A few words on the ethics of climate change and the way out of this mess, in no particular order and very emotively (fun though!). … Why does action on climate change simply not seem to happen with the urgency and magnitude that it should?
Consider this example (to start from a narrow point) - flying:
The specific ethical impropriety is this: that in effect you say to yourself (and the excuse of ignorance is ridiculous because scientists scream it in the media virtually everyday), I know what this plane does to the environment but I don’t care about that. I want to go on holiday and I’m happy to be complicit in damaging the world and damaging the lives of thousands and thousands of people. Indeed I am happy, eager no less, to cash in my children’s collateral well-being right now so I can have a few days of pleasure immediately.
And this is absurd, what sort of parent, what kind of person is fine with that?
But this does seem to be the case; this does seem to be what many, many people think. The unwillingness, the seductive ease with which so many people obfuscate and dispel the clutching mists of climate change guilt, seems to be all-encompassing.
Obviously, I don’t think it’s the case that many people are just this cruel. I think the main difficulty is that there is a lack of tactile apparency with this problem - bringing the intangible and remote idea of how I am contributing to climate change to the experiential level of everyday life is hard, of course it is, and visualising the subtle interplay of cause and effect, the notion of the world as a dense web of interconnected contiguity, is not how most people go about considering their daily lives! So, the specific effects of seemingly innocuous events go unrealised and remain unconsidered.
Now, what can we say to this? How can we explain the ethics, indeed, the simple logically absurd nature of this situation in terms that can be understood? Look at it another way, what is it that you damage by refusing to make the necessary changes to alleviate climate change?
People’s lives and the world are damaged, that’s the obvious answer - that’s what’s being damaged. And this is true, but we know that this is easily dispelled because, as I said, (most) people don’t spend their time reflecting philosophically on their lives, they’re absorbed in living it. And the climatic results are remote, physically and temporally. So, what?
Yourself, that’s the answer, you damage yourself. You damage the fundamental part of yourself that is the part of your being that drives you on day after day, which makes you get up in the morning and just live. The same core-being that is filled with horror at the sight of suffering, that weeps with pity at the wasted life, that brims with wonder at the stunning architecture; the experiential part of you beyond immediate reflection because it’s the part of you busy being a fundamental part of you. It’s the part of you that requires meditative detachment to consider (if you’re terrified, you can’t stop being terrified for a few moments, consider what it’s like to be terrified, and then go back to it – this part of you). That’s what you damage; you chip away at, again and again, every time. And the erosive effect of this guilt is both unsettling and unfulfilling. Why? Because this is the same part of yourself which contains the notions that you hold dear, what gives your life meaning, what matters. And if you’re a good person, you damage the good within you because your actions just aren’t good.
I suspect that in a time when society wasn’t so immersed in dry technological empiricism, these types of problems would be experientially more obvious. The Renaissance man of Palestrina’s time would see clearly where the 21st century man is clouded, and even in the 1800s, Edgar Allen Poe was warning us of just these types of failings in The Man Who Was Used Up, to put it simply: being out of touch with the world, with the biosphere and the “real”, non anthropocentric world, and obsessed with technological advance for it’s own inherently fathomless sake.
Critically, therefore, the wrongness (as it were) is present not remote. It’s when you step on the plane for the flight to take you on your holiday, when you say, screw everyone else, I’m not spending money on insulation; when you say, sod that, I can’t be bothered to walk, I won’t turn the lights off when I leave the room, I’m not using public transport, I won’t turn the thermostat down –when you in fact say, why should I not be able to go and do what I want, where I want? I want this luxury, so... It’s at this moment that you do wrong, that you become complicit in the deaths of people (who die because of how you willingly helped change the climate – you know this side-effect, there is no ignorance), that you fracture your fundamental nature.
To put it starkly, the pregnant women on her long-haul flight for her sunny summer holiday is damaging the adult life of the child in her womb right there and then, and damaging her own life fundamentally at the same time. Ha! bitterly ironic.
