The Grave Dangers Of "The Greater Good".

In the series finale of the haunting and tragic television show "Wayward Pines", a central character states "There is no greater good. There's only good, no matter how small the act." The boundless value in this compassionate sentiment cannot be overstated, as our real world is presently being torn up by a lack of basic empathy and humanity, at a time when we are in such dire need of both. But our failure to implement solutions to our myriad dilemmas, which take into account broader, often future needs, while simultaneously providing vital local and present benefits, is another urgent deficit we must rectify. My goal in this article is to illustrate the physical and moral risks of prioritizing "The Greater Good" over "The Good", using three largely disparate examples, from the fields of health care, energy, and animal rights.

While everyone acknowledges the COVID-19 pandemic currently wreaking havoc upon humanity worldwide is a crisis of epic proportion, key differences of opinion remain on the most dangerous of its impacts. The ravages of the direct physical suffering and death the virus brings are obvious, but other devastating effects have only become apparent more recently, and some threats are still unclear in their level of severity. Perhaps the greatest level of ambiguity surrounds the long term economic impacts, with deep concerns over business shutdowns and restrictions causing the most acrimonious debates. On Monday, March 23, in an interview with news anchorman Tucker Carlson, Dan Patrick, the 70-year-old Lieutenant Governor of Texas, staked out an extreme position, claiming restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus stood to cause far more harm than the disease itself. He stated "no one reached out to me and said, 'As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?'", adding that "if that's the exchange, I'm all in".

Mr. Patrick's hysterical and somewhat incoherent words were almost certainly a gut reaction to genuine fear that his children and grandchildren, and so many other young people, would endure intense and unforeseen pain as a result of public health mandates. He surely envisioned a nightmare scenario of them homeless and hungry, with no one to turn to for help. One of the most powerful and moving moments for me in school was as a 14-year-old, learning in Biology class about mothers who permanently destroyed vital organs by raising objects as large as cars, to save their children being crushed beneath. I can't fully remember what Punnett Squares and Transfer RNA are, but I can explain how a parent's great love for their child triggers huge adrenaline rushes, allowing them to perform such superhuman feats of bravery and strength. Yet while this fierce love was behind Mr. Patrick's declaration, it is still a deeply misguided one, as we have a moral duty to protect the sick and weak among us, even if that means hardship for the strong. We cannot be surrounded by fellow human beings literally choking as they desperately battle a vicious illness, and fail to take all the actions we can to help.

Another grave situation posing steadily more frequent and severe dilemmas for humanity, is our Earth's climate crisis. While the belief of so many that the crisis isn't even real is clearly our most daunting obstacle to overcome, there are other people who are significantly hampering progress toward healing our planet. Surprisingly, these are passionate environmental advocates who insist on specific paths to sustainability, even in the face of scientific evidence which dictates an altered trajectory. An especially vocal scientist with such egregious "tunnel vision" is Mark Z. Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. In 2011, Professor Jacobson co-founded The Solutions Project, an organization advocating for the noble goals of "100% Clean, Renewable Energy", as well as Environmental and Racial Justice. Over the course of six years, he crafted impressive blueprints for pathways for virtually every nation in the world to achieve an entirely sustainable, zero-carbon energy system by 2050, entirely using currently available technologies. This may sound too good to be true, and sadly it is. In June 2017, after a rigorous review, 21 researchers (including several of Jacobson's colleagues at Stanford), published a paper revealing that Jacobson's analyses "used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions". The most glaring error they found was his claim that currently operating dams in the United States have the capacity to support enough extra turbines and transformers, to boost their generating capacity by 1,300 Gw (more than 16 times their current total generation of 80 Gw), which was completely invalidated by a Department Of Energy study, concluding the maximum additional possible capacity was a mere 12 Gw.

Professor Jacobson filed a specious and unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against his colleagues, and he is no longer a director or advisor of the organization he was so instrumental in founding. It is a sad story, primarily because the world is so desperately in need of visionaries who can dream and plan on the monumental scale that he did. But they must be humble enough to adapt their strategies, and Jacobson refused to accept the value and absolute necessity of nuclear power in a building a carbon-free society. I was shocked when, on June 20, 2019, The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation published an article by Jacobson entitled "The 7 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Not The Answer To Solve Climate Change". Predictably, he makes several misleading claims disparaging nuclear power, most notably his citing of a CDC study which found that between 1950 and 2000, over 10% of Uranium miners in the United States died from respiratory diseases. While this is true, he fails to mention that in recent decades underground Uranium mines have been fitted with ventilation systems they previously lacked, and many mines are now open-cut ones, where workers risk of overexposure to radiation is quite small.

