Transcript Notes on Alley and Climate Change

STOLZE - PHILOSOPHY 103
Notes on Richard Alley,
Earth: The Operators’
Manual and the
Philosophical
Implications of Climate
Change
Four Basic Questions about Climate Change
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What is the scientific evidence for human-caused climate
change?
What would likely be the result of “business as usual”?
Why should we care?
What should we do individually and collectively?
Working Assumptions
Let’s make the following assumptions about climate change:
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As Richard Alley and the world’s leading climate scientists have
demonstrated, climate change is human-caused and is the result of
releasing excessive greenhouse gas emissions (>350ppm CO2) into
the earth’s atmosphere.
Continuing “business as usual” would threaten the survival of
humanity and other species.
What is required, then, is urgent individual and collective action.
As a result, my focus today will be on the exercise of “practical
wisdom” involved in identifying and assessing reasons that can be
given to act or not to act in response to the moral problem of climate
change.
Planetary Boundaries
According to new scientific research, there exist nine “planetary
boundaries,” which are interlinked Earth-system processes and
biophysical constraints: climate change, rate of biodiversity loss,
interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, stratospheric
ozone depletion, ocean acidification, global freshwater use, change in
land use, chemical pollution, and atmospheric aerosol loading. (*)
Crossing even one of these boundaries would risk triggering abrupt or
irreversible environmental changes that would be very damaging or
even catastrophic for society. Furthermore, if any of these boundaries
were crossed, then there would be a serious risk of crossing the
others.
However, as long as these boundaries are not crossed, “humanity
has the freedom to pursue long-term social and economic
development.”
(*)See Johan Rockström et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” in Nature 461,
September 23, 2009, pp. 472-475.
The Nine Planetary Boundaries
A Working Definition
Let us define a sustainable society as “one that satisfies basic human
needs without exceeding any of the nine planetary boundaries and so
without diminishing the prospects for future generations to satisfy their
basic needs as well.”
The Moral Problem
1.
One should urgently act to halt any grave threat posing serious harm to others.
2.
Crossing any of the nine planetary boundaries would be a grave threat posing
serious
harm to human beings.
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Therefore, humanity should urgently act to avoid crossing these boundaries, or, if
already crossed, to reverse course and resume social and economic
development within them.
4.
Dangerous climate change (>2˚C) will result from crossing one of the nine
planetary boundaries.
5.
But dangerous climate change is caused by releasing excessive greenhouse gas
emissions into the earth’s atmosphere (>350 ppm CO2).
6.
Therefore, humanity should urgently act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into
the earth’s atmosphere to a safe target (<350 ppm CO2).
Two Levels of Action
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Individual
Collective
Individual Actions
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Educate yourself and others
Create music and art to raise awareness
Practice mindful, frugal, and sustainable consumption
Calculate, and try to reduce, your carbon footprint
(www.myfootprint.org)
Reuse and recycle products
Buy local and organic
Reduce meat intake in diet
Walk, bicycle, carpool, or take mass transit
Conserve, use alternative energy sources, and insulate your home
Two Forms of Collective Action
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From above: states and global treaties
From below: social movements pressuring states
State Actions
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End militarism
Immediately halt the construction of all new coal-fired power plants
and begin to phase out the use of coal as an energy source, except
when the CO2 is captured and stored
Stop deforestation and soil-depleting agribusiness
Create incentives for businesses and households to replace
unsustainable technologies and to adopt sustainable technologies
Move beyond the 1997 Kyoto Protocol by adopting stringent and
enforceable targets
Establish a World Environment Organization
Social Movement Actions
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Write letters, make phone calls, or send email to representatives
Vote for environmentally accountable candidates
Join existing or start new organizations and parties
Demand sustainable workplaces
Engage in direct action (e.g., marches, sit-downs, and strikes)
Transform the socio-economic system from one based on limitless growth to one
based on sustainable development (green capitalism vs. ecological socialism)
Reasons for Doing Nothing (1)
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Ignorance of the problem
Skepticism about who caused the problem or how serious it is
Willful ignorance or stupidity (“I’m happy not to know more.”)
