Editorial Commentary
Climate, nature and ethics: an editorial essay Dale Jamieson
I
t is a truism, though one we often try to ignore, that the world does not obey the dictates of our systems of know knowledge ledge and gove governan rnance. ce. Disci Discipline plines, s, bure bureauaucracies, and even online journals divide the world into domains, but many of the most difficult problems and interesting questions inhabit the interstices of these domains or cut across them. It is easy to think of examples from economic development and ecological preser pre servat vation ion,, to hea health lth car caree and cri crimin minal al jus justic tice. e. When such problems and question are disciplined by the institutions of epistemological governance, much is distorted, neglected, and ignored. One highly prized and widely shared value in our research and policy-making communities is valueneutrality. For this reason explicit consideration of values is high on the list of marginalized and excluded issues. But since we are valuing creatures it is difficult for us to effectively exclude values from our thinking, even (and perhaps especially) when we believe with all our hearts that it would be best to do so. As a result we often have the worst of both worlds: values run wild, but the myth of value neutrality suppresses their systematic examination and discussion. This Th is is esp especi eciall ally y sho shocki cking ng whe when n it com comes es to the environment. Those who have advocated conservation, from John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and Aldo Leopold, to the signatories of the Rio Declaration, have ha ve ty typi pica call lly y ex expr pres esse sed d th thei eirr vi view ewss in va valu lueecomm co mmit itte ted d la lang ngua uage ge.. Th Thee ve very ry co cont ntex extt of th thee 19 1992 92 Ri Rio o Earth Summit was set by a series of reports written by international commissions led by prestigious political leader lea ders, s, wh who o ass assert erted ed tha thatt two mo moral ral imp impera erativ tives es wer weree inextricably linked: protecting the global environment and improvin improving g the liv lives es of the wo world rld’s ’s poo poor. r.1,2 In the run-up to Rio, activists from both the North and South often expressed themselves in moral language. 3 According to one study such value commitments were also prominent in the minds of government officials active in the negotiations, though these officials were often hesitant about expressing them publicly. 4 New York University Environmental Studies Program, 285 Mercer Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10003, USA DOI: 10.1002/wcc.31
Volume 1, September/October 2010
© 2010
It has become clear since the heady days of the Rio Earth Summit that the nations of the world have done little to live up to their political commitments, and it has become increasingly common to wonder whether this failure of nerve is related to a failure of values. Environmental ethics began to be constituted as a field in the 1970s, and at the same time related develo dev elopme pments nts wer weree occ occurr urring ing in rel religio igious us stu studie dies, s, geography, political theory, law, and other areas of academic inquiry. Although much of this work was responsive to developments in science (such as the rise of Earth system, or glob global al chang change, e, scien science), ce), scientists scientists themselves largely ignored or were ignorant of this work.. While the scien work science ce of the glob global al environment environment has continued to develop and expand, the hardy band of theorists who write about the ethical dimensions of environmental questions has continued to grow. Climate change in particular is increasingly seen as a moral issue. Perhaps the most striking sign of this is the recent activity of the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri. In the last 12 months he has written a letter to The Independent Independent newspaper (London, UK) with Paul McCartney urging people to become vegetarian (2008) (20 08),, sup suppor ported ted an app appeal eal dra drafted fted by 25 NG NGOs Os and religious organizations declaring that ethical considerations are at the root of the climate crisis, and contributed a forward to a new volume of essays on climate ethics.5 This is the same man who owes his 2002 200 2 ele electio ction n as Cha Chair ir of of the IPC IPCC C to the Bus Bush h adm admininistration, and at the time was denounced by AL Gore 6 the man with whom he shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, as the ‘‘let’s drag our feet’’ candidate of the American right. The atmosphere has changed, and so has the atmospherics of the climate change discussion. Yet WIREs WIR Es Cli Climat matee Cha Change nge is the only one of the 15 exi existi sting ng aca academ demic ic jou journa rnals ls ex expli plicit citly ly cov coveri ering ng climate clima te affai affairs rs7 to ta take ke th thee ex expl plic icit it di disc scus ussi sion on of valu va lues es as pa part rt of it itss ch char arge ge.. Of co cour urse se,, va valu lues es discus dis cussio sion n so somet metime imess app appear earss in the pag pages es of the oth other er journals (how could it not), but usually without the systematicity, rigor, and sensitivity to the literature that characterize characterize the purely scien scientific tific material that
John W iley & Sons, Ltd.
