Record temperatures. 1 in 1000-year flood events across the globe. The desperate push for climate change denialism is buying time for major polluters to transition to alternative cash streams – sort of like when you want to find a new job, but you keep telling your current boss you’re never going to quit…until the day you quit – but the Earth cannot be filibustered by healthy quarterly financials.
The speed at which polluters are transitioning to renewables is entirely detached from the scientific consensus on the urgency of mitigation action. Fortunately, thanks to the pandemic, governments and corporations around the world are starting to realize that they can stop pretending to give a shit about people dying – and in the process save some money – without adverse consequences.
In order for a subway to flood so completely as to drown commuters, there has to be several compounding layers of failure, and an assessment of risk and consequence that bleakly devalues human life.
Scientists and engineers understand the inevitability of unpredictability; even the most well-designed subway system in the world is allowed to flood during PMD flood events. However, it is one thing to say ‘it’s going to flood, what ya gonna do?’ and another to say, ‘people are gonna drown, what ya gonna do?’ It’s like not understanding the difference between have no money in the bank and being ten million dollars in debt.
Such indifference, fundamentally, arises from an indifference toward human life.
To be clear – it is perfectly OK to not care about strangers dying. We do it every day. We care more about our diet than some random kid starving to death in Yemen, because those kids don’t concern us, and if you think too much about the suffering of humanity you’re going to be paralysed with anxiety. This kind of indifference is not evil; it is a part of life.
To push the boundary of not-evil even further: if you see a person about to walk into traffic, and instead of stopping them you turn around and pretend you did not see them, this should not be considered evil. We all have priorities, and if your priority is to maintain a calm and uneventful life, pursuing your own goals without having to worry about other people, then it is perfectly acceptable to walk away from every misfortune that does not personally concern you. It is morally disreputable, but morals don’t put food on the table. It is not evil.
This is very different from, say, knowing that a thing is not safe, understanding that people are going to die after having examined reliable data with scientific method and comprehensive risk analysis, yet despite all that, still going out and telling everyone that this thing is perfectly safe, that there is no chance of dying, just so that a certain status quo can be maintained, and money can be made on the side.
This is evil. If there is a reason for which a person can go to hell, then this is it.
This was the level of failure that allowed people to drown in the subway. The people in charge knew that climate change exacerbated floods are real and imminent, yet they decided against taking it into account when building the tunnels. They knew that there is a level of flooding that will lead to loss of life, but because it costs too much money that could be otherwise going to their own personal bank accounts, they decided that it was not worth the effort to hedge. They have almost certainly received information from scientists and engineers regarding the difference between chance of failure and consequence of failure, yet the information was dismissed out of hand, because it’s a bunch of money-wasting nerd-talk that will delay the project and make them look stupid.
When people start drowning, it is the frontline staff and the victims that get the blame: that the operator on shift did not shut the lines down quick enough; or that people should take responsibility for their own safety. Those responsible for allowing such a preventable catastrophe to happen in the first place? They melt into the shadows. They are the first to point fingers. They are the last to suffer any consequence.
While Spiderman understood that with great power comes great responsibility, those in power understand that maintaining said power is their only responsibility. Anything else is either useless, pointless nerd shit or stuff that can be coerced into solidifying their power.
You know that a bunch of low-level bureaucrats are going to get fired for the drowning. You know that the firms that had designed the tunnels are going to shed half their staff, even though it is unthinkable that a firm capable of designing a municipal subway system is incapable of risk assessment. You know that those responsible for the disaster – the ones who threw the risk mitigation plan away for a quick buck and a promotion – will still be there, making the same kind of decisions.
This result is not limited to one flooded subway. It is also applicable to the energy sector, for their decades-long knowledge of climate change yet lobbying for the opposite; to those pushing antivax agendas while themselves are fully vaccinated; and to the lawmakers who spend their entire careers pitching semantics against science, knowingly endangering the lives of those who don’t know better, in exchange for political success.
There is only one evil in the world.
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