Transcript Climate Change, Morality, and Collective Action

CLIMATE CHANGE, MORALITY, AND
COLLECTIVE ACTION
A Cerritos College Philosophy Student Conference
(10/18/2016)
By Ted Stolze
Philosophy Department
W.S.Merwin, "Convenience"
We were not made in its image
but from the beginning we believed in it
not for the pure appeasement of hunger
but for its availability
it could command our devotion
beyond question and without our consent
and by whatever name we have called it
in its name love has been set aside
unmeasured time has been devoted to it
forests have been erased and rivers poisoned
and truth has been relegated for it
wars have been sanctified by it
we believe that we have a right to it
even though it belongs to no one
we carry a way back to it everywhere
we are sure that it is saving something
we consider it our personal savior
all we have to pay for it is ourselves
(From The Moon Before Morning [Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2014], p. 93)
A Thought Experiment
Let's imagine an alien invasion of planet Earth:
"Here the aliens are, swarming Earth, infiltrating everything. They set about to sicken
children with asthma, poison the ground water, stir the storms into devastating forces,
pour oil over the shrimp beds. They inject poisonous wastes into caves until the Earth
trembles. Summoning hurricanes, they drown old ladies in their attics. They pump acid
into the oceans. They blast cropland into deserts. They inundate coastal cities. They kill off
half the plants and animals on the planet."
What would we think? What would we do? How should we resist?
(Kathleen Dean Moore, Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Courage in a Time of
Planetary Change [Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2016], p. 55; see also Derrick Jensen,
Deep Green Resistance, pp. 14-15).
The Human Role in Climate Change
An excellent short video that summarizes the scientific evidence for
human-caused climate change and forecasts the dangerous outcome of
“business as usual” was produced by the Rock Ethics Institute at
Pennsylvania State University (http://youtu.be/7_aHyhVRYks). In the
rest of this presentation I shall assume that such evidence and forecast
are not in serious scientific dispute.
Summer Heat
• August became the planet's 16th straight warmest month on record;
• August tied with July for the warmest month in the last 136 years of record
keeping;
• This was the hottest summer in recorded history;
• The earth is already warmer than it has been in roughly 120,000 years and is
locked into a path in which it will hit temperatures not seen for 2 million years.
• Dr. James Hansen, recently retired from NASA, has collaborated with other
leading climate scientists to produce a new, more accurate, graph (reproduced
on the next slide) that shows global surface temperature has risen 1.06°C
since the preindustrial period.
(http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37833-scientists-sound-alarm-on-climatebut-us-still-toys-with-skepticism);
(https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201607)
(http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2016/20161004_BurdenCommunicatio
n.pdf)
What Must Be Done to Avoid “Cooking the
Planet”?
In a compelling new article (“Recalculating the Climate Math”) the leading climate
activist Bill McKibben has summarized the findings of a report by the Washingtonbased think tank Oil Change International (OCI), using data it obtained from the
Norwegian energy consultants Rystad, "most of whose customers are oil companies,
investment banks, and government agencies. Here is McKibben’s warning:
"If we’re serious about preventing catastrophic warming ... we can’t dig any
new coal mines, drill any new fields, build any more pipelines. Not a single
one. We’re done expanding the fossil fuel frontier. Our only hope is a swift,
managed decline in the production of all carbon-based energy from the fields
we’ve already put in production.“
McKibben emphasizes the OCI’s judgment that this “managed decline” in the fossil
fuel industry must begin immediately and occur over the next 17 years.
(https://newrepublic.com/article/136987/recalculating-climate-math)
(http://priceofoil.org/2016/09/22/the-skys-limit-report/)
Why Should We Care? Climate Change as a
Moral Problem
The ecological philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore has argued (in Great
Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Courage in a Time of Planetary
Change [Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2016], pp. 23-29] that there are
"thirteen good reasons to save the world," which can be grouped into
three categories:
The consequences of acting or failing to act;
The moral duties we have to act;
The human virtues from which action arises.
The Consequences of Acting or Failing to Act
• We must act for the sake of human life and flourishing.
• We must act for the sake of the children.
• We must act for the mutual flourishing of all life.
• We must act for the sake of the Earth.
The Moral Duties to Act
• We must honor our duties as stewards of divine creation.