621
Editorial Commentary
these journals publish. In contrast, WIREs Climate Change, through the Domain Climate, Nature and Ethics, will publish first-rate scholarly review articles on climate ethics and related questions, and help disseminate to a wider audience the important work that has already been done in this field. Furthermore, I hope that creating this Domain in the WIRE will set off a new generation of scholarship in this area, greatly expanding and diversifying the population of contributors. I also hope that publishing this work side by side with contributions from natural scientists, political scientists, and economists will draw greater attention to questions of climate, nature, and ethics. Now, to some matters of substance, much of the published work relevant to this Domain involves either locating these problems against the broader background of moral and political philosophy, 8,9 or concerns the ethics of mitigation. 10,11 While there is much more to say about these issues, especially in a world in which the moral obligation to mitigate is rarely acknowledged, there are other important issues relevant to this Domain of the journal which also deserve attention. One of these areas concerns ethical issues about compensating those who have already been harmed by climate change or will be harmed in the future. Compensation for such harms is beginning to be discussed in law reviews and international fora, but is only beginning to be discussed by ethicists.12 There is a large body of theoretical work that can be drawn on here, much of which grows out of concerns with compensating indigenous peoples or oppressed minorities. Of course, some of the issues are importantly different, but there are also some interesting analogies, and the identification and evaluation of similarities and differences will be part of the ongoing discussion. Whatever happens with respect to mitigation, it is clear that we are in only the early stages of climate change, and that people will have to adapt in order to avoid the most serious harms. It is not clear that we can adapt to all of the consequences of climate change, and being forced to adapt to human-induced climate change can itself be viewed as a harm. In any case there will be costs (economic and otherwise) that will have to be borne. Yet thus far we have very little discussion of the ethical issues implied by the necessity of adapting to climate change (but cf see Ref 13). Kartha et al.14 point out that much of our concern about mitigation and adaptation is instrumental. What we want is for people to live ‘good, lives, in which they flourish, and it is commonly believed that 622
©
wires.wiley.com/climatechange
this requires reaching a reasonable stage of development. One approach to the interlocking crisis of climate and poverty would be to bypass concerns with mitigation and adaptation altogether and go directly instead to questions of development and quality of life, treating climate as one of a host of factors that are instrumentally relevant to achieving these goals. Whatever there is to say in favor of this proposal, it illuminates that fact that issues at the intersection of development ethics and the ethics of climate change have not been sufficiently explored. Lurking in the background is non-human nature which will perhaps suffer the greatest impacts of climate change. Our attitude toward this will depend in part on our views about the value of nature. If nature’s value is only instrumental to the satisfaction of human wants, then these questions can be rolled up into other questions about how climate change affects relations among humans. But some philosophers have argued that nature (or at least some aspects of nature) has value independent of human desires. 15 Thus far, however, this discussion regarding the value of nature has barely made contact with questions of climate ethics. Perhaps the greatest future challenge to climate ethics will concern proposals to change climate intentionally through geoengineering. As it becomes increasingly clear that climate change is occurring, pressure builds to intervene directly in the climate system by managing solar radiation through launching space mirrors, injecting sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere, or through other means. Such proposals raise questions that go beyond questions of distributive justice, raising issues about what people and which institutions have the moral authority to authorize such interventions, and whether there is any notion of respect for nature that can be brought to bear on the evaluation of such proposals. Finally, it is often overlooked that questions about the allocation and deployment of scientific resources also raise ethical issues. Money that goes toward building more sophisticated climate models—or toward geoengineering—could go toward adaptation, compensation, or even research in these areas. There are good arguments for a portfolio of investments, but these arguments and the ethics of how the portfolio should be managed are barely even alluded to in the existing literature. The foregoing is meant only as a teaser. By now it should be clear that while a significant body of work has already been done on some aspects of this Domain, much more work remains to be done and
2 01 0 J oh n W il ey & S on s, L td.
V ol um e 1 , S ep te mb er /O ct ob er 2 01 0
WIREs Climate Change
Climate, nature and ethics: an editorial essay
many important questions have barely been asked much less addressed. Scientific curiosity is itself a good enough reason for developing these lines of research, but in this Domain there is an added imperative; the questions explored here are vital to determining how we ought to act in the face of climate change. Those who contribute to this discussion may not answer all of our questions or propose answers that we always
find comfortable, but the questions must be asked and the conversation engaged if we are to survive the greenhouse world with our values and integrity intact. By providing authoritative and accessible reviews of work completed on climate change, nature, and ethics, and through suggesting future work to be done, the goal of this Domain of WIREs Climate Change is to support us in this quest.
REFERENCES
1. Brandt W. North-South: A Program for Survival . Cambridge MA: The MIT Press; 1980, 304 pp. 2. The Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues. Common Security: A Blueprint for Survival . New York: Simon and Schuster; 1982. 3. Agarwal A, Narain S. Global Warming in an Unequal World . New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment; 1990. 4. Craig P, Glasser H, Kempton W. Ethics and values in environmental policy: the Said and the UNCED. Environ Values 1993, 2:137–157.
9. Shue H. The unavoidability of justice. In: Hurrell A, Kingsbury B, eds. The International Politics of the Environment: Actors, Interests, and Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1992, 373 –397. 10. Jamieson D. Climate change and global environmental justice. In: Edwards P, Miller C, eds. Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Global Environmental Governance. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press; 2001, 287–307. 11. Singer P. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. New Haven: Yale University Press; 2002, 208 pp.
5. Gardiner S, Caney S, Jamieson D, Shue H. Climate Ethics: Essential Readings. New York: Oxford University Press; 2010, 448 pp.
12. Risse M. The right to relocation: disappearing island nations and common ownership of the earth. Ethics Int Affairs 2009, 23:281–300.
6. Gore AL. The Selling of an Energy Policy. New York Times, Sunday, April 21, 2002. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/opinion/theselling-of-an-energy-policy.html.
13. AdgerWN, Huq S, Paavola J, Mace MJ, eds.Fairness in Adaptation to Climate Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press; 2006, 335 pp.
7. Hulme M. Mapping climate knowledge: an editorial essay. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2010, 1(1): 1–7.
14. Kartha S, Baer P, Athanasiou T, Kemp-Benedict E. The greenhouse development rights framework. Clim Development 2009, 1:147–165.
8. Jamieson D. Ethics, public policy, and global warming. Science, Technology, and Human Values 1992, 17:139–153.
15. Taylor P. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1986, 342 pp.
Volume 1, September/October 2010
© 2010
John W iley & Sons, Ltd.
623
