“To whom much is given, much is expected” – Luke 12:48
I recently heard a wonderful radio broadcast which succinctly explained the entire mortgage backed security crisis and the ensuring economic meltdown we are all suffering through. Go to ThisAmericanLife.org and listen to the podcast or read the transcript for “The Giant Pool of Money”:
Mike Garner: …my boss was in the business for 25 years. He hated those loans. He hated them and used to rant and say, “It makes me sick to my stomach the kind of loans that we do.” He fought the owners and sales force tooth and neck about these guidelines. He got same answer. Nope, other people are offering it. We’re going to offer them too.
Mike Francis: No income no asset loans. That’s a liar’s loan. We are telling you to lie to us. We’re hoping you don’t lie. Tell us what you make, tell us what you have in the bank, but we won’t verify? We’re setting you up to lie. We’re going to get more market share this way. House prices are booming, everything’s gonna be good. And … the company was just rolling in the cash. The owners and the production staff were just raking it in. Something about that feels very wrong. It felt wrong way back when and I wish we had never done it. Unfortunately, what happened … we did it because everyone else was doing it.
Alex Blumberg (reporter): It’s easy to ignore your gut fear when you are making a fortune in commissions.
The world is facing some very difficult choices related to the energy industry. Foremost is the possibility of human-induced climate change. Another which is not on people’s radar now but will re-emerge as world oil demand recovers is peak oil. CERA states that oil production won’t peak until 2030, but wait; that’s only 20 years from now. Our society wasted the opportunity of last 36 years since the 1973 – 1974 OPEC oil embargo to insulate ourselves from future oil shocks, so 2030 is not that far off. Water rights also come to mind, especially as they relate to hydrofracing of unconventional reservoirs in the arid U.S. West.
I do not here wish to disclose my positions on any of these issues, nor will I attempt to change yours. You may breathe an appropriate sigh of relief. Rather, I want to point out that our geoscience profession is tip-toeing around, and possibly into, deep pools of moral hazard based on the fact that our industry is one which wields an incredible amount of money, power, and influence. The danger here is that the individual geoscientist may find it easier to at times succumb to the prevailing group mentality and just go along with the program, rather than think and feel things through for himself or herself. This self-silencing could have the deleterious effect of removing a potentially influential voice (one’s own) from the debate. There could also be negative long-term mental & emotional effects for the geoscientist – guilt and remorse – for a decision made in conflict with one’s inner moral compass.
The excerpt above from “The Giant Pool of Money” reaffirms what we know to be true, that money and the tendency towards a herd mentality have a way of short-circuiting people’s ability to make moral decisions and more importantly, to act upon those decisions. It would be the height of arrogance for us geoscientists to proclaim that we are not subject to the same corrupting influences as mortgage brokers. We’re all humans; we all function in the same way. So the challenge for us as individual geoscientists is to find ways which intensify or raise the stakes of the moral questions. I propose three tests:
One way to gain increased moral focus is to imagine that you are trying to explain the situation or moral choice to a child, and that the child is asking some very penetrating, fundamental questions which you must confront head-on. “Dad, are we going to run out of gasoline someday?” “Mom, my science teacher says that the ice at the North Pole is melting… is that going to hurt us?” “Grandpa, I want to be a geologist someday just like you; will I be able to get a job doing what you do?” When we imagine that we are answering a child’s searingly direct question, we are less able to engage in obfuscation or double-talk.
Another way to gain increased moral focus is to imagine your own funeral wake, where friends and relatives are recounting the accomplishments of your life. What would you like them to remember about your life and career? This can be further intensified by adding in the Dave Ramsey (popular financial talk show host) insight, that “men have no risk bone”, with a twist. That is, at the end of your life, how will you explain or justify the consequences should things not go as you anticipate? Put yourself in the position of Mike & Mike above from “The Giant Pool of Money”. If things go awry in a very bad way with the climate, how would you feel about that? Or, if nothing all that bad happens with the climate, and you supported an onerous cap & trade or a carbon tax policy, how would you feel about that? Would there be guilt and remorse? If so, how much?
A third test would be “the stench test”. That is, if the issue at hand stinks of party politics, make sure you don’t get recruited into one side or the other of the debate. Remember, the goal of politicians is to get campaign contributions and get re-elected; their goal is not to find the truth or to solve problems. Indeed, for them it is even better if problems remain unsolved forever, in order to be perpetually useful as campaign material. In order to get elected, politicians have to pander to their base voters, and possibly move some swing voters. Therefore, politicians usually champion issues which evenly divide public opinion. In such an environment, you can be certain that the truth, and truth-seeking (the scientific method) is lying mortally wounded, and is getting trampled by shouting crowds. Accept none of this. Don’t become a living, breathing “spambot” (a virus-infected computer that spews out spam emails) for someone else’s talking points. Come up with your own reasoning, your own vocabulary, and share your own independent ideas and words with family & friends, and write and talk to your elected officials. They probably won’t listen if their ideas differ greatly from yours, but a popular groundswell of opinion might influence or nudge them. It’s far better that a politician gets influenced by informed constituents who are genuinely concerned about an issue, rather than by a paid political consultant who just wants to say what his client, the politician, wants to hear so that he or she gets paid his consultancy fee.
One of my spiritual teachers told me once, “Don’t make up your mind about yourself”. I think he meant that we should realize that we are works-in-progress, with imperfect insights (“For now we see through a glass, darkly”), and that even adults should expect to change and grow in some ways over time. I have observed that moral people hold fast to their deepest core beliefs, but have the ability to change their opinions and actions based on conditions. If that were not the case, how could things ever improve? We would still have slavery and Jim Crow, the popular vote only for white men, and Eastern Europe under Communism. So if we are to act morally, we have to be flexible, adaptable people.
In closing, we all have to realize that our individual careers are very short compared to the sweep of history. We have very little time to do something that matters. We geoscientists have received some of the finest educations ever granted to human beings in all of civilization. As it is written in Scripture, “To whom much is given, much is expected”. We owe a debt not only to managers and shareholders, not only to governments and political parties, but also to people in remote corners of the world that we don’t see on a daily basis, to those past giants on whose shoulders we stand, and to future generations yet unborn. It matters not if you are a recent college graduate and today is your first day on the job, or if you are looking forward to beginning retirement soon. Today is still your day, for as long as the sun shines. You might have an opportunity to do something today that you and your children and your grandchildren could be proud of. Be flexible; don’t lose that opportunity. It might not come your way again.
