Moral Theory and Climate Change

Ethical Perspectives on a Warming Planet

Dale E. Miller, Ben Eggleston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351792899
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Climate change has become the most pressing moral and political problem of our time. Ethical theories help us think clearly and more fully about important moral and political issues. And yet, to date, there have been no books that have brought together a broad range of ethical theories to apply them systematically to the problems of climate change. This volume fills that deep need. Two preliminary chapters—an up-to-date synopsis of climate science and an overview of the ethical issues raised by climate change—set the stage. After this, ten leading ethicists in ten separate chapters each present a major ethical theory (or, more broadly, perspective) and discuss the implications of that view for how we decide to respond to a rapidly warming planet. Each chapter first provides a brief exposition of the view before working out what that theory "has to say" about climate change and our response to the problems it poses.

Key features:

• Up-to-date synopsis of climate science

• Clear overviews of a wide range of ethical theories and perspectives by leading experts

• Insightful discussions of the implications of these theories and perspectives for our response to climate change

• A unique opportunity to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of various ethical viewpoints.

1

Modern Climate Change

A Symptom of a Single-Species High-Energy Pulse

Hans-Peter Plag

Introduction

In 1912, Francis Molena contemplated the possibility of human activities causing climate change, and he concluded:

It is largely the courageous, enterprising, and ingenious American whose brains are changing the world. Yet even the dull foreigner, who burrows in the earth by the faint gleam of his miner’s lamp, not only supports his family and helps to feed the consuming furnaces of modern industry, but by his toil in the dirt and darkness adds to the carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere so that men in generations to come shall enjoy milder breezes and live under sunnier skies.

Molena, 1912

Today, more than a century later, atmospheric CO₂ is much higher than Molena expected, and instead of enjoying the “milder breezes,” fear of stronger storms is increasing, while the “sunnier skies” are associated with more frequent deadly heat waves and prolonged droughts. During the last century and particularly the last several decades, climate has been changing at a much higher rate than before 1900 throughout the Holocene, the last geological epoch that started approximately 12,000 years ago (e.g., Gaffney & Steffen, 2017). Evidence documenting modern climate change is abundant (e.g., Pachauri et al., 2014; IPCC, 2018) and the observed changes in the chemistry of the climate system can be linked to human activities. However, recent impacts of modern society on the planetary system go far beyond changing the climate. The rapid modern climate change is part of a larger syndrome of accelerated modern global change and can only be characterized and understood as part of this syndrome.

The planetary system can be viewed as a life-support system for a very large number of fine-tuned subsystems of species interacting with each other within this system and slowly changing it. The concept of a planetary life-support system of systems has been utilized recently in scientific assessments of the interaction of humanity with the planet (e.g., Young & Steffen, 2009; Pearce, 2010) and in communications of the anthropogenic degradation of the system to the public and world leaders (e.g., Wallström et al., 2004; Barnosky et al., 2014).

The concept of the Earth’s life-support system was used by Griggs et al. (2013) to operationalize the principle of sustainable development by defining sustainable development as “a development that meets the needs of the present while safe-guarding the Earth’s life-support system on which the welfare of current and future generations depends.” Communities of human and non-human animals embedded in the planetary system interact with this life-support system through flows of matter and energy (Figure 1.1). In many aspects, the Earth’s life-support system is similar to the organism of an animal, in which many fine-tuned processes generate flows that keep the organism in homeostasis. Like the planetary system, the animal organism provides a life-support system for many other organisms that are crucial for the generation of the flows that maintain homeostasis. Central to the understanding of the physiological functioning of a body system is the integrated nature of chemistry and physics, coordinated homeostatic control mechanisms, and continuous communication between cells (Widmaier et al., 2016). Central to the understanding of the functioning of the Earth’s life-support system is the integrated nature of chemistry and physics and the coordinated functioning of homeostatic control mechanisms provided by the continuous interaction of the “web of life” (Capra, 1996) embedded in, and integral to, the planetary life-support system.

Figure 1.1Earth’s life-support system and humanity. Human and non-human communities embedded in the Earth’s life-support system interact with it through flows of energy and matter. Unlike other animals, the flows between the life-support system and human communities are regulated by ethics, social norms, and the mainstream economic model.

Source: Modified from Plag & Jules-Plag (2017).

