dreamed of since they were kids, and so find great sorrow in the idea that they may be disappearing, permanently. And to prevent that unspeakable outcome, they are willing to adapt. Especially if it means working less and surfing more often. I bet they’d gladly sacrifice a bit as well.

  To the surfer, then, we’re obliged not to foul the climate as much as we now are, and not just because we could do it without sacrifice. We also ought to protect Surfing as We Know It, because we should respect the natural order for what it is.

  In other words, surfers are conservatives.*23 The natural world in respect of surf breaks is assumed to have great value, in the sense that we have very good reason to respect it for the way it is. There is what is given, outside human intervention, including the land, sea, and climate, in all its constant motion. And even if we could replace the whole natural order with something better, we should not try to. We should accept it for the given it is, paying our respects, taking care not to mess with it, for instance, by putting it at significant risk of massive degradation.

  Surfers love and cherish the deep way we are related to and depend on what surrounds us, which includes the way the flow of ordinary life and surfing is structured by its natural environment. This relationship benefits people in the most basic way. Humanity, and so human benefit, wouldn’t be possible without it. Nature matters for people to be people, for ordinary life to keep its structuring preconditions, and this foundation of human natural existence is itself a proper object of deep respect. We can respect it by preserving it, even if we must get a bit less rich.*24

  In the climate casino, this should weigh heavily into the scales of decision. Science can tell us the (very) rough odds, the rough probability of different climate change scenarios, albeit with a lot of unquantifiable uncertainty. But then what risks shall we take? We certainly shouldn’t bank on what seems most likely to happen. If we thought modest warming, mild disasters, and medium death tolls were the most likely outcome, we shouldn’t stop worrying about worse outcomes, which could also realistically happen. Although the house of a randomly selected person is not likely to catch fire, it would be foolish for him not to buy a fire extinguisher. The sheer awfulness of a fire that burns the guy’s house down is a good enough reason for him to reduce the risk by buying the extinguisher, even if that isn’t the most likely outcome, or is even rather unlikely.

  Foolishness aside, taking certain risks can also be a kind of wrongdoing. I morally shouldn’t play Russian roulette on someone’s head. One bullet. Six chambers. Spin the cylinder. My target would have a rather good, five-in-six chance of living. Even so, I’m doing something wrong in pulling the trigger, even if the gun goes “click.” If the person lives, I couldn’t say, “No harm, no foul, bro.” There was indeed a foul; he was wronged the moment I placed him at a pretty significant, one-in-six risk of death. That’s something he could reasonably ask me not to have done, especially not just for the sake of fun or revenge or a show of dominance. Or if you prefer a less dramatic example, think of a driver who unnecessarily buzzes a bystander, leaving the woman unharmed, after putting her at a heightened risk of getting clipped. He’s culpably negligent, and he really should be more careful. The woman could reasonably complain of being exposed to such increased risks when the driver could just slow down a bit.

  In the same way, people who must live here on Earth in later generations could reasonably complain of our heating up the climate. We’ve already created the risks. Even if the whole problem blows over (some self-correcting feature of the global climatic system might be triggered), the wrong will have already been done. If we do nothing and hope for the best, we’re akin to the negligent driver who could slow down a bit, but just keeps stepping on the gas pedal.*25

  The prospect of the End of Surfing as We Know It is cause for dread, but not just for surfers: it reflects a profound alteration of basic ways the natural world structures human life. The risks of disruption are not simply risks of personal injury. What’s disrupted is a relationship of fundamental importance, between people and nature, which should itself be the object of our respect. The potential for such a truly awful outcome should then weigh down the scales of decision, suggesting relative caution in the face of risk. Whatever it is we think we might gain from putting the whole order of human life in jeopardy, the value of any such upside must diminish, or be silenced, in the face of respecting what is. As for us, we can work less and learn to live simply, taking the cautious course.*26

  —

  I suppose most surfers haven’t quite thought through all of this eminently surfer reasoning. I bet nearly all of them will be amenable to it. At the moment, the state of surfer opinion about climate change is the usual state of advanced-worlder confusion. Surfers have deep sympathies with sustainability causes, and while some are taking concerted action (for example, in the Surfrider Foundation), most just aren’t sure what to do about the fact that surfboards and wet suits and driving to check waves and jet travel to far-flung breaks are not ecologically friendly. There are efforts at “green” surfer products, much as in the wider economy. But surfers are as mixed up as anyone in the fossil-fueled economy we all still depend on.

  So it would certainly be understandable if non-surfers found all this leisure capitalism business counterintuitive, or maybe crazy. All human beings before us (save perhaps the flood surfer, Noah) could safely assume a natural world that’s just there to be used. John Locke, who had a big influence on the U.S. founding fathers, went so far as to say that the world was created by God and granted to humanity with the express purpose of its being used as much as possible for human benefit. Each person was to leave “enough and as good” in the commons for others, but the world was still there for the taking. The point of having nature was human well-being.