Cynicism (“I know very well, but whatever.”)
Apathy (“I don’t care.”)
Nihilism (“Nothing matters, anyway.”)
Reasons for Doing Nothing (2)
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Denial (“I know enough that I don’t want to know more--it’s too
painful”)
Despair (“It’s too late, there’s nothing that can be done.”)
Greed (“I can still make money off this.”)
Someone else will do it for me (Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie…)
God wants humans to dominate nature
God will take care of everything
Reasons for Doing Nothing (3)
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Search for a quick technological fix (“Let’s put giant mirrors in space!”)
Theoretical or practical ineptitude (“It’s too complex; we can’t pull this off.”)
Reject the possibility of a collective solution (“I’ll just fend for myself.”)
The Real Obstacle: Our Brains?
Greg Craven has proposed that the real psychological obstacle is that
human brains have evolved to deal most effectively with threats that
are:
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Intentional and personal
Violate our moral sensibilities
A clear and present danger
Involve quick changes rather than gradual changes
Unfortunately, as Craven notes, “global warming has none of these
properties. It is impersonal, morally neutral, in the future, and gradual,
and we’re just not wired to watch out for stuff like that” (pp. 72-3).
(*) See his new outstanding new book What’s the Worst that Could Happen? A Rational
Response to the Climate Change Debate (NY: Penguin, 2009).
Reasons for Doing Something
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Rational self-interest and risk avoidance
Precautionary principle = if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible
harm to the public or the environment, in the absence of a social consensus that
harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would still advocate
taking the action
Solidarity with the “wretched of the earth”
Concern for future generations
God wants humans to be good stewards of nature
Reverence for life
Three Kinds of Scenario:
Possible Paths that Unsustainable Societies Might
Take (*)
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Barbarization
Conventional Worlds
Great Transitions
(*) Taken from John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009).
Two “Barbarization” Scenarios
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Breakdown = social and environmental collapse
Fortress World = “a planetary apartheid world, gated and maintained
by force, in which the gap between global rich and global poor
constantly widens and the differential access to environmental
resources and amenities increases sharply” (Bellamy Foster, p.260).
Two “Conventional World” Scenarios
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Market Forces = “an unfettered capitalist world order geared to the
accumulation of capital and rapid economic growth without regard to
social or ecological costs” (Bellamy Foster, p. 257).
Policy Reform = “an expansion of the welfare state, now conceived as
an environmental welfare state, to the entire world” (Bellamy Foster,
p. 259).
Two “Great Transition” Scenarios
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New Sustainability = “a radical ecological transformation that goes
against unbridled ‘capitalist hegemony’ but stops short of full social
revolution….to be carried out primarily through changes in values and
lifestyles rather than the transformation of social structures” (Bellamy
Foster, p. 261).
Eco-communalism = “the creation of sustainable communities geared
to the development of human needs and powers, removed from the
all-consuming drive to accumulate wealth (capital)” (Bellamy Foster,
p. 264).
Communal vs. Market Exchange
John Bellamy Foster observes that the new Bolivarian Alternative for
the Americas (ALBA) emphasizes communal exchange = “the
exchange of activities rather than exchange values. Instead of
allowing the market to establish the priorities of the entire economy,
planning is being introduced to redistribute resources and capacities
to those most in need and to the majority of the populace. The goal
here is to address the most pressing individual and collective
requirements of the society related in particular to physiological needs
and hence raising directly the question of the human relation to
nature. This is the absolute precondition of the creation of a
sustainable society” (Bellamy Foster, p. 275).
The Tasks of Political Philosophy
Any adequate political philosophy has three distinct features:
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An account of social injustice
An alternative ideal of social justice
A strategy for transition from unjust to just social orders
An Ecological Political Philosophy
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Actually existing capitalism is ecologically unsustainable.
Feasible alternatives are either a green capitalism or an ecosocialism.
The path from unsustainable capitalism to either a green capitalism or
eco-socialism will involve profound individual and collective efforts:
changes in lifestyles, technological innovation, and political action.
