Can Selfishness Save Us?

Can greed, for lack of a better word, be good? It may be the only way to save the planet - and everyone living on it

Katherine Hayhoe, the Texas-based scientist who has led efforts to confront climate change - and a self described “relentless optimist” - was understandably shaken by last week’s election results. Shaken, but not stirred from her relentless activism. She was, after all, a lead author of the National Climate Assessment under the last Trump administration, and “firmly of the conviction that a thermometer does not give you a different answer depending on how you vote.” She believes that “a hurricane does not knock on your door and ask you which political party you’re registered with before it destroys your home.”

She has dealt with the devil before and is more than willing to do so again.

She’s ready to roll up her sleeves with the belief that bipartisan consensus is achievable. What choice do we have? I have little faith in the motives of Trump’s people and philosophy, except for one element that is a cornerstone of their faith - and that may be precisely the place where common ground can be reached.

And that sweet spot is selfishness. Put more crassly, in the words of Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

Hayhoe sees self-interest as an opening to achieve progress, or at least to slow down the deterioration of our climate during the Trump presidency, and it’s to appeal to that which is most appealing to the person on the other side of the table. Here’s what she said in an interview in Inside Climate News:

I really feel like, in the next four years, we need to lean into collaborations and partnerships and solutions that have multiple wins for both people and the planet. So one group of people might be advocating for solutions because it has an immediate health benefit. Others might see the immediate economic benefit. Others might see the benefit for nature. For too long, we’ve worked in silos, and now we don’t have time for single wins. We need multiple wins. We need partners that are in it for multiple reasons, and the more we focus on what we can accomplish together, I think the more positive outcomes we’re going to see, and the more allies we’re going to gain, especially at the local to regional level.

It might seem like a no-brainer that people would act - and vote - in what they think is their self interest. That’s generally true, with one constant exception. Who would be crazy enough to vote against their self interest for altruistic reasons?  The Jews. As Milton Himmelfarb wrote in an oft-quoted 1973 essay in Commentary, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” 

That held true this year, except that this year, Latinos voted in larger numbers for Trump and Mainline suburban Protestants may have joined with the Jews. And it’s easy to suggest that those Jews who voted Democratic and are not billionaires voted in their economic self interest, not simply for altruistic “world repair.” But however the voting worked out, for most people, self interest, not a grandiose desire to save the world, was the prime motivator. We need to accept that for so many people, self trumps all. We need to appeal to them on that level or bid farewell to any hope for Net Zero carbon emissions. We need partners, and Hayhoe has shown that partners are there to be had.

So I’m buying in to the Gen X-fueled obsession with the 80’s “Me Generation.” Give me Alex P. Keaton over Mother Theresa any day. Or at least today.

Many on the right are nostalgic for Ayn Rand’s “virtue of selfishness.” Rand’s novel The Fountainhead is one of the few novels Donald Trump likes and has been a beacon for reactionaries for generations. It proclaims the primacy of selfishness.

Rand wrote:

Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”

In truth, Leviticus 19 says the same thing: To “love your neighbor as yourself” implies that you first love yourself, and that you love yourself a lot. If your plane’s cabin is losing pressure, you first have to put the oxygen mask over your own face before you can help your child. You gotta look out for Number #1.

So here’s what Number #1 needs: Fewer floods on the Florida coastline. Fewer famines spurring border conflicts and mass refugee flights. Fewer hundred degree days that are not good for golf and destroy a bumper crop of corn to feed cattle for all those hamburgers. More water for those immaculate greens.

I have a feeling Hayhoe is right and it makes loads of sense to find that common ground where health, economic and environmental benefits coalesce. That is already happening, and each wildfire, hurricane and drought will continue to foster that new alliance. There are more than a few people in western North Carolina right now who know what I’m talking about.

Back in 2013, when my synagogue board voted for what was at the time one of the largest solar panel installations in of any religious facility in the nation, I’d like to say it was exclusively out of an altruistic desire to save our planet. That played a role, but state subsidies and cheaper energy played a much larger one. The temple budget reaped enormous savings from the project. Plus we got assistance in rebuilding a roof that was overdue for replacement. It was a win-win-win, for the synagogue, mother nature and Uncle Sam. And we all felt like Good Jews while doing it.

Going green has been the selfish choice for a long time. Once it became the cheapest choice - it went beyond the left fringe and became a hit with conservatives too. That’s what’s happening now all around the country, even as people still cry out instinctively, “Drill, baby drill!”

Sometimes the greatest benefit of an action is a byproduct of the original purpose. The Torah derived its central law of conservationism, the mitzvah of Bal Tashchit, from of all things, the rules of warfare.  Deuteronomy 20:19 states that when besieging a city we should not cut down trees (“for is the tree a human that you would besiege it too?”).  It’s fascinating also to witness how the rabbis broadened that law’s scope to address all sorts of gratuitous destruction in civilian life.  This mitzvah is particularly relevant as we witness all kinds of wanton ruination perpetrated in our own societies.

But when you look at the original purpose of the commandment, it was probably a selfish one. It’s hard to imagine that the ancient Israelites assumed that trees had feelings, which would border on paganism. At a time of war, it’s hard to have much sensitivity for the world around you. The focus is entirely on the task at hand, and by necessity, with so much bloodshed, the conscience naturally becomes numbed to collateral damage. Trees deserve special care, not for environmental reasons, but because they are useful to conquering armies, providing food, shade and shelter, both during and presumably after the campaign.

The Torah is calling on Israel to care for trees - not the earth as a whole, which is quickly becoming scorched with blood and fire - for self-centered reasons.

I should reiterate that centuries later this ruling led to an entire corpus of environmental source material that fuels Judaism’s decidedly green agenda.

But I don’t think the Bible was there yet, at least not this law. The first chapters of Genesis are another story. There is certainly an ethos of stewardship to be found in the second Creation story (Gen, 2) and Noah narrative, and it is what propels many conservative Christian groups toward environmentalism.

There is every reason to believe that Hayhoe is right, that we can come together over this climate emergency. And she might just be the one to help that happen.

Selfishly, I’d rather not drown, burn or starve. Even Ayn Rand would understand that.