let’s have your suggestions.
I assume you will be volunteering to give up all of the following to set an example:
Car
Holidays
Luxury purchases.
Have never driven, not flown since 2005, and my last luxury purchase was a big telly (though I got that for £100).
Unfortunately, it's merely a happy accident that I tick all those boxes as I did these things so that I could retire early and not to reduce my global footprint.
In actual fact, I agree with your point, and would regard myself as too self-centered to make the additional changes in lifestyle that are required, like giving up meat for example.
I also disagree with the tactics deployed by Just Stop Oil. They claim that were it not for these high profile acts of disruption that their message would not be conveyed to the world through the wider media.
I am not so sure. The organisation Led by Donkeys are very good at political campaigning. For example, a lot of us now know about what goes on at Tufton Street thanks to their activities. The humorous touches that embellish that activism also helps to keep the public onside. So maybe Just Stop Oil need to take a leaf out of their books.
Are they also on the right side of history? Unfortunately, I think they may be.
Just before I retired, I spent my last few years in teaching teaching Environmental Ethics as part of an A Level syllabus. To begin with, I wasn't all that enthusiastic as, back then, it was not a topic that inspired me. But - given that A level candidates often get credit in their answering for mentioning the views of philosophers who are not mentioned on the syllabus, as it indicates that they have undertaken wider reading. My tactic was to do that additional reading for them and then pass on what I had found out.
So the first thing I wanted to know was whether there was a 'climate emergency'. This is what I found (though it is a bit out of date and rather long - it's a cut and paste of an old introductory handout):
Is climate change happening?
Yes and it is already underway. Globally, average surface temperatures have increased by 0.7 degrees over the twentieth century. This may not seem much but it is unprecedented. By 2100, an average surface temperature increase of between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees is anticipated. In order to avoid the worst case scenarios and limit that increase in temperature to around 2 degrees, the majority of climate scientists are of the view that estimated cuts in emissions of between 60 and 80% in 1990 levels by 2050. This is why the 2 degrees figure formed the basis for the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Who believes this?
The main research has been undertaken by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
The National Academy of Sciences (which has over 2,000 of America’s best brains on its books, including 200 Nobel Prize winners) has found that the IPCC’s work on climate science was fair and accurate. Its own views on climate change are straightforward: ‘Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.’
Meanwhile in 2003, the American Meteorological Society concluded that there ‘is now clear evidence that the mean annual temperature at the earth’s surface, averaged over the entire globe, has been increasing in the past 200 years…Human activities have become a major source of environmental change.’
In the same year, the American Geophysical Union adopted a statement which claims that scientific evidence strongly indicates both that the climate of the planet is changing, and that human activities are partly responsible for the changes.
The US Climate Change Science Program, which undertakes research on behalf of 13 federal agencies in the US published a report in 2006 which expanded on the science underpinning the findings of the IPCC. The report argues that the observed patterns of climate change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural factors alone – the human production of greenhouse gases is responsible as well.
Scientific opinion outside of the US is behind the IPCC too. In June 2005, just ahead of the G8 summit, the national science academies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, Brazil, China and India signed a statement in support of the findings of the IPCC. The statement claims, ”there is now strong evidence that that significant global warming is occurring…It is likely that most of the warming can be attributed to human activities.’
Following a campaign by the Royal Society in the UK, the national or regional scientific academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Sweden issued a joint statement on the science of Climate Change in 2001. A part of it reads, ‘The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise the IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes.’
In short, there is a lot of agreement among experts all over the world about both the changing climate and our role in it.
Note that there are climate change sceptics, though these are very much in a minority. Perhaps the best known is Bjorn Lomborg. But his issue is actually not with the reality of climate change, but rather with the economic and political approaches being taken (or not taken) to meet the challenges of that climate change. He is a strong advocate for focusing attention and resources on what he perceives as far more pressing world problems, such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition.
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As for 'What can be done about it?', a common argument is that whatever we do will make no difference. So what is the point in even trying?
Well, in the movie
Stardust Memories, Woody Allen meets some aliens and starts asking them all the Big Questions About Life. They tell him, “You’re asking the wrong questions. If you want to make the world a better place, tell funnier jokes!”
Taking that point and applying it to the environment, maybe all we can do is whatever we feel capable of.
As for that aforementioned wider reading, the most pessimistic philosopher I came across was an ex-marine called Roy Scranton. He is no eco-warrior but his prognosis is chilling. This is from his,
We're Doomed. Now What?:
'We all see what's happening, we read it in the headlines every day but seeing isn't believing, and believing isn't accepting. We respond according to our prejudices, acting out of instinct, reflex and training. Right-wing denialists insist that climate change isn't happening, or that it's not caused by humans, or that the real problem is terrorism or refugees, while left-wing denialists insist that the problems are fixable, under our control, merely a matter of political will. Accelerationists argue that more technology is the answer. Incrementalists tell us to keep trusting the same institutions and leaders that have been failing us for decades. Activists say we have to fight, even if we're sure to lose.
Meanwhile, as the gap between the future we're entering and the future we once imagined grows ever wider, nihilism takes root in the shadow of our fear: if all is already lost, nothing matters anyway.
You can feel this nihilism in TV shows like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, and you can see it in the pull to nationalism, sectarianism, war and racial hatred. We saw it in the election of Donald Trump. Nihilism defines our current moment, though in truth it's nothing new. The Western world has been grappling with radical nihilism since at least the seventeenth century, when scientific insights into human behaviour began to undermine religious belief. Philosophers have struggled since then to fill the gap between fact and meaning. Kant tried to reconcile empiricist determinism with God and Reason; Bergson and Peirce worked to merge Darwinian evolution and human creativity; more recent thinkers glean the stripped furrows neuroscience has left to logic and language.
Scientific materialism taken to its extreme, threatens us with meaningless; if consciousness is reducible to the brain and our actions are determined not by will but by causes. then our values and beliefs are merely rationalizations for the things we were going to do anyway...'
If I am reading Scranton correctly, we are all in denial about our impending fate. Perhaps, as capitalists (and I would admit to being one), the insistence that this system can exist in perpetuity without eventually consuming the planet is a collective delusion on our part.
It's something to contemplate.
