The global challenge of climate change poses a perfect moral storm — by failing to take action to rein in carbon emissions, the current generation is spreading the costs of its behavior far into the future. Why should people in the future pay to clean up our mess?
Here are some excerpts of a piece Stephen Gardiner published in Yale Environment 360, “The Ethical Dimension of Tackling Climate Change”:
Sometimes the best way to make progress on a problem is to get clearer on what that problem is. Arguably, the biggest issue facing humanity at the moment is the looming global environmental crisis. Here, the problem is not that we are unaware that trouble is coming. After all, the basic science is both well known and continually being reiterated in major national and international reports. Rather, the core problem is that thus far effective action seems beyond us. We seem at best paralyzed, and at worst indifferent. Put starkly, there seems little place within our grand institutions and busy lives for what may turn out to be the defining issue of our generation.
Why? In my view, at the heart of the matter is the fact that humanity is in the grip of a profound ethical challenge that our current institutions and theories are ill-equipped to meet….
… Climate change brings together many areas in which our best theories are far from robust, such as intergenerational ethics, global justice, scientific uncertainty, and humanity’s relationship to nature. The problem here is not that we do not have any guidance at all. For example, the idea that imposing catastrophe on the future for the sake of our own modest benefits is not a defensible way to behave is a relatively secure basic ethical intuition. Rather, the problem is that it is difficult to move beyond those basic intuitions to deal with the details, and we are too easily distracted by counterarguments, especially from theories that have merits in other contexts, but fail to take the future seriously enough.
For example, some influential economists claim the current generation is justified in moving slowly on climate change because future people will be richer due to economic growth, and so should pay more. But are we entitled to assume that the future will be richer even in a climate catastrophe? And even if they are, why should they pay to clean up our mess?
… We in the current generation — and especially the more affluent — are in a position to continue taking modest benefits for ourselves, while passing nasty costs onto the poor, future generations, and nature. However, pointing this out is morally uncomfortable. Better, then, to cover it up with clever but shallow arguments that distort public discussion, and solutions that do little to get at the core problems….
This is a grim state of affairs…. We must acknowledge the global and intergenerational power that we yield and take responsibility for it, rather than taking solace in comfortable distraction. No one will stop us from exploiting that power but us. This is why ethics is at the heart of the matter.
The rest of this excellent piece can be found at Yale Environment 360. Gardiner is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Program on Values in Society at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he specializes in ethics, political philosophy, and environmental ethics.
For my interview with Gardiner on geo-engineering, see:
- Exclusive: Dysfunctional, Lop-Sided Geoengineering Panel Tries to Launch Greenwashing Euphemism, “Climate Remediation”: Revealing Interview with Ethicist Who Withdrew from Panel, Equally Revealing Article by Panel Member on Report’s Dysfunctional Process
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Exactly. Get a C&C deal for UNFCCC-compliance asap.
http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/Converge_faster.pdf
http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/350_.pdf
There is more embedded photosynthetic energy in the average world diet than in the cars we drive or in the houses we heat and cool. We are literally eating up the planet and leaving a desolate world for our children and grandchildren. Yet, not one of the 192 world leaders nor Al Gore has championed a change in the world diet, though many of these luminaries are fulminating over our fossil fuel consumption.
We are still in the denial phase of our addiction. Every one of us should be twelve stepping on a weekly basis, but perhaps, we are too proud to admit that we are addicts.
Many medics and campaigners support the dietary position you take: – http://www.gci.org.uk/endorsements_medics.html
http://www.gci.org.uk/endorsements_campaigns.html
[In case your were wondering what the 'pentagram' was for, its 40 years future like this: - http://www.gci.org.uk/animations/orbiting-sun1.swf
Beautiful!
Prof. Gardiner taught two of my classes at the University of Washington that I used to satisfy some distribution requirements, one of which was The Ethics of Climate Change, which he co-taught with John M. Wallace. That class actually gave me the final push to declare my major in atmospheric science (now studying it in grad school).