  Locke made a lot of each person’s own use of resources (for example, fencing off a plot of land for farming), without worrying too much about what might happen when large numbers of people started using them in a complex system. This made it seem as though there would always be “enough and as good” resources for others, in which case there’s no big worry about conservation for future people. This turned out to be sorely mistaken. Now good stewardship does require careful conservation of scarce ecological resources: the good steward would do such things as work less and surf more in order to leave enough and as good for future generations. The Protestant work ethic assumed the righteous could just keep working, being cleansed in sanctification. Nowadays being faithful in God’s grant as Locke understood it looks more like an ocean cleansing in regular surfing.

  —

  That point certainly isn’t obvious; one can see why people might feel confused. The old-style capitalism put us out of attunement with the world’s available resources. Science only realized the extent of it relatively recently, and it takes a long while for society to become more attuned to the new world it inhabits—and created.

  * * *

  *1 The success of renewables is unfortunately also undercutting support for nuclear power in some cases (for example, in California), which is crucial as a clean energy source.

  *2 Thomas Malthus famously argued that (1) people love making babies, (2) the earth can only produce so much food, and so (3) population growth must outstrip food supply, bringing mass starvation. This didn’t happen. The green revolution showed that food production could keep up, because market signals and technology increased resources as growing populations needed. The climate change problem is more radical in scale, scope, and consequence, so we can’t blow it off as passé Malthusian doomsdayism.

  *3 The eminent philosopher and economist John Broome argues that we have “duty of justice” not to harm others and should reduce our personal emission by buying offsets. Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), chap. 5.

  *4 John Fleck, Water Is for Fighting Over, and Other Myths About Water in the West (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2016), tells the story of successful piecemeal and small-bore efforts at conservation in the Colorado River basin that added up to a solution in the face of water scarcity, despite warnings of mega-droughts. This is another example of the “common pool resource” systems studied by the Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom.

  *5 How do we know the surfer is keeping it simple? Our emissions would have to be roughly estimated, to ensure that a contribution is being made. We’d want an unobtrusive method of accounting with easily tracked categories. I assume this is mainly an administrative and technological problem. There could be an app for that.

  *6 Suppose I offer this argument: surfers are heroes if people must work less; people must work less; so surfers are heroes. The conclusion would follow by dint of logical necessity (in this case, the rule called modus ponens). Then you could deny that surfers are heroes, but you’d have to reject one of the two premises, on pain of believing things that cannot all be true. And if you can’t fault any of the premises, you’re stuck with the argument’s conclusion: surfers are heroes! The argument stated in the main text can likewise be stated as a logically valid argument.

  *7 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). If she doesn’t quite make this strong claim, the suggestion is at least that we look for something radically different.

  *8 On why this is a matter of “social and moral preferences,” see the godfather of neoclassical economics, the Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow and his “Political and Economic Evaluation of Social Effects and Externalities,” in Frontiers of Quantitative Economics, ed. Michael D. Intriligator (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1971), pp. 3–23.

  *9 Duncan Foley, “The Economic Fundamentals of Global Warming,” in Twenty-First Century Macroeconomics: Responding to the Climate Challenge, ed. Jonathan M. Harris and Neva R. Goodwin (London: Edward Elgar, 2009); Broome, Climate Matters, chap. 3.

  *10 John Broome and Duncan Foley, “A World Climate Bank,” MS, describe various ways future generations can, as it were, pay us for the benefit they receive in emissions reduction. We in the present can simply leave them fewer nice things than they’d otherwise inherit. So, for example, we might divert investments now headed for conventional capital, which they stand to inherit, over to green infrastructure, which reduces emissions and costs to them. They inherit less, but as “payment” for the present cost of emissions reductions for their benefit, leaving them no worse off for the swap. This could work with no new expenditure, leaving us no worse off.

  *11 The surfer’s “utility function,” in this case the way a surfer would trade time for money, explains how compensation is possible. The workaholic will have different preferences, which we return to in the next chapter.

  *12 The 2016 Paris agreement is something of a consensus, but everything still depends on whether enough countries can faithfully follow through on emissions cuts. Support for this may depend on whether countries feel they are sacrificing a present generation’s interests instead of simply seeking efficiency.

  *13 Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Science: The Stern Review (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and William Nordhaus, A Question of Balance: Weighing Options on Global Warming Policies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), which says on pp. 179–80 that the “optimal” strategy involves sacrifice rather than mere efficiency (or “optimal-plus-deficit”).

  *14 This is a famous problem with utilitarianism, the view that the right action, or just institution, is the one that maximizes welfare overall. Although “everyone counts for one, and no one more than one,” as Jeremy Bentham put it, we figure out what is right by simply toting up the sum total of harm and benefit for our different options and then choosing the highest total. We might have to sacrifice some poor soul, or even ourselves, for the greater good, for instance, by giving up an eye so that a blind person can become sighted. This isn’t “above and beyond the call of duty,” but morally required if indeed it would promote the greatest overall welfare. I for one don’t accept this view because of its rather outrageous implications, including its unreasonable demands. John Stuart Mill proposes a utilitarianism of rules that include commonsense morality, but it suffers from its own problems.