The Black Swan: the most compelling reason why you should be worried about climate change

Surprisingly enough, the most convincing argument I found for climate change comes not from scientific journals or long-written books on the climate crisis, but from a book that primarily deals with philosophy, statistics and economics.

The Black Swan: The Impacts of the Highly Improbable, written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, deals with a class of rare, but highly consequential events; for instance, the banking collapse in 2008, and the 9/11 attack in 2001. Despite Taleb only mentioning briefly about the climate while spending the majority of the book dealing with consequences in economics and finances, his findings are rather alarming with regards to climate change. In breaking down the key ideas of Taleb’s book, I want to address and expand its implications on the climate, and why it demands more action than ever before.

Climate change is an Extremistan event.

First, a distinction between Extremistan and Mediocristan events:

Mediocristan events are events that are mostly predictable. They follow the famous Gaussian bell curve, and wide…