The “Wedge” Approach to Climate Stabilization
The wedge approach is a proposal by Princeton University ecologist Stephen Pacala and
physicist Robert Socolow that climate stabilization “could be achieved if society picked
seven actions, or wedges, each starting from zero in the year 2004 and growing to avoid
emissions of 1 gigaton of carbon per year in 2054. Pacala and Socolow provided fifteen
options, of which any seven would suffice; more or fewer could be used if society’s goals
changed. Four of the wedges involved different efforts to improve energy efficiency, one
shifted much electric generation from coal to natural gas because gas provides almost
twice the energy for the same amount of CO2 released, three wedges used different forms
of capturing and storing CO2, one increased use of nuclear power, three implemented
renewable energy, and two preserved carbon in forests and soils” (pp. 220-221) Each of
these options is already available at an industrial scale. Alley doesn’t claim to know
which of these wedges are the best, or if others should be added. But this wedge
approach to climate stabilization demonstrates that transition to a sustainable society
does not have to occur all at once. With proper political commitment and enforceable
treaties, it could be carried out through a combination of actions over several decades—
but time is running out.
Climate Stabilization Wedges
Unsustainable vs. Sustainable Energy Sources
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Alley characterizes sustainable energy sources as those in which “our
use of the continuously replenished flow now will not reduce the
amount available in the future” and unsustainable energy sources as
those in which “we are extracting energy from a storehouse much
more rapidly than new energy is added.” He observes that “we
harvest sustainable sources and mine unsustainable ones” (p. 224).
Fossil fuels are unsustainable, as are nuclear and most geothermal
energy.
By contrast, the following energy sources are sustainable: sun, wind,
plants and biomass, waves and currents, some geothermal, tides,
hydroelectric, carbon capture and sequestration, and conservation.
Geoengingeering
Geoengineering is the idea of covering up the effects of excessive
atmospheric CO2 on the Earth’s climate by blocking “some sunlight,
cooling Earth just enough to offset the warming from the CO2” (p. 305).
David Keith on Geoengineering and Moral Hazard
Knowledge that
geoengineering
is possible
Climate
impacts look
less fearsome
A weaker
commitment to
cutting
emissions
Alley’s Concluding Points
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This is science, not revealed truth, but the science is solid.
Delaying is not free.
Fossil fuels will run out.
We need alternatives to fossil fuels, and lots of them.
We haven’t been trying very hard.
Betting on the future can pay off.
James Hansen on “Never-Give-Up Fighting Spirit”
“How refreshing, on cold, windy Thanksgiving Plus One Day, which we spend with
our children and grandchildren, when I went outside to shoot baskets with 5-year-old
Connor. Connor is very bright, but needs work on his hand-to-eye coordination. I set
the basket at a convenient height for him, but his first several shots banged off the
backboard off-target. Then he said, very brightly and bravely, “I don’t quit, because I
have never-give-up fighting spirit.” It seems his karate lessons are paying off.
Some adults need Connor’s help….
The most foolish no-fighting-spirit statement, made by scores of people, is this: “we
have already passed the tipping point, it is too late.” They act as if a commitment to
a meter of sea level rise is no different than a commitment to several tens of meters.
Or, if a million species become committed to extinction, should we throw in the towel
on the other nine million? What would the plan be then – escape to Mars? As I make
clear in “Storms of My Grandchildren”, anybody who thinks we can transplant even
one butterfly species to another planet has some loose screws. We must take care
of the planet we have – easily the most remarkable one in the known universe….
Are we going to stand up and give global politicians a hard slap in the face, to make
them face the truth? It will take a lot of us – probably in the streets. Or are we going
to let them continue to kid themselves and us, and cheat our children and
grandchildren?
Intergenerational inequity is a moral issue. Just as when Abraham Lincoln faced
slavery and when Winston Churchill faced Nazism, the time for compromises and
half-measures is over.
Can we find a leader who understands the core issue, and will lead?”
(Excerpted from <http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20091130_FightingSpirit.pdf>.)