To ensure that you are able to to keep up with Don's work, visit Ethics and Climate and subscribe to the RSS feed or to the e-mail list.

Don was one of several people at the Rock Ethics Institute working in the area of ethics and climate change. This is one major focus of the instute's teaching, research, and outreach, and we have every intention of continuing the discussion on Climate Ethics.

The following entry by guest blogger, Dr. Kenneth Shockley, Associate Professor, University of Buffalo, makes a strong case that the nature of the harm caused by the disinformation campaign calls for collective moral outrage.

Those who deny the reality, importance, or magnitude of climate change warrant our collective outrage. Whether by action or inaction, their denial blinds us to the risks, vulnerabilities, and threats to our well-being posed by climate change. Insofar as claims of ignorance are becoming increasingly implausible, those who support or propagate the disinformation campaign about climate change are guilty of more than deception. They are guilty of exacerbating risks to our collective well-being and of undermining society.

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the current misinformation campaign waged against climate science. I will, therefore, take it on assumption for our purposes here that both (1) there is overwhelming evidence that climate change is taking place and (2) there is a concerted effort, through activity or negligence, to convince the public that there is no need for action. I take (2) to constitute the essence of what I will call the disinformation campaign about climate change. I take (1) to provide the focus of such a campaign, a campaign focused on convincing any and all that the science of climate change is not worth taking seriously or that the consequences of climate change are too uncertain to justify action.

What I am interested in is the nature of the harm associated with the disinformation campaign. The disinformation campaign is more than a coordinated effort at misrepresenting the science, it is a violation of body politic. Our collective well-being is being undermined, and this should provoke moral outrage, both domestically in the US and UK where it seems to have its home, and internationally where some of its more egregious and immediate consequences are felt. Just as the sense of moral outrage is the proper result to violations of one's individual person, we owe collective moral outrage to violations of our collective body politic. The harm associated with the disinformation campaign goes beyond a simple matter of dishonesty (which it is). Insofar as the disinformation campaign blocks efforts to address climate change that campaign is complicit in increasing the risk of being subject to the more calamitous consequences of a changing climate.

The recent IPCC SREX report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters To Advance Climate Adaptation, (IPCC, 2012), paints a vivid picture of the risks and vulnerabilities presented by climate change, both now, and in the future. Similar warnings have been expressed in the United States National Academy of Science's recent report America's Climate Choices (US Academy, 2011) and in a wide range of other sources. What should we say about those who in the face of overwhelming evidence that we are at risk of significant harms encourage us not to act in the face of those risks? What would we say of those who convince us that an impending flood is not real, and hamper our efforts to prepare for, or minimize the effects of that flood?

This question should frame the way we think about the current effort to deny the clear and overwhelming scientific consensus that we are facing a changing climate, with the risks and concerns noted by those best able to assess them. After all, these vulnerabilities pose a risk to our well-being; they have great moral significance.
In blocking efforts to address, respond to or adapt to climate change, the disinformation campaign exacerbates our vulnerabilities to a changing climate; given the scale and magnitude of the problems we face, exacerbating vulnerabilities to climate change puts social stability at risk. This risk constitutes a threat to our well-being, and the well-being of our children; to increase this risk is to incur blame.

As the actions of the disinformation campaign put society at risk, those in support of this campaign, knowingly or out of culpable ignorance, similarly deserve our ire. Efforts to ignore this risk should provoke our individual and collective moral outrage. Political officials who endorse, accept, or adopt this campaign and its goals are in violation of the public trust; such officials are acting contrary to the public good with which they are entrusted. Those who illicitly attempt to influence the political process by means of this campaign of misrepresentation are complicit in this violation.

By misrepresenting the science of climate change, the disinformation campaign is complicit in putting social stability at risk, with the attendant moral consequences; they are complicit in increasing the probability and extent of widespread human misery. Those who are engaged in this campaign are guilty of violating the sacred trust of their office, guilty of culpable ignorance (for surely we trust those who make political decisions to use the resources of their office to find the best available data for that decision; simply failing to recognize the nature of the science is culpable when the well-being of the society they represent is at stake), or corruption (for passing off as public reason, reasons based self-serving motivations that run contrary to the long term well-being of our society is surely an inappropriate influence on the body politic, a corrupting influence of the most vile sort). Violation of public trust, culpable ignorance, or simple corruption. I see no other options. The point now is to move forward.

We must bring to light the corrupting influences. We must compel the media to make clear that there is only as much debate about the science behind climate change as there is debate about the science behind the existence of the dinosaurs (for while in both cases we may doubt the details, there is little doubt about the overall picture). We must compel our political agents to make clear, in the starkest moral terms, why they are making, or failing to make, the decisions they make. This should motivate a movement at least as ferocious as the Occupy Wallstreet movement. The Occupy Wallstreet movement was focused on the very real and morally potent concern that our economy is shifting us toward a society not in line with the basic moral principles on which our nation was founded and on which our hopes and expectations are based. To some extent that economy is reversible. The concern that motivates moral outrage at inaction and obstruction regarding climate change should be focused on the very conditions that make possible a stable society for us, and for our children. Our influence on these background conditions is not so reversible, at least on time scales that matter to our children. For the sake of our children, and for the sake of our own moral decency, this disinformation campaign should inspire moral outrage.

References:

IPCC, 2012, Special Report on managing Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Mitigation, available at ; http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-SPM_FINAL.pdf/

US Academy of Science, 2011, America's Climate Choices, National Academies Press, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12781.

By:
Kenneth Shockley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor,
111 Park Hall
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260

This conference was particularly notable because both Chinese and non-Chinese participants appeared to agree that climate change must be understood to be essentially an ethical matter that can only be solved through reliance on some common global values. To this writer's knowledge, this was the first conference in China that expressly explored the ethical views of Chinese and Western ethicists about climate change.

The papers presented at the conference included the following:

A. Climate Change Ethics And Philosophy

1. The Practical Significance of Understanding Climate Change As An Ethical Problem (Donald A. Brown, Penn State University)
2. The Border Between Climate Change And Libertarianism (Jun Chen, Hubei University)
3. Thoughts On Climate Change And The Conflict Of National Interest (Gang Guo, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
4. Review On The Climate Change Ethics (Jun Shi, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
5. Philosophical Review On Climate Change (Fan Chen & Guozhang Liu, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
6. Analysis On The Root Of Climate Crisis Through Biological Marxism (Feng Xu, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
7. Possibilities Of Global Cooperation On Climate-the Dilemma Of Nation-State Theory And World Theory (Fangxing Ye, Hehai University)
8. Climate Justice And Climate Ethics (Rongnan Zhang, Department of Philosophy-East China Normal University)
9. Climate Change: Ethical Dimension On Sustainable Development (Siwei Dai, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)

