To choose or not to choose--Barry Jones

I have proposed my own variant of ''Pascal's wager'' to examine the options for climate change:

■ If we take action on climate change and disaster is averted, there will be massive avoidance of human suffering.

■ If we take action and the climate change problem abate that's the questions for other reasons, little is lost and we benefit from a cleaner environment.

■ If we fail to act and disaster results, then massive suffering will have been aggravated by stupidity.

■ If we do not take action and there is no disaster, the outcome will be due to luck alone, like an idiot winning the lottery.

Failure to act appears to favour the present but it certainly prejudices the future. As the French diplomat Talleyrand acutely observed 200 years ago, ''Not to choose is to choose''.