And even more unfairly, he states that mining for Neodymium, Cerium, and the other Rare Earth Minerals essential to building renewable energy generation equipment, is relatively harmless. This is simply not true, as the world's largest Rare Earth mining and distillation complex in Baotou, China has generated so much Sulfuric and Nitric Acids and other toxic chemicals, that the city now has a "toxic lake" on it's outskirts which generates three times normal background radiation levels. And there is such great concern about the huge amounts of Cobalt mined by children in The Democratic Republic Of Congo, that Elon Musk pledged at Tesla's Battery Day event earlier this week to develop new coatings that would entirely eliminate the need for the metal. Perhaps the most appalling aspect of Professor Jacobson's "mining health analysis", is his complete failure to mention the recent great strides made in extracting Uranium from seawater, using simple assemblies of coated yarn. If such sourcing is scaled up, nuclear energy will become fully "renewable", as levels of both nuclear fuels (Uranium and Thorium) are constantly being replenished in the ocean through a "steady state" chemical reaction, where the exact amount extracted is gradually restored, truly one of nature's wonders.

Yet another excellent example of humanity's urgent need for empathy and fairness, relates to growing concern over animal rights. In her 2016 documentary film "Angry Inuk", the talented Inuit filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril explains the unintentional detrimental effects international sealskin bans have had on Indigenous Arctic peoples. The early scenes of the film are quite moving, especially the scene in which an Inuk hunter describes his great love for Ringed Seals, and his deep concern for the animals' suffering when oil companies performed exploratory drilling tests near his village during the 1970's. At the same time, animal rights activists were intensely pleading for an end to the horrific slaughter of newborn Harp and Hooded Seal pups, which occurred annually in Canada's Maritime Provinces, Norway, and Russia. Thankfully, they were very successful in their efforts, with all killing of the babies completely ending in Canada and Norway in the 1980's, and finally Russia in 2009. However, the movement was extremely shrill and strident, and like Professor Jacobson's analyses, failed to clarify crucial facts, particularly that Inuit never participated in the industrial massacres, as killing baby animals deeply violates their religious beliefs. Sadly though, after securing protection for the animals, Greenpeace never once advocated for sealing communities to be compensated by their respective national governments, an absolute moral necessity as the hunters were simply poor people doing the fashion industry's "dirty work". Worst of all, the Inuit, who only hunt adult seals and only sell the skins of animals they eat, were hit hardest financially due to their extreme isolation.

The story does not end there though, as demand for seal fur increased exponentially once again after the fall of the former Soviet Union renewed trade with nations previously "behind The Iron Curtain". By the mid-2000's, the sealing nations were once again conducting annual cruel massacres, this time of hundreds of thousands of still helpless newly weaned animals. On May 5, 2009, The European Union Parliament voted 550-49, to ban the import of all sealskins, with a clear exemption for the adult animals hunted by the Inuit. It is at this point in her recount, that Ms. Arnaquq-Baril loses my sympathy. She and several other Inuit activists join Canadian and Norwegian government lawyers, in an intense and unsuccessful 6-year-long attempt to persuade the World Trade Organization to overturn the EU ban, citing the economic toll on vulnerable communities. While this second demise of the sealskin trade has unquestionably created pain for many people just as the first one did, in Ms. Arnaquq-Baril's native Canada the Federal Government has created a special safety net for Inuit hunters, paying them a fixed price for skins even if no one buys them. More support is needed, but the government's recognition of the Inuit's unique reliance on seal meat for a healthy diet is heartening, although unfortunately Ms. Arnaquq-Baril is almost entirely unsatisfied.

I have great sympathy for all poverty stricken communities, and Indigenous communities have suffered particularly acutely, due to centuries of Colonial racism and oppression. But the EU sealskin ban (and similar bans enacted by The United States and many other nations), do not seek to "punish" these communities, and as I noted before, many even allow the importation of skins so long as they are sourced from Indigenous community food hunts. The sole goal of the bans is stopping the cruelty that is inherent to industrial sealing, a biologically validated statement that the animals are sentient beings that feel pain, and at the very least deserve a humane death. Yet throughout the second half of the film, and in statements she has made since, Ms. Arnaquq-Baril paints all opponents of the seal fur trade as callous and privileged people indifferent to the plight of her people, and the poor in general. Her argument is as fallacious as it is hurtful and insulting. Think about it this way. Imagine if the tobacco industry demanded a removal of all the Surgeon General's Warnings and a resumption of government supported marketing of their products to addict young people, with the justification of recreating the jobs lost to now widespread awareness of the hazards of smoking. Ms. Arnaquq-Baril is essentially advocating the same shameful immorality in her pursuit of "The Greater Good", the only difference being the victims are animal children, not human children.

How can well intentioned people "thread the needle" between providing for those in need, while not harming others? How do we craft solutions to the daunting and complex threats facing every living creature on our planet, in a fair and equitable manner of shared sacrifice? There are no mysterious and profound answers, just several simple policies all of us must consistently abide by. One essential starting place is summoning the courage to admit when we are wrong, not doubling down on our beliefs if evidence is consistently pointing in another direction. And any healing and progress must spring from a renewed commitment to empathy, including towards those we most disagree with, even those who are outright cruel. To quote a sign one of my neighbors put up earlier this year "Alone we can do so little, Together we can do so much".