B. Section Two: Climate Change Policy And Law

1. Discussion, Debate, And Democratic Negotiation: The Choice Of Tools In Global Climate Change Policy Making (Xiangrong Su, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
2. Adaptation To Climate Change Impacts: Challenges To China's Environmental Law And Changing Directions (Xiangbai He, Law School-Western Sydney University)
3. Response And Choice To The Climate Legislation And Regulation Under Multiple Pursuits Of Benefits (Xiaodan Song & Zhangjun Pang, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
4. Research On Regulation Of Atmospheric Property Under Climate Change (Shibin Wu, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
5. Study On The Legislation Of Human-impact Climate Change (Zhi Qiao, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
6. The Inspiration of "Others Theory" Of Ethics On Contemporary Public Policy (Xi Wang, China mMeteorology Bureau)
7. A Brief Analysis On The Cooperation On Climate Study Across Taiwan Straits In The Last 60 Years (Suhua Yong & Xiangping Liu, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
8. Research On The NGOs' Influence In Coping With Climate Change (Meili Tang, Huijuan Shi, & Fengjiang Cheng, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)

Section Three: Economic And Social Management In Climate Change

1. Climate Change And Ecocities In China: Challenges And Opportunities To Building A Sustainable And Equitable Society (Erich W.Schienke)
2. Efficiency And Reduction In China: Carbon Tax Or Sectoral Cap And Trade? (Rongxiang Cao, Central Bureau of Translation)
3. Energy Saving In China: Tax, Control On Total Amount In Each Department, Or Trade? (Rongxiang Cao, Central Bureau of Translation)
4. Democratic Governance: Probe On The Democratic Mode In Coping With Climate Change (Zhijiang Li, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
5. Change Of The "Leadership" Of Global Environmental Control: Case Study In Canada (Laihui Xie, Central Bureau of Translation)
6. Path Selection Of China's Ecological Regulation Construction Through Ecological Civilization (Fen Sun & Jie Cao, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
7. Climate Change, Eco-system, And A Sustainable Developing Society (Zhangguo Liu, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
8. Research On The Factors That Drive Low Carbonization On China's Traditional Manufacturing (Decai Tang & Changshun Li, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
9. Discussion On The Practical necessity And Basic Ideas On China's Ecological Regulation (Fen Sun & Jie Cao, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
10. Analysis Of The Influence Of REDD On Slowing Down China's Climate Change Process (Jichuan Sheng, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)

For further information about this conference, contact Donald A Brown, Penn State University, dab57@psu.edu

By

Donald A. Brown,
Associate Professor, Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law
Penn State University
dab57@psu.edu

ClimateEthics begins with this entry using YouTube technology to explain the ethical dimensions of cliamte change. The following is our first attempt to do this. This video explains why it is practically important to understand climate change policy issues as ethical questions. We hope to improve our ability to do this in the future. This entry is 16 minutes long. It argues that it is practically important to turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change.

Donald A. Brown
Associate Professor, Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law
Penn State University
dab57@psu.edu

If climate change is understood as essentially an ethical problem, several practical consequences for policy formation follow. Yet it would appear there is widespread failure of those engaged in climate change policy controversies to understand the enormous practical significance for policy formation of the acknowledgement that climate change is a moral issue.

Given the growing urgency of the need to rapidly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and the hard-to-imagine magnitude of global emissions reductions needed to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at reasonably safe levels, the failure of many engaged in climate change controversies to see the practical significance of understanding climate change as an ethical problem must be seen as a huge human tragedy.

The evidence for this widespread failure to understand the practical significance of seeing climate change as a moral issue includes the almost universal failure of the press or advocates of climate change policies to ask those governments, businesses, organizations, or individuals who oppose national climate change policies on the grounds of national economic cost alone whether they deny that in addition to national economic interest nations must comply with their obligations, duties, and responsibilities to prevent harm to millions of poor, vulnerable people around the world. In the United States and other high-emitting nations there is hardly a peep or a whisper about the practical consequences of seeing climate change as a world-challenging ethical problem.

Without doubt, there are several reasons why climate change must be understood essentially as a civilization challenging ethical problem. Many have asserted that climate change is an ethical problem, but few appear to understand what practical difference it makes if climate change is seen as an ethical problem.

Why is climate change fundamentally an ethical problem?

First, climate change creates duties, responsibilities, and obligations because those most responsible for causing this problem are the richer developed countries or rich people in developed and developing countries, yet those who are most vulnerable to the problem's harshest impacts are some of the world's poorest people around the world. That is, climate change is an ethical problem because its biggest victims are people who have done little to cause the immense threat to them. .

Second, climate-change impacts are potentially catastrophic for many of the poorest people around the world if not the entire world. Climate change harms include deaths from disease, droughts, floods, heat, and intense storms, damages to homes and villages from rising oceans, adverse impacts on agriculture, diminishing natural resources, the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food, and the destruction of water supplies. In fact, climate change threatens the very existence of some small island nations. Clearly these impacts are potentially catastrophic. Yet there is growing evidence that greenhouse gas levels and resulting warming may be approaching thresholds that could lead to losing control over rising emissions.

Third, climate change must be understood to be an ethical problem because of its global scope. If other problems are created at the local, regional or national scale, citizens can petition their governments to protect them from serious harms. But at the global level, no government exists whose jurisdiction matches the scale of the problem. And so, although national, regional and local governments have the ability and responsibility to protect citizens within their boarders, they have no responsibility to foreigners in the absence of international law. For this reason, ethical appeals are necessary to motivate governments to take steps to prevent their citizens from seriously harming foreigners.

Although many have acknowledged that climate change must be understood as an ethical problem, the practical significance for policy formation that follows from this recognition appears to be widely not understood. The following are ten practical consequences, among many others, for policy formation that flow from the acknowledgement that climate change is an ethical problem. Although there are some climate change ethical issues about which reasonable ethical principles would reach different conclusions about what ethics requires, the following are conclusions about which there is a strong overlapping consensus among ethical theories. The ethical basis for these claims have been more rigorously worked out in prior articles and are not repeated here to reduce complexity.

II. Ten Practical Consequences of Acknowledgement Climate Change Is An Ethical Problem.

If climate change is an ethical problem, then:

1. Nations or sub-national governments may not look to their domestic economic interests alone to justify their response to climate change because they must also comply with their duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others to prevent climate-change caused harms.

2. All nations, sub-national governments, businesses, organizations, and individual must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. Although different theories of distributive justice would reach different conclusions about what "fairness" requires quantitatively, most of the positions taken by opponents of climate change policies fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny given the huge differences in emissions levels between high and low emitting nations and the enormity of global emissions reductions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. Any test of "fairness" must look to principles of distributive or retributive justice and must be supported by moral reasoning.

3. No nation may refuse to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions on the basis that some other nations are not reducing their emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. All nations must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions without regard to what other nations do.

4. No national policy on climate change is ethically acceptable unless it, in combination with fair levels of greenhouse gas emissions from other countries, leads to stabilizing greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations at levels that prevent harm to those around the world who are most vulnerable to climate change. This is so because any national position on climate change is implicitly a position on adequate global atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration stabilization level and all nations have a duty to prevent atmospheric greenhouse concentrations from exceeding levels that are harmful to others.