Gardiner does a great job of teasing out some very concrete and often simple ethical questions that we all have to face. All of them point toward the same answer – we cannot, morally, continue to postpone action.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to avoid having to face these questions and be forced into action when you deny the reality of climate change.
If you have the chance, you should read some of his published articles, or better yet, A Perfect Moral Storm.
http://moralground.com/
Moral Ground brings together the testimony of over eighty visionaries—theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturalists, activists, and writers—to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibility to our planet.
In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do.
It’s this incredible arrogance – the unquestioned assumption that everyone will be so much richer, and that even if they are, they’ll be appreciative of a world that is in so many ways different with an unstable hot climate and ruined ecosystems…
It makes no sense, unless, of course, you’re arrogant and hubristic.
A couple of days ago an Onondaga chief, Oren Lyons, joked, “You can’t really call it ‘alternative’ energy, when there really is NO Alternative.”
If we can ditch the illusion of endless choices and escape hatches along the way, that could help firm up a more ethical, and practical, position.
I owe it to Oren Lyons to rewrite that so his more even voice comes through.
“You can’t really call it alternative energy, when there really is no alternative.”
Thank you for introducing me to Oren Lyons.
“People in the future cleaning up our mess”?
Don’t we realize there very probably will be no future? We also hear “future generations will really be resentful of us now…” What future generations?
We can’t seem to get our head around the fact we are at a very high CO2 parts per million in our precious and very thin atmosphere – almost 400 ppm to be exact – and anything over 350 ppm is highly dangerous.
Leading climate scientists like James Lovelock and James Hansen say we will not have a future if we continue “business as usual” with CO2 emissions. Why do so many, even people who know something about the subject talk like there will be a future?
This is the most serious threat ever faced by mankind. Can we get people to comprehend this somehow? Or is it just too big to comprehend?
Yes. Bill all you say is correct.
Also there is a negative feedback which isn’t discussed (much) and that is of course the break down of civil society and the drastic reduction of the human population by extreme events.
These are inevitable now and will be reducing our GHG emissions (rapidly) – the hard way.
Paul – I’d agree that a population crash looks inevitable – but only if we fail to control global temperature by albedo restoration. Yet I’d disagree over that possible crash providing an effective negative feedback on warming.
If we let matters run to the extent you describe, then the interactive positive feedbacks – that are now accelerating off the timelagged warming of the 1970s’ cumulative GHG stocks – will be releasing CO2e output in quantities to simply dwarf any decline of anthro-outputs.
The crash is avoidable – most likely – but a point is coming where too much heat has entered the oceans, thus committing us to uncontrollable seabed methyl clathrates’ collapse. I mention this to point out that we do still have some time to apply albedo restoration – and, of course, to start terminating fossil fuel dependence and deploying a carbon recovery program globally.
What we are getting desperately short of time for is negotiating the essential global climate treaty to codify international commitments and co-operation – which are pre-requisite to the triple strategy noted above. Without the treaty, nations will strive to build futile national climate resilience (aka ‘adaption’) faster than destabilization advances, and there will be no effective common security effort.
If it’s of interest, and you’ve not already seen it, have a look at the climate policy framework for the treaty negotiation known as “Contraction & Convergence” – as originated and promoted by Global Commons Institute – at:
http://www.gci.org.uk
Regards,
Lewis
Everything important I learned in Kintergarden:
hold hands crossing the street;
clean up your own mess.
Chinese scientist interviewed by Nature makes the same ethical point in his final paragraph
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111020/full/news.2011.604.html
I agree with most of the above, particularly the prime importance of a treaty but I wonder how quickly all these, now, multiple disasters hitting highly industrialized sites like Bangkok, is going to show up in the CO2 record.
I believe the GFC caused a small downward blip in the rate of emissions so when as these disasters accelerate, are we going to see the effects? I am not being a super-optimist but surely, there must be an effect, ME
“Why should people in the future pay to clean up our mess?”
So is the logical conclusion that we should pour massive amounts of money now into geoengineering which MIGHT actually clean up the mess as opposed to SOLELY trying oh so hard to decrease emissions by twenty percent which which would leave a slightly smaller mess for future generations?