• We must honor our duties to protect human rights.
• We must honor our duties to act justly.
• We must honor our duties toward future generations.
• We must honor our duties of gratitude and reciprocity.
The Human Virtues from which Action Arises
• We must act because we are compassionate.
• We must act because we love the world.
• We must act because we feel the beauty of the world.
• We must act because we are people of integrity.
So Why Don't We Act NOW?
"Climate change is hard to think about not only because it’s complex and politically contentious,
not only because ... it’s mind-bendingly difficult to connect the dots. Climate change is hard to
think about because it’s depressing and scary.
Thinking seriously about climate change forces us to face the fact that nobody’s driving the car,
nobody’s in charge, nobody knows how to 'fix it.' And even if we had a driver, there’s a bigger
problem: no car. There’s no mechanism for uniting the entire human species to move together in
one direction.
There are more than seven billion humans, and we divide into almost 200 countries, thousands
of smaller sub-national states, territories, counties and municipalities, and an unimaginable
multitude of corporations, community organizations, neighborhoods, religious sects, ethnic
identities, clans, tribes, gangs, clubs and families, each of which faces its own disunion and
strife, all the way down to the individual human soul in conflict with itself, torn between fear and
desire, hard sacrifice and easy cruelty, all of us improvising day by day, moment to moment,
making decisions based on best guesses, hunches, comforting illusions and too little data."
Roy Scranton, "When the Next Hurricane Hits Texas," The New York Times, October 7, 2016
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opinion/sunday/when-the-hurricane-hitstexas.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share)
Some Difficulties for Collective Action
Too many individuals
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may not know basic facts about the problem; or
may not want to know basic facts about the problem; or
may not know what to do about the problem; or
may not want to know what to do about the problem; or
may not intend to do anything about the problem; or
may not resolve to act with others to solve the problem; or
may fail to act with resolve with others to solve the problem.
Climate Action (1)
Climate justice activists should reflect on how best to address the seven
difficulties for collective action regarding the problem of climate change:
• If individuals do not know the basic facts about climate change, then a
response is to demand better science education and to disseminate
such information effectively through corporate or alternative media.
• If individuals do not want to know basic facts about climate change,
then a response is to persuade others that social transformation is
necessary and future delay will only make matters worse.
Climate Action (2)
• If individuals do not know what to do about climate change, then a
response is to offer tactics and strategies that are appealing.
• If individuals do not want to know what to do about climate change,
then a response is to emphasize what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
called the “fierce urgency of now.”
Climate Action (3)
• If individuals do not intend to do anything about the problem, then a
response is to point out that failure, or refusal, to act, is by default still
a form of action – but in bad faith. The only way out of bad faith is to
undergo what Simone de Beauvoir once called a radical “conversion.”
• If individuals do not resolve to act with others to solve the problem of
climate change, then a response is to construct means by which
individuals can break out from such an “I-mode” and adopt instead a
“we-mode” that embodies genuinely shared intentions, resolutions,
and commitments. Without such a shift in perspective, collective action
regarding climate change is not possible.
Climate Action (4)
• If individuals fail to act with resolve with others to solve the problem,
then we see a political manifestation of what philosophers have
traditionally called “weakness of the will” but more simply could be
termed ethical weakness (or backsliding). The solution to this problem
of ethical weakness lies in fostering what the classical scholar Melissa
Lane has called an understanding of ourselves "as co-producers of our
characters and culture.”
• According to Lane, “we produce sustainability through the terms in
which we interact, wherever we interact, or we produce its opposite.
As eco-producers, we understand ourselves to be non-negligible, and
to be responsible, in producing and reproducing the conditions for our
own sustainable individual and social health” (Eco-Republic: What the
Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living
[Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012], p. 126).
We
“More and more, the key figure is We. And if we ask who is We or, if we
want to be a bit more grammatical, who are We, then we come quickly
to the idea that We are a Question. We don’t actually know very well. It’s
not a predefined question, it’s an open We, it’s a We that invites, that
provokes. It’s a We that asks: Who are We?” (John Holloway, In,
Against, and Beyond Capitalism [Oakland: PM Press, 2016], p. 3)
A Case Study: The Dakota Access Oil Pipeline (DAPL)
Thousands of indigenous people from nearly 100 tribes and their
supporters have come to North Dakota to set up a camp and some have
committed civil disobedience in order to oppose construction of the
1,172-mile Dakota Access oil pipeline, which would run within a halfmile of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and cross beneath the
Missouri River. If completed, the pipeline would cost $3.8 billion and
carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota’s
Bakken oilfield to Illinois.