5. Because it has been scientifically well established that there is a great risk of catastrophic harm from human-induced change (even though it is acknowledged that there are remaining uncertainties about timing and magnitude of climate change impacts), no high-emitting nation, sub-national government, organization, business, or individual of greenhouse gases may use some remaining scientific uncertainty about climate change impacts as an excuse for not reducing its emissions to its fair share of safe global greenhouse gas emission on the basis of scientific uncertainty. The duty to prevent great harm to others begins once a person is on notice that they are potentially causing great harm, not when the harm is absolutely proven.

6. Those nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals that are emitting greenhouse gases above their fair share of safe global emissions have obligations, duties, and responsibilities for the costs of adaptation or damages to those who are harmed are will be harmed by climate change.

7. Given the magnitude of potential harms from climate change, those who make skeptical arguments against the mainstream scientific view on climate change have a duty to submit skeptical arguments to peer-review, acknowledge what is not in dispute about climate change science and not only focus on what is unknown, refrain from making specious claims about mainstream science of climate change such as the entire scientific basis for climate change has been completely debunked, and assume the burden of proof to show that emissions of greenhouse gases are benign.

8. Those nations or entities that have historically far exceeded their fair of safe global emissions have some responsibility for their historic emissions. Although the date at which responsibility for historic emissions is triggered is a matter about which different ethical theories may disagree, at the very latest nations have responsibility for their historical emissions on the date that they were on notice that excess greenhouse gas emissions were dangerous for others, not on the date that danger was proven.

9. In determining what is any nation's fair share of safe global emissions, the nation must either assume that all humans have an equal right to use the atmosphere as a sink for greenhouse gases, or identify another allocation formula based upon morally relevant criteria. All nations have an ethical duty to explain why any deviation from per capita greenhouse gas emissions is ethically justified.

10. Some economic tools frequently used to evaluate public policy on climate change such as cost-benefit analysis that don't acknowledge responsibility for allocating the burdens for reducing the threat of climate change on the basis of distributive justice are ethically problematic.

By:

Donald A. Brown,
Associate Professor,
Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law
Penn State University
dab57@psu.edu

This post by guest blogger Dr. Michael W. Schröter discusses recent energy policy developments in Germany that have potentially profound ethical significance. The ethical significance can be attributed to two aspects of recent German energy policy discussed in this post. First, not only has the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power plants, it has passed laws that seek to assure that Germany will meet future energy demand by expanded reliance on renewable energy. In doing this, Germany is committing to assure that future energy consumption needs will be met by the most ethically benign methods of energy production, namely renewable energy. Secondly, the German energy policy is being understood as enhancing the ability of German citizens to control their own energy destinies through their ability to become less reliant on large electrical grid systems. In other words, energy policy can enhance democratic control of energy policy and by doing this enable citizens to choose a more sustainable future.

Editor

Currently Germany is close to achieving some societal consensus about several issues that have been polarizing political and civil groups for over forty years: energy policy.
Massive protests about nuclear power plants in the early 1970s led to the establishment of a new political party--the Greens (Grüne Partei) in 1980. Since the mid 1980s the German political debate focused more and more on questions of climate change.

Increasingly energy questions have become the focus of public attention and recently energy has become the top political issue in Germany. The conservative party of chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), forming a coalition with the liberal party (FDP), completely changed her party's position in just three months because their former more conservative positions on energy that had formerly been the basis for energy policy were no longer supported by the majority of the Germans. The recent Fukushima nuclear power disaster was, as Germans say, just the final drop which brought the tap to overflowing.

Energy policy allowed the social-democratic party of Germany (SPD) in coalition with the Greens to win a federal election in 1998, already, with the promise to end the use of nuclear power in Germany--twelve years after Chernobyl. So there has been a tradition of energy policy being an influence on the results of federal elections in Germany for some time. Now, however, the focus of political struggle is to find ways of transforming the energy supply completely from nuclear and fossil to renewable sources.

How do we explain this intense focus on energy issues and why have questions like the preservation of biodiversity not warranted the same public attention although they are, at least, as important?

Our whole way of life depends on energy. For this reason, we have adopted a life-style which consumes fossil resources (or, better, natural CO2-storages) rapidly while producing waste which will be there for many future generations and threatening the face of earth--including us--as we know it. Yet, although it is still, unfortunately, too early to say uncontroversially that we have a political consensus that Germany's energy future will be completely comprised of renewable energy, it is even more controversial to say how we must achieve an exclusively renewable energy future.

But it is also clear that if we would be able to find a sustainable answer to the energy challenge this would give us real hope that we will be able to find solutions to other threats of the ecological crisis like the ongoing loss of biodiversity. Energy policy therefore appears to be the best candidate for seriously tackling most issues on the road to sustainable societies.

So far, mainly two approaches to an energy future in Germany can be identified. The first is to stick to traditional ways of producing energy and add technical options to diminish the risks. These include carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies for coal plants, the construction of more nuclear power plants that are being promoted as being climate neutral and various geo-engineering solutions to climate change.

The other approach is finding completely renewable energy sources coupled with energy storage options to solve the intermittency problem of some renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The discussion of this second approach has become more than a sober technical debate among experts in Germany because people now understand that these choices will affect the way of life of every individual. This political discussion is beginning to be understood as more than just a technical question but a question of democracy in Germany because a renewable energy approach will affect the power of people to control their own destinies in ways that the pursuit of former larger energy technologies did not do. And so the debate about energy policy is becoming a debate around the culture and structure of political problem-solving in Western democracies.

Energy suppliers are mostly big companies with good connections to politicians. They do have the power to influence a public debate just by saying what kinds of options are realistic and which are not. The challenge is to find a democratic modus in which every citizen can actually choose what kind of energy supply structure he or she wants to be, a development that would allow citizens have a role in their energy future and no longer limit them to the mostly passive part citizens have played in energy policy. A renewable energy future allows citizens to become producers themselves. In some villages in Denmark and Germany, people have started projects to achieve exactly this: to become their own producers of energy just out of renewable sources. The future of energy policy in Germany will tell us if we can expect "normal" citizen to follow the ethical example of idealistic energy pioneers that are growing in numbers.

The democratic challenge of the energy debate therefore is to grant everyone the possibility of a fair choice; in some ways this can be considered as an ethical obligation that politics should embrace.

The German government tackled this challenge already 1990 with a legal framework guaranteeing everyone installing a renewable energy source a special amount of money for a fixed period of time. According to law, the big energy companies are obliged to inject this energy into their power grid. This partly adjusts the economical imbalance between big companies and citizens and gives the latter a fair choice to become a producer themselves, if he or she wants more renewable energy to be there. Surprisingly people installed nearly double of the amount than was expected. Energy policy was no longer a question of theoretical debates but practical action. Thereby it opened a new field of economical activity in the society which by now has become an important pillar of the German system. Therefore it does not surprise that the law declaring an end to the use of nuclear power by the year of 2022 in Germany is accompanied by another law that has established goals for the increase of renewable power: from now around 15% up to, at least, 35% by 2020 and 80-95% by 2050.

