Climate change provides us with a modern version of Pascal’s Wager (the argument of the seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician for acting as though you believe in God even if you don’t). If catastrophic global warming turns out not to happen, the steps we’d take to address it are still worthwhile. Given that there’s even a reasonable risk of disruptive climate change, any sensible person should decide to act. It’s insurance. The risk of your house burning down is small, yet you carry homeowner’s insurance; you don’t expect to total your car, but you know that the risk is there, and
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