James Garvey on an idea that demands action

The climate is changing, and human beings are causing the change. In the last ten years scientists have shifted from being fairly certain about the existence of climate change to calling the evidence for it “unequivocal”. Scientists have moved from just suspecting that humanity had a hand in the change to saying that there’s a 90% chance that human beings are driving it. In the cautious language of science, this is strong stuff. When tpm first appeared, the public perception of climate change was on a par with rogue asteroids and grey goo – a remote, apocalyptic possibility. It’s now discussed daily in the media. Heads of state lose sleep over it. Philosophical reflection on climate change can make you lose sleep too.

As the science has settled and filtered through to the rest of us, a new idea has moved up the philosophical agenda. In a sentence, the new thought is that climate change has a moral dimension. We get almost all of the energy we use by burning fossil fuels. This puts greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the natural greenhouse effect is enhanced, and the planet’s average temperature rises. The extra heat has many effects, and some places may benefit for a time, but things will get more difficult for more people as the planet heats up. Human beings are suffering and will suffer because of all this, because of human choices, choices made by our generation and those who came before us. Whenever choices lead to human suffering, particularly unnecessary human suffering, moral questions arise. The following questions will give you a feel for the territory.

What matters more to us: enjoying our own happiness or doing something about the suffering of future people? Animals will struggle to adapt to the changes ahead – how much should their needs matter to us? Do ecosystems have something more than instrumental value? By what principle should countries divvy up emissions? Are we entitled to equal per capita shares? How should fairness or equity or justice figure into action on climate change? Do people have emissions rights? Should causal responsibility for damage to the climate make a moral difference to the demand for action? Ought the rich help the poor adapt to climate change, particularly if the rich became rich partly as a result of causing the trouble with the climate? Should polluters pay for the damage caused by pollution? Are we responsible for the environmental sins of our parents and grandparents? Is it morally acceptable to carry on with our emissions and hope for a technological quick fix? What’s the right way to think about the risk to future people against the backdrop of scientific uncertainty? Is civil disobedience the right response to a government’s failure to act on climate change? Why should one country go green if others refuse?

Reasonable people can give different answers to these questions, but reasonable people can’t ignore them. Philosophy takes up a large number of so-called “applied” moral problems – questions having to do with abortion, euthanasia, GM crops, just wars, animal rights, medical welfare and on and on. Most of these problems aren’t really yours, at least not at the moment, and hopefully you’ll sashay through life without ever really having to face a proper applied moral problem.

However, the climate is changing, and every time you switch on a computer or hop on a plane, you take part in a slow-motion disaster. Climate change is a moral problem, and it’s our moral problem. Perhaps we have only just started to come to grips with this thought in the past ten years or so, and sometimes it’s said that our moral framework just can’t handle a problem so large, so complex, and so seemingly intractable. For my part, I’m hopeful that we can think our way through it all and make the right decisions. The question is whether or not we’ll manage to think the right thoughts in the time that we’ve got.

Further reading
One World, Peter Singer (Yale University Press)

James Garvey is the author of The Ethics of Climate Change (Continuum)

Read all fifty ideas and more in the special 50th issue of tpm