The experience in Germany shows another effect. By installing renewable power other environmental political issues are arising. Strangely we now see in Germany those who once argued for more renewable energy are founding action groups against some renewable projects and making claims such as that there are too many windmills, expressing concerns about windmills kill birds or are spoiling the landscape. These controversies are now much more frequent than former issues about the threat of a nuclear accident or the of the enormous carbon emissions of coal plants. Thus a growing culture of renewable energy is creating, as always, new political issues. But these problems are encouraging debates about not only how people will supply energy but new issues about how technology fits into nature. This can be considered an essential step on the road to sustainable societies. Another important issue that is arising is concerned with potential problems with renewable transportation fuels among other challenging transportation issues.

In summary, the move towards sustainable energy in Germany that is well under way is creating new political issues about how a democratic society can achieve a greater control over its energy options as well as new questions about integrating human needs with ecological protection. One can see these developments as positive steps that are inevitable on the road to a sustainable future.

Dr.Michael W. Schröter (Berlin, GER)

The statement has been prepared in recognition of the fact that our nation has a moral obligation to address climate change in light of the fact that: (1) Climate change is a real, dangerous, and rapidly worsening problem with deep moral implications; (2) Yet U.S. has done little to reduce its contribution to the crises.

The statement asserts that the US has a duty to to prevent unjustifiable suffering and death among current and future generations in the U.S. and abroad. Furthermore, this obligation requires that the US acts significantly and rapidly to reduce our carbon pollution.

The "Statement of Our Nation's Moral Obligation to Address Climate Change" seeks to definitively make those points to elected officials, business, community, and civic leaders, and the public nationwide.

The committee is now looking for signatures.

If you want to know more about this effort or if you are willing to add your name go to

climateethicscampaign.org

II. Statement

We, the undersigned current and former elected officials and representatives from the business, labor, youth, national security, financial, conservation, racial justice, civil rights, and faith communities of the United States, recognize that climate change is a real, dangerous, and rapidly worsening problem with deep moral implications.

Although reducing carbon pollution will have costs, it will also produce incalculable benefits. Our response must therefore be driven not solely by near-term economic or national self-interest. We must also acknowledge and act on our long-standing moral obligation to protect current and future generations from suffering and death, to honor principles of justice and equity, and to protect the great Earth systems on which the wellbeing of all life, including ours, depends.

We call on every citizen to act on these moral principles without delay. Individually, and collectively as a nation, we must rapidly reduce carbon pollution by significant levels, prepare for the consequences of an already warming planet, and insist on public policies that support these goals and create a just transition to a low-carbon economy. The risks of inaction are exceedingly high. The benefits of acting on these moral principles are even greater.

The Moral Obligation to Prevent Suffering and Protect Human Life

The most fundamental of our guiding moral principles is that it is wrong to unjustifiably cause human suffering or death. Climate change-related impacts are already harming and killing people here and abroad. Unless carbon pollution is rapidly reduced, the resulting natural disasters, floods, diseases, illnesses, water and food shortages, and environmental degradation, along with associated rising violence and social breakdown, will injure or kill millions more every year.

Climate change-induced suffering from food shortages and the dramatic spread of disease and illness will be especially significant. Millions of people worldwide will be affected. Suffering will also result from the job losses and disruptions to families and communities caused by the billions of dollars in direct and indirect annual costs of climate impacts, as well as from the escalating market volatility, supply chain disruptions, and other impacts businesses will experience.

Over the past century, the U.S. has been the world's largest overall contributor to climate change, generating about 30 percent of the total energy-related CO2 emissions that are destabilizing the climate. Today, we continue to produce far more emissions on an annual basis than any other nation except China. Even if the costs are high, we must avert one of the worst violation of human rights the world has ever seen by acknowledging our contribution to the climate crisis and significantly reducing our emissions.

Business dislocations and job losses are also likely as we reduce our carbon pollution. These impacts must not be unduly borne by any group. A 'just transition' is necessary that spreads the costs as well as the investments in solutions and the benefits of new approaches equitably, provides for workers and communities that are adversely affected by climate protection policies, assists whole industries to make the necessary shifts, and ensures that all Americans have a democratic voice in how those decisions are made.
The Moral Responsibility to Honor Principles of Justice and Equity

Those who suffer the most from climate change are not the same people who now benefit greatly from the overuse of fossil fuels and other natural resources. As a matter of justice and equity, we have a moral obligation to reduce our carbon pollution in order to prevent suffering and death among people who have contributed little to climate change but who are, at least initially, most impacted: those living in the Arctic; people in less developed, hotter regions of the world; low-income and working-class communities, communities of color, women as well as children in the U.S.; and future generations everywhere.

In addition, even as we reduce our emissions we must do our part to ensure that vulnerable populations and nations have the financial and technological capacity to prepare for and adapt to the consequences of a warming planet and grow clean energy economies.

The Moral Obligation to Honor and Protect the Processes that Make Life Possible

Because we have a moral obligation to protect human life and prevent suffering and injustice, and because Earth's gifts have intrinsic value, we have a responsibility to protect the ecosystems and organisms that provide the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, the materials we use to sustain life and prosperity, and the natural beauty that lifts our spirits.

Whether we believe that the Earth and its great abundance is a product of natural processes or, as millions of people nationwide believe, that the Earth is the gift of the Creator, or both, our obligations are fundamentally the same--we must be good stewards of what we have inherited. Humanity is not in command of creation, but merely part of it. To disrupt the climate that is the cornerstone of all life on Earth and to squander the extraordinary abundance of life, richness, and beauty of the planet is morally wrong.

We Already Have the Know-How and Tools

The people of our great nation have the spirit, knowledge, and tools required to reduce climate change. The greatest obstacle is lack of human will. History is watching us. Our legacy will be determined by what we do now and in the next few years.

We call on everyone in the U.S. to act on their moral principles now by rapidly and significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions in their homes, places of work and government.

We call on every citizen to actively prepare for the consequences of climate change.

Moreover, we urge every citizen to insist that their government adopt policies to foster emission reductions and prepare for climate change, and to provide sufficient resources to build the capacity of the most impacted people worldwide to do the same.

This is not just about avoiding harm. Acting on our moral principles will foster the growth of a sustainable economy that creates millions of good jobs in clean energy fields, supports healthy families, and builds vibrant communities. That, itself, makes this imperative.

The need for action is urgent, the possibilities enormous. Please join us in heeding this call.

To know more about this campaign or to sign go to climateethicscampaign.org.

By :

Donald A. Brown,
Associate Professor, Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law,
Penn State University.
dab57@psu.edu.

ClimateEthics seeks to work out the ethical implications of mainstream scientific views about climate change. As we have said many times-if we get the science and economics wrong we may get the ethics wrong.

We do, however, believe that the mainstream scientific views as articulated by such prestigious scientific organizations as the United States Academy of Sciences are entitled to respect until peer-reviewed science changes the consensus view. Skepticism in science is not bad but skeptics should play by the rules of science including publishing their claims in peer-reviewed literature when they are engaged in what this article identifies as the "research role" of science. However, as we shall see, there is another role of science about which the rules and norms shift as a matter of ethics.

Just this May the United States Academy of Sciences concluded once again that humans are causing climate change and this will lead to harsh impacts for the human race and ecological systems unless steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As we shall see, getting the science right before discussing its ethical implications of science follows from an identification of which of two legitimate roles science is playing in any debate.

