Introduction:
Climate change sits high on the list of our most pressing contemporary global concerns. Scientists across multiple disciplines, employed to understand the cause and effects of climate change, are near unanimous in declaring that it is happening and that it is happening due to human activity. Yet despite the increasing number of scientific voices confirming the data, making dire predictions of consequences, and warning of the perils of inaction to correct our causative activities, it appears that the deniers still speak with the loudest voices, in defiance of their diminishing numbers. That anyone listens to them at all is baffling to me.
I have often argued that climate change is real, that it is our doing, and that we must act to fix it while we can. This essay question has inspired me to reconsider my dispute. Not because I now think the science is wrong, but because I now think that I may be on the ‘losing side’ simply because I depend so heavily on the scientific data to argue the problem. Therefore, I shall attempt to use this essay question to explore the problem in terms of ethics, politics, and psychology – separate from the empirical and statistical evidence I would usually present as my argument.
Ethics:
“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” – Genesis 1:28.
To many modern readers of theology, the above passage directs humanity to make profitable use of the environment and its resources, and to do so respectfully and wisely. Historically, however, it has been used to justify exploitation and profligate waste in the rather arrogant belief that God will continue to provide, no matter what. In other words, our abuses of nature will not affect us, because the Earth is a perfect creation that is infinite and self-healing under the just and benevolent hand of God. It can be argued that the historical interpretations of that one biblical passage are the origin of our current ecological crises (White 1967).
Fortunately, the advancement of science has given humanity greater awareness of our ecological impact, and we can no longer hide behind bible verse to excuse a wholly exploitative relationship with nature, as we have done so in the past. Additionally, philosophical enquiry encourages us to consider questions of science, justice, and morality, beyond the constraints of referencing only religious texts for guidance on questions of ethics.
Immanuel Kant, for example, argued for what he called the “Categorical Imperative”, which he characterised as a supreme principle of morality. A litmus test of morality, if you will. Today we might call this the “Golden Rule”, which encompasses humanistic ideals of “good will” and “duty”. Or, to simplify: “do no harm”.
Applying Kantian ethics to the problem of climate change would mean that we have a moral duty, in everything we do, to act to protect the sustainability of the Earth for those living today, and for those who will be living in the future. To do so makes our actions always morally right. Therefore, not acting as rational individuals and moral global citizens to reduce harmful emissions and pollution is always immoral, even for climate change deniers, as it would be treating “other human beings as mere instruments for our own ends (Rentmeester 2010)”. Although Kant lived 200 years ago, his ideas have helped to further develop the modern social contract theory that Thomas Hobbes had devised in his 17th century work, Leviathan.
Because we in the developed nations live in technologically dependent social and productive arrangements, it is our technological advancement that has exacerbated the threat of a climate change ‘Armageddon’. The application of modern technologies in what we produce and how we produce it, through fossil-fuel based industrialisation and consumption, is at the very core of the problem. Because of this, earlier ideas of social contract theory must be updated to include the natural environment in concepts of a just society, and to also forward technology itself as a solution to the cultural and ecological ravages caused by technology.
A more recent German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, was cynical in his conceptions of a modern technological world. He argued that our belief in technology was nothing more than an illusion of being in control, and that modernity has alienated us from nature (Irwin 2010). Given the apparent truth of this view, and the fact that technology is so embedded in our modern societies, the question of whether we should use technology to solve the problem of climate change must be asked: should we change our technologies to not just reshape how we produce and consume at ‘the ground level’, but also to actively engage in engineering the climate to our will, and thereby slow or reverse the warming of our planet?
For some thinkers, among both the deniers and the accepters of anthropogenic climate change, the idea is an undesirable and dangerous human conceit. Heidegger might well agree with them, but his agreement cannot invalidate the question. In fact, geoengineering, which is “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems to counteract climate change” (Oxford Geoengineering Programme 2018), may be the most viable solution for overcoming the climate crisis that we currently have at our disposal.
Politics:
“The world’s leaders will not curb economic growth if it jeopardises their survival. They will not commit political suicide simply because a cause is just (Flynn 2016)”.
Nonpartisan political will, made legitimate by unanimous public support, with a strong demand for good global governance and urgent effective action, is utopian thinking at its grandest. In the world of politics, at almost any level, there are often too many conflicting ideologies to achieve any working consensus, and too many powerful interest groups competing in the arena to gain economic and political advantage. Further obstacles to cooperation in tackling climate change include conflicts between the collective good and national interests, and the tensions between developed and developing countries (Heywood 2015). The issue of climate change is the modern era’s “Tragedy of the Commons”.
