Philosophy and Climate Change (The Philosophers' Corner-Sydney-Australia)

What philosophy can contribute to the climate change debate

“We do not yet have a good understanding of many of the ethical issues at stake in global-warming policy”. We remain confused about vital factors like who should take responsibility, equity between generations and how to think about nonhuman animals. This confusion, gives us reason for avoiding our obligations. Resistance by governments to taking action, attempts by various players to throw sand in the eyes of the public and specious arguments to justify an unwillingness to do what is necessary – “moral corruption”. The subversion of our moral discourse to our own endsClive Hamilton quoting Stephen Gardiner

• The question of how we should address the impacts of climate change- both now and in the future

• The extent of our obligations to take action to reduce our emissions in order to limit global warming

• How best to understand the collective action necessary to address climate change

• The argument from skepticism and why we still face significant skepticism as to the causes of climate change

How should we best address the impacts of climate change?

• “CO2 concentration has ranged between 172 and 300 ppm for the past 800 000 years. In 2008, CO2 concentration has risen to a much higher 383 ppm. Global CO2 concentration has risen 37 per cent since the Industrial Revolution” CSIRO, 2011

http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding/Humans-Changing-Climate/Atmospheric-greenhouse-gas-exceeds-pre-industrial-levels.aspx

Global effects of climate change

Precautionary principle

If an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to

the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls

on those taking the action.

How to reduce impacts in the future?

Cosmopolitanism• The increasing rise of capitalism and world-wide

trade and its theoretical reflections• The reality of ever expanding empires whose

reach extended across the globe• The voyages around the world and the

anthropological so-called ‘discoveries’ facilitated through these

• The renewed interest in Hellenistic philosophy• The emergence of a notion of human rights and a

philosophical focus on human reason

Kleingeld and Brown- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2002

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 1948, along with related covenants;

• The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992;

• The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992; • The Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development, 1992; • The UNESCO Declaration on the Responsibili- ties of the Present

Generations Towards Future Generations, 1997; • The Kyoto Protocol, 1997; • The Earth Charter, 2000, as recognized by the UNESCO General

Conference; • The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, 2002; • The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

(UDBHR), 2005.

Examples of Cosmopolitanism

Game Theory

Tim Soutphommasane

http://www.themonthly.com.au/ethics-climate-change-peter-singer-tim-soutphommasane-p2-2586

SkepticismCSIRO

Second Annual Survey of Australian Attitudes to Climate Change: INTERIM REPORT 2011

Humans are causing climate change Climate change is a

natural fluctuation

“The Earth has a 35 year thermal inertia and so… we’re waiting 35 years even to see the effects of what we did 35 years ago. So it would be another 30 years until we started to really see, even at the only 380 parts per million level that we’re doing now, what those effects are.   And we’ll be at 550 parts per million by then – or more. It’s never been above 300.  So there’s a serious debate over whether that will be very bad or not, but all we know is no matter what we do when we get there, there’s no turning back." 

Dr. Nathan LewisProfessor of ChemistryCalifornia Institute of Technology

Earth’s 35 year thermal inertia

The detail of modern science is incomprehensible to almost everyone, which means that we have to take what scientists say on trust. Yet science tells us to trust nothing, to believe only what can be demonstrated. This contradiction is fatal to public confidence

George Monbiot

Natural variations and climate change

The argument against skepticism

“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of

the general public”1969, Brown and Williamson

Attitudes to climate change based on political affiliation