III The Two Science Roles

When making claims about what science knows, strict and careful scientific and peer-reviewed scientific procedures should be followed. Science usually assumes that in basic research, scientists should be silent until statistically significant correlations have been demonstrated between hypothetical cause and effect or other compelling reasons for proof claims have been demonstrated. (Different scientific disciplines have actually different expectations about proof claims, what ethicists call "epistemic norms") When science is playing its centrally important role in research for the truth about causation, strict and rigorous procedures are called for and no scientist should make claims when acting in this role that have not been demonstrated.

In basic research about climate change, nothing less should be expected. We will call this the "research role" of science.

However, there is a second role for science that requires different procedures. We expect science to not only prove and explain causation but to warn people of risks before proof is in--- particularly if the risks are significant and we cant wait until proof is demonstrated before the harm occurs.

Science often discovers sound scientifically based reasons for great concern but for practical and theoretical reasons can't reach ideal levels of proof before the harm occurs. Because of this scientists are sometimes expected by the law or social norms to warn people of potential harms. For instance, sometimes scientists are expected to make reports report based upon the "balance of the evidence" or regulatory agencies are expected by law to take preventative action as long as the scientific reasons for taking preventative action are not "arbitrary and capricious."

In examining human-environment interactions as well as human health-environment questions, scientists often uncover scientifically sound reasons for significant concern but for practical or theoretical reasons can not prove cause and effect. When engaged in such matters, I will call this the "public policy" role of science.

There are many uses of science in its "public policy" role about which there appears to be wide spread social agreement that it would be imprudent or otherwise unethical to wait until all the proof is in before taking appropriate action. This is so if: (a) waiting guarantees that the harm will occur if the risk turns out to be real, (b) the potential harms are grave to some people or ecological systems, and (c) those being put at risk have not consented to be put at risk.

The law is full of concrete examples of shifting levels of proof and burdens of proof depending upon what kind of risks are at stake and who is at risk from potentially risky behavior. In fact, most civilizations make dangerous behavior criminal. Tort laws makes people follow standards of great care to avoid harm to others once they are on notice that what they are doing is dangerous. In fact, if the harm occurs once someone is engaged in dangerous behavior, the law presumes the person causing the harm acted negligently. In such cases, defendants can't defend themselves by claiming there was no proof that what they were doing would cause harm, they must be careful if great harm is possible even if unproven under civil law.

The duty to be careful to not harm others even in cases where the proof of harm is uncertain is widely accepted around the world in such international law principles as the "No harm Principle." Under the No Harm Principle, nations are expected to prevent potential harm to other nations once they have reason to believe that activities in their countries are putting others at risk, they may not wait until absolute proof has been established to cease dangerous behavior.

US law has different rules for levels of proof and burden of proof depending on what is at stake. Criminal law requires the prosecutor to prove a defendant is guilty "beyond reasonable doubt", civil law usually only requires proof by a "balance of the evidence": Most cultures would require very high levels of proof to prove somethings is safe if a scientist is engaged in very dangerous behavior such as creating a black hole that could suck in the entire universe. In other words, norms of research science are not always applicable to public policy disputes. Sometimes public policy requires more proof and sometimes far less proof than required in scientific research depending upon what is at stake, who is at risk, and whether the uncertainties can be resolved before putting others at risk.

Before claiming that something is a risk, however, scientists should also have to follow certain rules or norms as a matter of ethics. These include they should be very, very clear that they have not proven cause and effect, they should acknowledge all uncertainties, and they should subject their reasoning to public scrutiny and reasonable debate. Care when making a claim about unproven risks in public policy disputes is also ethically essential.

III The Two Roles and Climate Change and Ethics.

When it comes to climate change and other complex problems humans are facing, confusion between these two different roles of science is rampant and is at the heart of the opposition between opposing camps. The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, for instance, has sometimes made conclusions based upon the "balance of the evidence" The ideological climate skeptics, (to be distinguished from reasonable skepticism) often publicizes what is not known about these issues and ignores what is known and at the same time has accused those who have identified plausible but unproven risks as doing "bad science." This is happening over and over again. On the other hand, environmental activists sometimes act as if their claims are made on the basis the norms of research science when at best they have only satisfied the norms of science engaged in its public policy role.

To resolve this confusion certain things are needed. They include:

(a) greater clarity about the role science is playing in any given debate,
(b) acknowledgement that there is an important "public policy" role for science that is different from its role in basic research, and in such cases high levels of proof are not always required by ethical considerations.
(c) a willingness to engage in public dialogue about the basis for any identified but unproven risks.

In a recent post on Tornadoes and Climate Change, ClimateEthics explained the main reasons why we may not claim that intensity and frequency of tornadoes will increase in warming world. They are (1) the trend data inconclusiveness, (2) there are scientific grounds for eventual reduction of shear winds in a warming world, and (3) possible eventual temperature difference decreases in a warming world. Because tornado propagation is sensitive to sheer wind and differences between warm and cold air masses meeting, tornado intensity and frequency may not increase in a warming world.

Yet, we explained there is also reasonable basis for concern that a warming world may at least temporarily increase tornado damage including the fact that oceans are now warmer, and regional ocean circulation cycles such as La Nina/El Nino patterns in the Pacific which affect upper atmospheric conditions appear to becoming more chaotic under the influence of climate change. And so there is a reason to believe, for instance, that instead of having a La Nina event in the Pacific once every six or seven years followed by an El Nino, the Pacific ocean will cycle between these extremes at faster rates in a warming world. More frequent La Ninas may make tornado propagation in the central US more frequent if not more destructive. We also know that in a warming world we have more water vapor in the atmosphere and some regional water bodies including the Gulf Of Mexico are warmer now then in recent times most likely under the influences of climate change.

Yet. we stressed that if we talk about these risks of climate change influencing tornado propagation, all uncertainties should be fully and honestly acknowledged and the honest absence of proof claims must be clear.

Whether these are legitimate concerns can't be decided simply on the basis of science in its research role but must be delegated to science in its public policy role. In such a role, the debate should be about given what we know about a warming world are these reasonable risks. In such cases, reasonableness cant be decided under the rule of research science unless someone is claiming that the scientific proof is in. These disputes must instead be settled on the basis of whether there is a reasonable basis for concern not withstanding lack of final proof. If there is, ethics would say we must identify these risks, not simply ignore ignore them, although care is needed in how these matters are discussed.

ClimateEthics believes that the climate change debate would be greatly improved if civil society would acknowledge these different legitimate roles for science.

By:

Donald A. Brown
Associate Professor Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law
Penn State University.
dab57

The outbreak of recent killer weather events including US tornadoes hitting Joplin, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama has everyone asking whether there is a link between tornadoes and human-induced climate change. In this writer's experience when US TV or radio weathermen are asked about the cause of recent strong tornadoes, they most always ignore climate change as a potential cause and point to a cyclical ocean circulation event known as La Niña as the cause of recent tornadoes if they comment on causation at all. Rarely is human-induced climate change mentioned as a cause or contributing factor in the recent outbreak of sever tornadoes although questions about causation are becoming more frequent on TV and newspapers in this writer's experience.