Since 1988, various transnational and intergovernmental organisations have been created in efforts to address climate change, and to put forward legally binding targets for industrialised countries to reduce their emissions. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol designed elaborate ‘flexible mechanisms’, such as the Emissions Trading Scheme, to employ market mechanisms that allowed countries to pay for emissions reductions wherever it was cheapest to do so. But this cap-and-trade scheme did little to encourage the industries most addicted to coal, oil and gas to reduce their emissions; and because carbon credits were worth dollars and were traded like stocks, it incentivised dishonest practices through carbon offset projects. It became – as the Executive Director of Greenpeace called it – a “multi-trillion dollar carbon racket (Annie Leonard 2009)”.
This use of market forces to combat the causes of climate change, perfectly illustrates how deeply embedded neoliberal political and economic culture is in industrialised nations, and how believing the market alone will fix what the market broke is akin to believing in magic beans. Yet, in all but lip service to sustainable environmental ideals, political discourse remains focused on market solutions. And the failures of the Emissions Trading Scheme have given some politicians and media spokespersons the credible ideological argument that “global warming” is nothing more than a confidence trick designed to extract wealth from the public purse for private profit.
Short political cycles, and a consumer-culture conditioned population, ensure that election platforms are dominated by economic rhetoric centred on market growth. While the ‘left’ and ‘right’ political representatives may differ on how money is spent or not spent; promoting arguments for tax cuts or public goods; mentioning climate change or ignoring it; their most electable promises are often purely economic, with wealth measured in monetary terms only: gross domestic product, consumer spending, and budget surpluses and deficits.
The contemporary neoliberal capitalist system is a globalised one that attempts to restructure societal, political, and economic institutions in every corner of the globe, and is supported by both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power that is backed by the United States and United Kingdom, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation. This restructuring has been affected through coercion, which can be violent, and is always in the interest of western power and hegemony. The supporting argument is that liberalising underdeveloped nations has lead to fewer people in extreme poverty and has set these nations on the positive path to wealth creation through industrialisation. For the time being that may be true, but it cannot last because of climate change effects on water availability and food production, to name just two essential life supporting mechanisms.
Issues of scarcity, such as food and water insecurity, prove that economics – and therefore politics – cannot be safely disembedded from the environment. Yet powerful interest groups, working on behalf of wealthy industrialists and the finance sector, have driven this incremental disembedding through their influence on politicians, markets, and consumers. Financialisation – “the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies” (Epstein 2005) – has created a debt economy.
As individuals, private enterprises and governments borrow more, they must then produce more to generate the level of growth required to service their debt. This facilitates further disembedding of the economy from the environment, at least from the point of ideology. The paradox being that almost all productive human activity is dependent on fossil fuels to varying degrees, and fossil fuels are wholly embedded in the environment. This will prove to be the dissonance that accelerates us past the tipping point of environmental collapse.
Aside from a slow growing Green political movement, there have been only minor changes to business as usual in the political sphere. Various committees, conferences, agreements, and institutions designed to tackle the challenges through global governance and policy are struggling to inspire the transformations required to re-embed politics and economics back into the environment. Corporate owners and shareholders want their returns on investment paid in dollars in the short term; a lack of imagination limits longer term investment in ensuring an environmentally sustainable future. The market is ill-equipped to manage collective goods.
The media, too, has been complicit in this political stalemate on effectively managing the causes of climate change. Ownership consolidation of media platforms into financial sector hands, who have a stake in neoliberal capitalism, have been duplicitous in their curating of climate change messages.
Psychology:
“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” – Quote attributed to Carl Jung.
In the court of public opinion, media personalities are cast as barristers; their very targeted and manipulated audience are jury; and the judge is how popular a specific platform is with its advertisers. Scientists may be called in as expert witnesses, but the jury are instructed to consider opinion and feelings above any verifiable facts. In journalism, this is called “balance”, with the idea being that every story has two sides. But not every story does have two sides, despite the mediated divergent discourse. Climate change is one such story, and arguably one of the most misrepresented stories in media.
On the one hand, news reports are alarming. Within a twenty-minute televised news segment, announcers will leap from terrorism to hurricanes to market crashes to war to oil pipeline disasters to climate change impacts in far flung nations. There is never any analysis, just moral panics and spectacle. The average viewer becomes understandably dissociated from the reality of these events. Adam Curtis, a British documentarian, calls this “Oh Dearism (Curtis 2014)”. Audiences watch the 6 o’clock news, exclaim “oh dear!”, and then go back to preparing dinner. Few are moved to act, or to explore the issues more deeply.
Adjunct to news, is the “talkback” format, the debate format, and the interview. These lend significant credence to climate change deniers by framing the climate change challenges as issues of ideology, belief, and opinion – all of which are given validity in this manufactured contest of ideas, though some more than others. Despite many denialist’s arguments being thoroughly debunked, whether scientific or social, they are still lent credibility for their cultural capital in the market competition for media ratings.