Life has impacted the physiology of the planetary system from the start by creating and changing flows. To some extent, life determined many chemical and physical system variables throughout time and impacted climate. The flows manipulated by life kept the system in homeostasis and provided long stable states for life to evolve and occupy large regions of the planetary surface layers. Changes in the flows were slow and allowed species to adapt to equally slow changes in the mean state of the system, as well as most of the fluctuations around the mean.

In the case of human communities, the flows between the Earth’s life-support system and society are regulated not only by human needs but also by ethics, social norms, and economic rules and practices. The modern growth-dependent economy has facilitated growth by increasing most of the flows by several orders of magnitude, and these rapid changes in the planetary physiology have resulted in major changes in the biological, chemical, and physical conditions in the Earth’s life-support system. Among them is modern climate change.

Fever in a homeothermic species is a symptom of a malfunctioning of that system and often part of a syndrome of changes in the organism resulting from disruptions in the physiology of the organism. These disruptions can result, for example, from a breakdown of homeostatic control mechanisms, alterations of flows, or the attack of viruses or bacteria. The effectiveness of an external cure depends upon an accurate diagnosis of the disruption.

Similarly, a rapid increase in the global ocean and air temperature, which is indicating a rapid increase in the energy stored in the coupled atmosphere-ocean system, is a result of a disruption in the planetary physiology. The symptom of global warming indicates that the homeothermic processes in the Earth’s life-support system no longer are functioning to keep the system in homeostasis. Consequently, only by considering the full planetary physiology can the symptoms of global warming and modern climate change be fully understood and traced back to the underlying cause, the “sickness.”

An alien outside observer would not characterize the syndrome as anthropogenic but rather aim to see it as a distortion in the planetary life-support system that could have come from any individual or group of species. Having access to the very large database humans have compiled in the last few centuries, the alien observer would see the obvious: The distorting modern global change is the result of a single species that in a very short time of less than 200 years released a very large pulse of energy into the environment by tapping into energy resources stored in the planetary system over hundreds of millions of years. This species is using this energy pulse to re-engineer the planetary physiology by changing its chemical and physical state and modifying crucial flows by several orders of magnitude. To capture the main aspects of this distortion, the alien might denote it as a “single-species high-energy pulse” syndrome. The species causing the pulse acts as a virus in the Earth’s life-support system, a virus that found the means to change almost all flows to sustain its population growth at an unprecedented rate, invasively occupy all regions of the planet’s surface, and eliminate many other potentially competing species. By doing so, it destabilized the homeostatic mechanisms and initiated a rapid transition of the planetary system towards a new and currently unknown homeostasis.

Scientific evidence pointing to an ecological breakdown has become ubiquitous, and concerned scientists have issued warnings to humanity (Union of Concerned Scientists, 1992; Ripple et al., 2017). Major newspapers, including The Guardian and the New York Times, have picked up the alarming scientific findings concerning soil depletion, deforestation, and the collapse of fish stocks and insect populations. There is a growing consensus that these crises are driven by an economic model focused on unlimited growth of production and consumption, which is fundamentally reorganizing the flows in the Earth’s life-support system.

Modern climate change is extensively documented in scientific literature and assessment reports at national, regional, and intergovernmental levels, and there is little benefit in adding another summary here. However, considering modern climate change as a symptom of the larger single-species high-energy pulse syndrome is a novel contribution. Looking at the Earth’s life-support system from a medical point of view to assess its health, these five questions seem crucial:

•What is the baseline for a healthy planetary life-support system and what are the normal ranges of essential variables of this system?

•What characterizes the syndrome of the single-species high-energy pulse that the system is showing recently?

•What is the diagnosis of the underlying cause of this syndrome?

•What foresight can be developed with respect to the full spectrum of possible futures of the system and what are the likelihoods of these futures to realize?

•Is the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Modern Climate Change: A Symptom of a Single-Species High-Energy Pulse
• 2 Ethical Challenges Posed by Climate Change: An Overview
• 3 Procreation, Carbon Tax, and Poverty: An Act-Consequentialist Climate-Change Agenda
• 4 The Rule-Consequentialist Response to Climate Change
• 5 Kant and Climate Change: A Territorial Rights Approach
• 6 Contractualism and Climate Change
• 7 Contractarianism and Climate Change
• 8 Natural Law Theory and Climate Change
• 9 Virtue Ethics and Climate Change1
• 10 From Caring to Counter-Consumption: Feminist Moral Perspectives on Consumerism and Climate Change
• 11 Pragmatist Ethics and Climate Change
• 12 Phenomenology and the Ethics of Difference: Levinas, Responsibility, and Climate Change
• Index