This post argues that ethics requires acknowledging the links between tornadoes and climate change despite scientific uncertainties about increased frequency and intensity of tornadoes in a warming world. However, because there are also scientific reasons to doubt that tornado propagation and intensity will increase in a warming world, as we shall see, care is necessary about how we should discuss these risks.

As we shall see there are certain aspects of atmospheric conditions necessary to produce violent tornadoes that climate change is enhancing while there are other atmospheric conditions necessary to form tornadoes about which scientists are uncertain exactly how a warming world will affect them. To figure out whether climate change will cause more intense and frequent tornadoes requires asking lots of smaller questions about the atmospheric conditions necessary to produce tornadoes and to determine how climate change will affect each of these various atmospheric conditions that combine to propagate tornadoes.

Before discussing tornadoes, it is important to note that it is scientifically uncontroversial to conclude that climate change is causing more violent weather particularly in the form of: (a) more damaging thunder storms, (b) the kind of devastating flooding we have seen this year in Australia, Pakistan, Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, along the Mississippi and the Tennessee valleys, and (c) more severe droughts such as those experienced this year in China, Brazil, and Texas. Similarly more intense hurricanes have been linked to climate change although it is still uncertain whether global warming will increase hurricane frequency. (Emanuel, 2005)

Most climate scientists agree that future weather will be characterized by far more chaotic weather causing greater damage to human life, health and ecological systems and so tornadoes are not the only intense weather events that could be enhanced by climate change and that will likely cause increased damage and suffering. .

It also can be said that in one way climate change is already changing all global weather including tornadoes. This is so because climate change has already caused changes to the global climate system such as raising ocean temperatures and increasing the amount of water in the atmosphere. Increased ocean temperatures and the water content of air have an effect on the amount and timing of precipitation that is being experienced in any one location. And so a strong claim can be made that climate change is now at least partially responsible for all global weather although the part played by climate change could be small for any individual climate event relative to other causes such as normal ocean circulation patterns. Yet, no tornado or hurricane experienced recently would likely be the same without some contribution from climate change. That is no tornado would appear at the same place, the same time, with the same wind speed without changes to the climate system that have been caused by human impacts on climate And so every tornado is very likely affected somewhat by climate change. That is although strong tornadoes have occurred before recent human-induced climate change, no recent tornado is likely to have happened in the same way at the same place in the absence of global warming.

This is not to say, however, that the intensity and frequency of tornadoes will surely increase in the years ahead.. Yet, although it is not clear that climate change will be responsible for more tornado caused damages, other kinds of storm damages are virtually certain to increase.

This post, however, looks at links between tornado intensity and frequency and climate change and what ethics requires when discussing these links. That is, this post does not examine other links between climate change and damaging weather.

Earlier this month, the United States Academy of Science issued its most recent report on the science of climate change that once again concluded that human-induced climate change was a very serious threat to humans and ecological systems around the world. This Report was entitled "America's Climate Choices 2011" (US Academy, 2011) Among other conclusions, this report found:

Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused primarily by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities, and poses significant risks for a range of human and natural systems. Emissions continue to increase, which will result in further change and greater risks. In the judgment of this report's authoring committee, the environmental, economic, and humanitarian risks posed by climate change indicate a pressing need for substantial action to limit the magnitude of climate change and to prepare for adapting to its impacts. " (US Academy, 2011)

This is not the first US Academy of Sciences report on climate change. In fact the US Academy gas been warning Americans about climate change since international interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions grew dramatically in the late 1970's as computer modelers began to use new computing tools to construct climate models that were capable of predicting temperature changes caused by human-induced climate change. In 1977, Robert M. White, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote a report for the National Research Council a branch of the National Academy of Sciences that concluded that CO2 released during the burning of fossil fuel could have consequences for climate that pose a considerable threat to future society. (White, 1978)

A report prepared by the Carter administration a few years later in 1981 declared that "[t]he responsibility of the carbon-dioxide problem is ours-we should accept it and act in a way that recognizes our role as trustees for future generations." (Charney et al., 1979) This report also estimated that the amount of warming that would be experienced from a doubling of the pre-industrial levels of CO2 would be 3 degrees C, very close to the amount that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would predict almost 30 years later." (Charney et al., 1979)

For over thirty-five years, the US Academy of Sciences has warned the US about the enormous threats of climate change with each successive report making stronger claims that human caused climate change is a serious threat to civilization. If the United States can be accused of failing to live up to its ethical responsibilities to the rest of the world on climate change, one cannot blame the US Academy of Sciences for failing to ring alarm bells. US citizens cannot claim that their most prestigious scientific institutions have failed to take a position on the seriousness of climate change.

ClimateEthics has previously explained that that the failure of the United States to respond to climate change can be attributed in largest part to a well-financed, well-organized climate change disinformation campaign. See, for example, A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?:The Fossil Fuel Industry's Disinformation Campaign On Climate Change. (Brown, 2010a) ClimateEthics has also repeatedly argued that the failure of the United States to respond to its ethical duties for climate change may also be attributed to the almost complete failure in the United States of the media and even climate change policy advocates to acknowledge that climate change raises not only national interests but also duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others. See, for example, Are Ethical Arguments for Climate Change Action Weaker Than Self-Interest Based Arguments? Why Taking Ethical Arguments Off the Table Is Like A Soccer Team Unilaterally Taking The Goalie Out of the Net. (Brown, 2010b)

I. Introduction

One of the defining premises of any "free market" is that parties participate in transactions voluntarily.

Shoving, imposing, and force--not allowed.

Indeed, voluntary participation is a vital part of the justification--and defense--of free markets. Why are free markets supposedly "free"? Because people participate in transactions freely, voluntarily, as free human beings. Why are free markets considered beneficial? Because the outcomes are often beneficial to the participants and, often, to a broader community.

But what if the nature of a transaction forces you to take part? What if someone else's so-called free market imposes costs or harmful consequences on you involuntarily? What if ambitious aliens from another solar system were to run their economy as a free market that utilized Earth as a cost-effective dumping ground--ignoring the concerns, rights and pleas of mere humans?

More concretely, what if someone's free market forces harms--such as a destabilized climate and associated problems--upon someone else who wants nothing to do with those harms and hasn't agreed to suffer them?

Ultimately, as I'll explain, we arrive at this question: Can a free market retain any credibility, coherence, and integrity if it violates the deepest principles upon which its own existence is justified?

II. The Man and A Stream

The problem becomes obvious once you think about it carefully, but let's begin by considering an interesting source.