This means that the debate we should be having around policy decisions, lifestyle changes, and the restructuring of the means of production to minimise emissions and maximise environmental care, is a debate we are not having. That debate has been hijacked by special interests whose agenda is to sow the seeds of doubt about the scientific evidence, undermine confidence in governance and government, and advance conspiracy theories about some nefarious New World Order, all amplified through social media echo chambers.
The psychological effects of these conflicting mediated messages on the wider population is complex, and largely paralysing. Without personally experiencing the effects and immediacy of climate change catastrophe, many in the global north struggle to muster sufficient concern. And within peer groups, if a dominant or admired person is a denier, others in the group may be complaisant to that view, whether it is a view they personally hold true or not.
The climate debate in the public sphere is not framed by climate science, but the science of perception management, directed by public relations specialists. In a free market, manipulating public perceptions – right or wrong – is money in the bank. In the documentary, A Burning Question: Propaganda & the Denial of Climate Change (Kehoe 2012), the filmmakers take to the streets of Ireland to ask pedestrians what they think of the climate crisis. The responses were varied.
For some, climate change was real and anthropogenic, but they felt impotent. Beyond the switch away from single-use plastic bags and cups, they didn’t know what else to do. The majority were fence sitters. The debate had confused them, and they didn’t know what to believe or who to trust. For some of these people, they only knew not to trust the government or the media, but they struggled to adequately articulate why. Some felt overwhelmed by the plethora of competing social and environmental concerns, choosing to cope by retreating from such concerns altogether.
The rest, making up a group smaller than the majority, but larger than the group accepting the climate crisis as real, were the deniers. Within the denier cohort were two types of personalities: the cynical characters who believed it was all a grand conspiracy, and the optimists who merely scoffed and laughed, stating that it is a natural cycle and we all just need to enjoy life more and not worry about it. Listening to them, I found that my own psychological reaction to their responses swung between deep disappointment and pangs of envy. Ignorance is bliss.
Additionally, studies conducted over several decades that reveal “high levels of concern about the environment in general across most nations […] do not directly translate to willingness to pay to combat climate change. In both developed and developing nations, willingness to pay is found to be lower than levels of concern” (Riley E. Dunlap 2015).
In the United States, the world’s largest economy, denial is strongest among Republican politicians and their supporters. The conservative movement is staunchly Christian and libertarian in its values, making it particularly receptive to denialist propaganda. In their manufacturing of controversy, libertarian think tanks have shaped conservative public opinion, utilising multiple psychological tools that have effectively attacked any efforts to mitigate climate change as threats to their individual freedom, values, and prosperity. The affect on the conservative mind, primed and receptive to this kind of economic patriotism, is a fiercely combative belief that they are absolutely right, that nature was created for human use, and that environmentalism is the new communism (Riley E. Dunlap 2015, 300-332).
Conclusion:
Green parties are gaining political ground. Grassroots organised protests against neoliberal economic injustices, or to protect environments from harm, are gaining in number – and sometimes even receiving mass media attention. Global awareness of impending climate catastrophe is growing: there are few people today who can claim that they are unaware of climate concerns.
Some past deniers, particularly those in communities or industries – such as fishing and agriculture – that are already starting to feel the economic and environmental effects, are starting to repent; and news editors are beginning to give more space to the science than they do the science deniers. This is a great leap forward in the fight to get nations to more seriously address the issue. But it is too little too late and may never reach the critical mass needed, within the critical available time, to achieve effective and lasting climate catastrophe aversion.
We already have significant climate instability. The Gulf Stream appears on the verge of collapsing. Humanity does not have the mental or moral fortitude to make the sweeping structural changes needed to transform our complex civilisations, to save our own lives.
Transformations must be globally implemented, with great urgency, to be effective. We have squandered decades clinging to fossil fuels and underinvesting in “green” technologies. Hyper-consumerism has infected social behaviours, and it will prove an addiction too many will not wish to forfeit until it is too late. Wealthy elites will not wish to relinquish their grip on market share and political power; and with Repressive State Apparatuses at their disposal, their revolt against environmentalists will likely be violent, as it was against the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (Hersher 2017).
I am pessimistic about the 21st century. As individuals we do what we can locally, but how can it be enough? The challenge is too great. There is no commitment from those with enough political and economic power to affect the necessary changes, and a significant civilian minority would not allow it on ideological or religious grounds. I hope to be proven wrong, because if not the future is likely to be – to quote from Leviathan – “poor, nasty, brutish, and short (Hobbes 1651)”.
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