Ethics and Climate Change

Global warming can be seen as primarily a scientific issue but its very enormity brings into play powerful political, economic, social and ethical dimensions.

Ethics and climate change was the topic of a two-day seminar held earlier this month at the University of Washington. Some of the ideas discussed were:

Basic, universal human rights. The argument was made that there is a duty, on the part of all nations and peoples, to protect core human interests including the right to decent health, economic necessities and physical security. These rights must be safeguarded by all for the benefit of those living and for generations to come. In other words, our policies today, our governments and societies must accommodate these rights for future generations. There are those who strongly contend that future people should not have any rights in today's policy making.

What is truly wrong with climate change. This presentation focused on the five fundamentals: 1. that it imposes unacceptable risks (Schneider and others); 2. that it will cause significant economic losses (Nordhause and others); 3. that it is unjust (Shue and others); 4. that it will have irreversible effects. For those who are most concerned about climate change there is a further, fundamental moral intuition that is at work that raises the salience of this issue. The intuition is roughly that it is simply wrong for humans to causally affect natural systems in such a profound way.

The role and duty of scientists to confront those who abuse or politicize global warming science. How far do scientists’ responsibilities go in ensuring that relevant science is appropriately transmitted and understood by the public and policy makers? Even if scientists are not interested in the political ramifications of their work, do they still have a responsibility to try and ensure that it is not misused? What recourses are available to extract work from the fake ‘scientized’ political debate? Do all scientists have this responsibility, or can the field rely on a few public spokespeople? To what extent are ‘public’ scientists responsible for explaining/defending the field as a whole rather than just their own work?

The four dimensions of failing to deal with global warming:

1 . Failing to deal with climate change constitutes, not failing to help future generations, but inflicting harm on them;
2. Failing to deal with climate change constitutes inflicting harm on generations who could have been spared all such harm;
3. Failing to deal with climate change constitutes not simply continuing to make it worse, but unnecessarily creating opportunities for it to become significantly worse by feeding upon itself through positive feedbacks that
would otherwise not have occurred; and
4. Failing to deal with climate change constitutes not only unnecessarily creating opportunities for the planetary environment to become significantly worse, but also unnecessarily creating opportunities for it to become catastrophically worse.

Like it or not, if we want answers that best suit our societal needs, we're going to have to delve seriously into the philosophical, moral and ethical dimensions of global warming.