Two mathematicians are sitting in a bar in Paris looking at a nearby building. Early on in the lunch they see two people walk into the building. During dessert, they observe three people leaving the building. One mathematician then turns to the other and says, “If one more person goes into that building, it will be empty!”
- Quantum Man – Richard Feynman’s Life in Science, Lawrence M. Krauss, Norton, IBN 978-0-393-06471-1
That is an old joke I am leading off this post with (preposition at the end of a phrase!), but when I read it recently from the source given, it gave me a handle on the currently silent debate on fixing responsibility for global warming and fair allocation of the remaining space in the global commons among people.
I had sent this joke to a colleague’s nine year old. She responded, through her mother, “Tell that uncle that if there were no people inside the building in the beginning, how could this happen?”
The CO2 level at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was about 280 ppm (particles per million). That is when countries of the West, who grew to become the developed nations started populating the atmosphere more and more with carbon dioxide. This is like people going into the house, all of them from the consumption of fossil fuel in the western world; for the sake simplicity, let me call them the white CO2.
Then, we started counting the people inside. The population was very white, lily white indeed, but it was also getting crowded, so crowded that even the white CO2 started feeling suffocation. The number now stands at 392. What more, some black CO2 (from China, India, Brazil etc.) also started coming inside. “Enough is enough!” said the white CO2. This is when concerns about global warming – a real scenario – started getting articulated, ironically by the western countries, and this discomfited the white CO2s.
Why, you ask? They knew they had unconscionably occupied the global commons and it would not be too long before they will be asked to vacate some areas, or at least bring in more of their kind at a rate less than earlier, to accommodate black CO2s in the remaining space. The global commons is running the risk of being desegregated. Not good, but they, the white CO2s, could not say this aloud.
So, they devised this methodology to count black and white CO2s. Two people are entering the building (the increase in CO2 ppm is about 2 per year now) and the white CO2s want one of these to be of their kind and the other to be black CO2. So magnanimous of them, no discrimination whatsoever, they are congratulating themselves. But, remember, not a word about all those white CO2s already inside, quite dominantly so.
Now, this is the answer I would give to my nine year old friend. Just go and occupy a space most unfairly. Never let anyone mention your illegal act. Indeed deny as vigorously as you can that you are doing any such thing. Continue occupying more and more space and never vacate any space. Then, just like that mathematician, claim that one more white CO2 will balance the black CO2 and actually empty the global commons! Yes, there are enough fools in the world to believe this.
But my friend will not be one of them when she grows up.
Raghuram Ekambaram
- Quantum Man – Richard Feynman’s Life in Science, Lawrence M. Krauss, Norton, IBN 978-0-393-06471-1
That is an old joke I am leading off this post with (preposition at the end of a phrase!), but when I read it recently from the source given, it gave me a handle on the currently silent debate on fixing responsibility for global warming and fair allocation of the remaining space in the global commons among people.
I had sent this joke to a colleague’s nine year old. She responded, through her mother, “Tell that uncle that if there were no people inside the building in the beginning, how could this happen?”
The CO2 level at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was about 280 ppm (particles per million). That is when countries of the West, who grew to become the developed nations started populating the atmosphere more and more with carbon dioxide. This is like people going into the house, all of them from the consumption of fossil fuel in the western world; for the sake simplicity, let me call them the white CO2.
Then, we started counting the people inside. The population was very white, lily white indeed, but it was also getting crowded, so crowded that even the white CO2 started feeling suffocation. The number now stands at 392. What more, some black CO2 (from China, India, Brazil etc.) also started coming inside. “Enough is enough!” said the white CO2. This is when concerns about global warming – a real scenario – started getting articulated, ironically by the western countries, and this discomfited the white CO2s.
Why, you ask? They knew they had unconscionably occupied the global commons and it would not be too long before they will be asked to vacate some areas, or at least bring in more of their kind at a rate less than earlier, to accommodate black CO2s in the remaining space. The global commons is running the risk of being desegregated. Not good, but they, the white CO2s, could not say this aloud.
So, they devised this methodology to count black and white CO2s. Two people are entering the building (the increase in CO2 ppm is about 2 per year now) and the white CO2s want one of these to be of their kind and the other to be black CO2. So magnanimous of them, no discrimination whatsoever, they are congratulating themselves. But, remember, not a word about all those white CO2s already inside, quite dominantly so.
Now, this is the answer I would give to my nine year old friend. Just go and occupy a space most unfairly. Never let anyone mention your illegal act. Indeed deny as vigorously as you can that you are doing any such thing. Continue occupying more and more space and never vacate any space. Then, just like that mathematician, claim that one more white CO2 will balance the black CO2 and actually empty the global commons! Yes, there are enough fools in the world to believe this.
But my friend will not be one of them when she grows up.
Raghuram Ekambaram
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