In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman wrote about one of the principal limits of free markets that justify and sometimes necessitate government involvement. Here's a passage:

"A second general class of cases in which strictly voluntary exchange is impossible arises when actions of individuals have effects on other individuals for which it is not feasible to charge or recompense them. This is the problem of 'neighborhood effects'. An obvious example is the pollution of a stream. The man who pollutes a stream is in effect forcing others to exchange good water for bad." (Friedman, 1962)

Friedman's main focus here was on "neighborhood effects" that occur within a market system and that represent a limit, or failure, of the market. Most present-day economists use the term 'externality' to refer to such effects. Friedman's ultimate point was that neighborhood effects often justify government regulation, the aim of which is either to prevent them (if they are unwanted) or to ensure that benefits and costs are borne fairly by the responsible parties. If participants in a market and others who are subject to the market's consequences all fall under the auspices of a particular government or regulatory authority, that government or authority can--and often should--act to regulate such effects.

Let's revisit, however, an obvious and consequential point in Friedman's passage:

"The man who pollutes a stream is in effect forcing others to exchange good water for bad."

Friedman's observation here holds whether the "others" are within a nation's border or beyond it, whether they're participants in the market or not, and whether they accept the values of a particular type of market economy or not. In other words, just as a man who pollutes a stream in his own town forces others to exchange good water for bad, so also a market economy that undermines climate stability forces those consequences upon the entire world. Markets, of course, can fail people within them or outside of them.

In an April 4, 2011 New York Times op-ed entitled "The Truth, Still Inconvenient," Paul Krugman charged that Republican led climate change hearings that had just concluded were a deep moral failure. (Krugman, 2011) Krugman described the GOP US House of Representatives hearings at which of five invited witnesses on climate change, one was a lawyer, another an economist, and a third a professor of marketing---witnesses without any expertise in climate change science. One of the witnesses that was actually a scientist was expected to support the skeptical position but surprised everyone by supporting the mainstream scientific view on the amount of warming that the world has already experienced. Yet he was immediately attacked by climate skeptics.

The point of the Krugman article is that it is obvious from the witnesses who were asked to testify that the GOP led hearings were never meant to be a serious attempt to understand climate change science. In this regard, Krugman says:
.

But it's worth stepping back for a moment and thinking not just about the science here, but about the morality.

For years now, large numbers of prominent scientists have been warning, with increasing urgency, that if we continue with business as usual, the results will be very bad, perhaps catastrophic. They could be wrong. But if you're going to assert that they are in fact wrong, you have a moral responsibility to approach the topic with high seriousness and an open mind. After all, if the scientists are right, you'll be doing a great deal of damage.

But what we had, instead of high seriousness, was a farce: a supposedly crucial hearing stacked with people who had no business being there and instant ostracism for a climate skeptic who was actually willing to change his mind in the face of evidence. As I said, no surprise: as Upton Sinclair pointed out long ago, it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

But it's terrifying to realize that this kind of cynical careerism -- for that's what it is -- has probably ensured that we won't do anything about climate change until catastrophe is already upon us.

So on second thought, I was wrong when I said that the joke was on the G.O.P.; actually, the joke is on the human race.  (Krugman 20110)

This post examines Krugman's moral claims about the hearings. .

I. Introduction

Some have argued that the lack of political resolve to tackle sustainability issues stems from resistance to assumptions that modern economic and technological thinking will solve society's problems (Basso 1996, Bowers 2003).

I have been living in Alaska the past few years, and in contrast to assumptions about faith in technology, some Inuit people tell me their foundations for government and education are based on traditional sets of relationships by which they have lived. Their fundamental belief is that the connections that individuals feel for each other and to their environment determine personal character and value to the community. Without using the word "sustainability," for Inuits this belief is the definition of "sustainability." Sustainability is a core value of Inuit life. Instead of having to be incorporated or infused into policies and programs, culturally embedded concepts of sustainability form a natural foundation from which all policies and practices are derived. This is an inversion of the usual approach to trying to incorporate sustainability in policies, laws, and practices of the Western world (IALEI 2009).

The problem of global climate change can be considered a subset of "sustainability." Universities need to urgently, if not radically, respond to the challenges of anthropogenic global climate change by focusing on the complicated intertwined aspects of the scientific, social, political, policy, legal, cultural, and moral dimensions necessary for an informed citizenry.

Following, I discuss three topics. The first reminds us of the quantifiable scientific urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The second concerns the evolution of environmental and sustainability programs because their evolution can inform us about prospects of emergent global climate change programs. The third topic focuses on prospects for change in universities, especially those of research universities, which, as I also note, have influenced the teaching missions of small colleges and universities. Part of my critique is based on the view that comprehensive responses by higher education include a return to liberal education and education about climate change for all students.

The year 2012 is the 40th anniversary of the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment (UNCHE 1972), when the concept of "sustainability" arguably first began to influence higher education and public policies. We have not yet achieved sustainability. Dernbach (2002) described the checkered history of sustainability as "...stumbling toward sustainability." Stumbling toward solutions of global climate change is not an option, or at least a wise one. Time is not on our side. How can we dislodge our universities from their lethargic responses to the kinds of problems we are discussing?

II.Global Climate Change Science: The Problem of Urgency

Scientific conclusions published after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report (IPCC 2007) indicate that not only are greenhouse gas emissions rising faster than IPCC's worst-case scenario but that observed impacts exceed those projected (Allison et al. 2009, Levin and Tirpak 2009, New et al. 2011).

Recent scientific studies conclude that in order to avoid serious and irreversible impacts there is an urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 40 percent by 2020 or so compared to 1990 or 2000 levels (Hansen et al. 2008, Baer et al. 2009; Bates 2009; Kaufmann et al. 2009; Rockström 2009). Several major scientific studies conclude that avoiding serious and irreversible consequences of global climate change is plausible, but only if urgent actions are undertaken by developed nations, which means that greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak prior to or not later than around 2020 and then decline at an annual rate of six percent or more, eventually reaching a level close to zero if equity between developed and developing nations is to be honored (Anderson and Bows 2008, Ramanathan and Feng 2008, Baer et al. 2009, WGBU 2009, den Elzen et al. 2010, New et al. 2011).

These kinds of studies add a quantified dimension that has been missing from prior discourse about sustainability-the importance of which should not be underestimated. For decades, scientists have quantified human appropriation of natural resources but have not put any numbers on when our use of resources will have to peak and then decline in order to avoid so-called "unsustainable" tipping points. By way of contrast, global climate change science is now quantifying that within a matter of a decade or so, we must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by certain levels. Urgency beckons.

• Ethical Problems With Cost Arguments Made In Opposition to Climate Change Policies: The Failure To Value The Harms That Will Be Caused by Doing Nothing.
• Ethical Problems With Cost Arguments Against Climate Change Policies: Increased Costs May Not Justify Human Rights Violations
• Ethical Problems With Cost Arguments Against Climate Change Policies: The Failure To Recognize Duties To Non-citizens.

I. Introduction

Ethical issues are everywhere. Perhaps the greatest ethical issue of the time arrives as a problem that has the power to change the planet. Climate Change is a grave issue that is facing the world today. This can be seen from evidence stated by the UNFCCC.