Supporters say it would enable crude oil from North Dakota to reach
major refineries while reducing more dangerous rail and truck transport.
Opponents say the pipeline will adversely impact drinking water and
disturb sacred tribal sites. Climate activist Bill McKibben has argued
that such new projects must be halted – NOW.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/standing-rock-pipeline-fightdraws-hundreds-north-dakota-plains-n665956?cid=eml_onsite
Filmmaker Josh Fox on the Importance of
Standing Rock
• http://www.onenewspage.com/video/20161123/6120695/Fi
lmmaker-Josh-Fox-On-The-Importance-Of-Going.htm
Veterans on the Way to Standing Rock
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSCBaA71SaU#action
=share
DAPL (1)
DAPL (2)
A New Map of the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline
Civil Disobedience
On September 3, 2016, activists were attacked by dogs and were
pepper sprayed as they protested against the pipeline’s construction.
The violence was videotaped and broadcast by the national news
program Democracy Now! (https://youtu.be/kuZcx2zEo4k).
A Moral Argument for Civil Disobedience
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In the absence of adequate legal or political remedies to a socially unjust
situation, it is morally permissible to commit civil disobedience in defense
of basic human needs and the survival of complex human societies.
Access to clean drinking water is a basic human need.
Keeping the Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2°C is essential
for the survival of complex human societies.
The construction of DAPL would endanger access to clean drinking
water by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and contribute to increasing the
Earth’s temperature above 2°C.
At present there exist no adequate legal or political remedies to this
socially unjust situation.
Therefore, it is morally permissible for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
and their allies to engage in acts of civil disobedience to halt construction
of DAPL.
Intimidation of Journalists
• On October 14th a North Dakota state prosecutor charged Amy Goodman, the award-
winning host of Democracy Now!, with participating in a “riot.” Fortunately, on October
17th District Judge John Grinsteiner did not find probable cause to justify the charge.
• However, documentary filmmaker and journalist Deia Schlosberg was arrested in
Walhalla, North Dakota on October 11th for filming activists who shut down a tar sands
pipeline as part of a nationwide solidarity action organized on behalf of those battling
DAPL. The filmmaker was held without access to a lawyer for 48 hours, her footage was
confiscated by the police, and then she was charged last Friday with three felonies that
carry a total of 45 years in maximum prison sentences.
• See the news story (https://www.thenation.com/article/the-arrest-of-journalists-and-
filmmakers-covering-the-dakota-pipeline-is-a-threat-to-democracy-and-the-planet/) and
consider signing a petition to demand that charges against Deia be dropped
(http://www.howtoletgomovie.com/).
• Finally, consider making a contribution to the Standing Rock Sioux's Pipeline
Fund (http://standingrock.org).
Conclusion: The Great Derangement
The Bengali novelist Amitav Ghosh has eloquently observed in his new
book that "the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the
imagination" (The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the
Unthinkable [Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2016], p. 9).
Indeed, Ghosh proposes, we are living at a time "when most forms of art
and literature [are] drawn into the modes of concealment that [prevent]
people from recognizing the realities of their plight ... Quite possibly,
then, this era, which so congratulates itself on its self-awareness, will
come to be known as the time of the Great Derangement" (p. 11).
A Final Challenge
How then can we awaken from the Great Derangement and reimagine
the world and our human place within it? Not only must we act
courageously and mindfully, but we must also think of other ways of
living sustainably with other species on this planet.
This is the task imposed on philosophers, writers, artists -- and all of us
here today!
W.S. Merwin, "The Present"
As they were leaving the garden
one of the angels bent down to them and whispered
I am to give you this
as you are leaving the garden
I do not know what it is
or what it is for
what you will do with it
you will not be able to keep it
but you will not be able
to keep anything
yet they both reached at once
for the present
and when their hands met
they laughed
(From Garden Time [Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2016], p. 69).