What’s really annoying, is that the alternatives to a high carbon life, summarised simply as friends, family, and the arts (and by the arts, I mean maybe something as simple as spending your time reading, not vacuously in front of the TV, in the realm of 24 hour cable crap), are just better. They’re more fulfilling, fitting, appropriate, and they’ll improve the quality of lives physically and mentally. In fact, you could even say, that it’s a more beautiful way to live; happier too. The quality of the happiness is greater, less transient and vacuous, and more virtuous and fulfilling (spiritually, you might say).
I think all these ramblings have shown a rough sketch of the problems I thought I would mention. We can see the problem of climate change and why it’s so very wrong not to do anything about it (the ethical impropriety), then I spoke about why so many people can rationalise/obfuscate the problem (its lack of tangibility), and then I outlined why the wrongness is, in fact, substantively present (starkly so).
Therefore, it would seem logical to go on to say…
It is massively, spectacularly crazy to push for a growth in aviation, to encourage car sales (of the non-electric kind), to build the traditional coal-fired power stations, to give free-rein to the oil industry.
So many, many people have been telling governments precisely why this is crazy, and yet they still do it. In the UK, we even have a Department of Energy and Climate Change to advise the government exactly on the correct way forward, and yet a third runway at Heathrow seems very likely. With BAA adamant it’s crucial for economic growth and economic well-being, and Gordon Brown seeming to agree, I feel that I should point out, that biospheric collapse (which is what will happen with unmitigated, or poorly restrained climate change), will bring about economic collapse. By advocating the continued push of carbon industries, you bind the economy and the country into a greater likelihood of utter ruin.
In 50 years time, Government ministers/BAA officials (to point to just these obvious examples) will have to look their grandkids in the eye and say, “oops, sorry about that. Maybe I should not have pushed for a massive growth in aviation, given that it causes saturation of the higher regions of the atmosphere (just below the tropopause) with carbon dioxide, and the various nitrous oxides. Now, thanks to the flooding, drought, food shortages and the massive spread of pests and diseases, the economy is virtually nothing, we have little food, no electricity and people are dying everywhere. Sorry about that. But, hey, shit happens”, (maybe more like 100 years plus for this degree of severity, but I was enjoying the melodrama!).
What the hell sort of people advocate that? You really have to ask yourself, maybe they’re just too stupid to be in office/in charge.
Of course, (having calmed down) they’re not too stupid, but having many cares and worries and an ideology that isn’t shared by readers of The Guardian, and the current President-Elect of the USA, such problems don’t have a hold on their mind.
I wish it did, though, mainly because an excellent way to drive the country out of the ruin of post Keynesian Economics would be to heavily invest in Green industry. With the IEA saying yesterday that peak oil will probably be around 2020, an industry which is by it’s very nature polluting, destructive and frankly, stupid, may just not be the way to keep going. To invest in infrastructure: roads (for electric cars), trains, bridges, etc, and to massively invest in Green industry would be crucial for a Keynesian rebirth. The lowering of interest rates and helping to free up credit for small businesses (for example) is a good start, but you need to create high aggregate demand for jobs and goods to keep the economy working, to avoid abnormally high unemployment, and deflation. The technologies of green industry and infrastructure aren’t mystical; people can be employed in them. The investment will stimulate the need for goods and will open up huge new job prospects. And that’s crucial, the jobs are new, they’re not of a dirty industry which will help destroy people’s lives in the long-term, and will run out of a crucial element (oil) soon.
(And by the way, how many countries have been to war over photovoltaics? How many wind turbines do you know of, spend their time floating around the sea, crashing into rocks and spilling millions of barrels of oil everywhere?)
Psychologically, this tangible investment and the sight of these new jobs (and most economic problems are solved in the minds of the people, by their behaviour), causes people to be inspired and to feel a security to spend and not do the last thing they should do in a recession, save.
So big up Green industry, basically, and act good. People have phenomenal capacity, and we can win.
And give George Bush a wag of the finger as he screams against reason and all ethical sensibility and shoves through as many, “hey, let’s have fun screwing over the environment, wah, wah”, midnight regulations as possible.
Sorry, this is really long, but nice and pompous – all good fun!
mh
Matthew Humphrys is the production editor of the philosophy press, who share their office with Earthscan.