"The frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas. Significantly increased precipitation has been observed in eastern parts of North and South America, northern Europe and northern and central Asia. There is also observational evidence for an increase of intense tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic since about 1970. Drying has also been observed over large regions, i.e. the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and parts of southern Asia." (UNFCCC)

It is not a future problem to deal with; it is affecting people now and needs to be dealt with accordingly. There are several arguments that oppose action to limit the effects of climate change but perhaps none are more publicized (or argued) than those based on economic reasoning. This post will focus on the ethical issues of three economic arguments opposing climate change policy. These are ethical questions because they imply that there should be no action taken because of economic and cost arguments. The three economic arguments are increased energy prices, decrease of global GDP, and significant loss of jobs.

II. Three Economic Arguments

A. Increased Fuel Costs

The first argument of increased energy prices is being made by oil companies. The oil companies claim that due to the lack of cheap alternative fuels, the cost of energy will increase.

"Oil companies and industry -backed groups argue there aren't good alternatives to gasoline. Efforts to lower carbon dioxide emissions from fuel use in the Northeast won't have impact on global emissions and could raise oil prices." (Snyder, 2010)

The oil companies have the most to lose if climate change policies are adopted. They profit from fuel for nearly every industry imaginable. The downfall of oil companies are the amounts of carbon dioxide being emitted from their product. The only concern oil companies have is the amount of profits they will lose if climate change polices are put into action.
"The Big Oil and Dirty Coal lobbies are working hard to stop reforms so that they can protect their enormous profits." (Weiss, 2010)

These arguments are not based on factual statements. The oil companies are consumed by greed so make statements based on their best interest without regard to the consequences they will have on others. This brings up the issue of ethics within the decisions of the oil companies to reject climate change policies. The oil companies are making their arguments on utilitarian grounds meaning that the most favorable decision is the one in which happiness is experienced by the most people. However, even within this argument are violations of utilitarian principles. This boils down to being a simple calculation without regard to keeping anything sacred. They are making the statement that the benefits of using oil (keeping energy costs "low") outweigh the costs that consumption will have. In this, they are saying that allowing warming to continue and have devastating effects on the planet and its inhabitants is an acceptable cost of keeping oil as the main source of energy. This is ultimately taking life without consent. The oil companies are benefiting from loss of human life. This may seem indirect but it is exactly what is happening. Michael Sandel comments that the right thing to do is not simply a matter of calculating consequences by using cost and benefit analysis. He suggests that morality has a greater meaning. It pertains to the proper way human beings are to treat each other (Sandel, 2009). The oil companies are implicitly suggesting that a proper way to treat other humans is destroying their lives for the singular purpose of gaining profit. This is not how people are meant to be treated. All people deserve a greater respect than to be abused by companies with motives that disregard human life. Sandel suggests that the biggest weakness of utilitarianism logic it that it fails to respect the individual rights (Sandel, 2009). The case of climate change is a perfect example of this weakness. The oil companies are disregarding individual rights by continuing to fight policy regarding carbon dioxide emissions based on the argument of increasing energy costs.

Individual rights may seem like a loose term but there is a document known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which outlines rights of all persons.

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." (Article 1)

"Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person." (Article 3)

These rights are being violated by the oil company's rising price argument. They are using people as a means to and end thereby violating Immanuel Kant's theory of rights. Sandel writes about Kant's philosophy that morality is not about maximizing happiness or some other end, such as increased profit. Morality requires that persons are to be treated as ends in themselves.

"For Kant, respecting human dignity means treating persons as ends in themselves. This is why it is wrong to use people for the sake of the general welfare, as utilitarianism does." (Sandel, 2009)

Kant makes the argument that we are not to use people for personal gain. The oil companies are using the argument of rising energy costs as a way of convincing people that climate change policy is not a good idea. They are completely rejecting scientific literature and using public ignorance of the subject in order to maintain a high level of profits. This method is a complete failure to acknowledge Kant's ideals of not using people as a means to an end.

Thus, the economic argument of rising energy costs brings up several ethical issues. First, it brings up the issue of the proper way to treat other people. Next it violates the idea of individual rights based upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Finally, it contests Kant's principle of not using people as a means to an end. Instead persons should be treated as ends in themselves because everyone deserves at least that much.

On March 7th, US Congressman Henry Waxman, speaking at the Center for American Progress, encouraged Americans to see US action on climate change as a moral responsibility. To our knowledge, Congressman Waxman is the first US elected national politician to speak about the moral dimensions of climate change despite the fact that climate change must be understood as essentially a problem that creates a host of civilization challenging ethical issues. For this reason, Congressman Waxman should be commended.

Congressman Waxman did not, however, discuss the practical implications of understanding climate change as moral matter and for this reason this post identifies some of the logical conclusions that necessarily follow from seeing climate change as a moral issue. If these principles were followed it would transform how climate change has been debated in the United States.

II. The Significance of Waxman's Ethical Claim

After riling against many efforts underway in the Republican controlled US House of Representatives to prevent the US government action on climate change that are based upon fraudulent scientific views propagated by some fossil fuel interests, Congressman Henry Waxman said:

We are at a pivotal time in which every member of Congress will decide whether they will be on the right side of history or the wrong side of history," Mr. Waxman said. "Civil rights in the 1960s was a moral issue, and there was a right side and a wrong side. Climate change is an environmental issue. It is an economic issue. But it is also fundamentally a moral issue. (Broder, 2011)

If climate change is a moral issue it is important to identify the practical significance of this understanding. If climate change is a moral issue then, at minimum:

1. High-emitting nations and individuals may not make decisions about greenhouse gas reductions by looking only at self-interest alone. Any position on climate change must respond to duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others.

2. A nation that is exceeding its fair share of safe global emissions may not refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the basis of increased domestic cost alone.

3. A nation may not refuse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that put others and the ecological systems on which they depend at risk of harm on the basis of some scientific uncertainty once it is established that great harms are possible.

4. A nation must limit its greenhouse gas emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions. In deciding what is fair, a nation must look to ethically relevant criteria for being treated differently than others.

5. Some of the economic analytical tools that are often used to judge the acceptability of public policy such as cost-benefit analysis are ethically problematic when harms and costs are greatly disaggregated among those who would bear costs of action to reduce the threat and those who experience harms of non-action as they are in climate change.

6. Those who cause damages to others have a duty to compensate them for their harms.

7. National policies on greenhouse gas emissions must take into consideration their responsibility to limit their emissions to their fair share of global emissions that will achieve safe levels of levels of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

8. Before setting domestic climate change policies, nations must consult with those who could be harmed by non-action on climate change.

9. Nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals have responsibilities to reduce the threat of climate change.

If climate change is a moral issue as Congressman Waxman has asserted that it is, then it follows that how the climate change debate has been conducted in the United States must be transformed. No longer can the climate change debate focus exclusively on whether proposed climate legislation or policies are in the US interest alone. The US must consider its duties, responsibilities, and obligations it has both to living people around the world and future generations. So far, ethics is the missing crucial element in the US debate about climate change because the US climate change debate has up until now focused exclusively on whether climate change legislation and policies are in the US interest alone.

By:

Donald A. Brown,
Associate Professor, Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law,
Penn State University
dab57@psu.edu

References:

Broder, 2011, Waxman Angrily Assails G.O.P. 'Science Deniers', New York Times, March 7, 2011, http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/waxman-angrily-assails-g-o-p-science-deniers/