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What is the most effective altruistic act that you and I can make? This if the question posed by this website, and after a few months of thought I have decided to do the following.
I will drastically reduce and then eliminate all fossil fuel and meat consumption from my life. I don’t want to do this, I have enjoyed a life of cheap energy based on fossil fuels, but I now know that I can no longer live this way. Because of the harm it does to those less well off, future others and all life on this planet, I must stop.
Socrates said that wisdom is knowledge and we now have the knowledge that climate change is “widespread, rapid and intensifying and the world must quickly and completely curtail greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophe” (Economist Magazine‘s stark summary of the IPCC’s most recent report). If you read the IPCC’s freely available 6th Assessment Report (or for something less heavy The Climate Book compiled by Greta Thunberg), or just watched the news, or the weather in your local area, you cannot fail to know this to be the effects of global warm are true and immensely damaging. We have to stop dumping green house gases into atmosphere or the planet will get hotter and hotter and hotter until our civilization collapses. So will you and the rest of humanity act wisely? Socrates thought that with knowledge you couldn‘t do anything but, however I‘m not so sure.
Whilst knowledge is wisdom, we now know it is not enough. Humans have the capacity for delusion, disbelief and selfishness, so that we can dismiss knowledge as untrue or “fake news” or think we are already doing enough or it is pointless an individual acting or its up to Governments to act. We can invent countless excuses for our own convenience. We can create a reality that suits ourselves to give us short term pleasure (and maybe pleasure that will last until we die). However, eventually the true reality comes crashing in and we are forced to acknowledge the unavoidable truth. But, by then it will be too late and the planet will be unable to recover.
When you look at the cosmic, geological and evolutionary events that have resulted in the advanced life forms on this planet, how can you not be amazed by the world? For all we know, we may be the most complex life form in the Universe - but we are currently on a path to destroy ourselves by swiftly and radically altering the planet. Do we not have a moral duty to prevent harm to others, future others and other life forms?
So, the most altruistic the most effective act you can do is to stop dumping your pollution on those least able to cope with the consequences, namely those in less wealthy countries, future others who have no voice and other life forms who have an equal right to live. You will be helping billions and billions, not to mention saving the future of our planet.
Also, at the next election, vote for the political party with the greenest agenda,