Throughout the recorded history of the human species, several societies have faced existential crises that mandated major cultural shifts in opinion and philosophical outlook. In fact, I would argue that all major philosophical paradigm shifts have coincided with major social upheaval and crisis. The most recent and poignant example of such a shift was the advent of the postmodern era as a reaction against modernism. The beginning of the end for modern thought was the advent of nuclear technologies. As the Cold War progressed and people were faced with a growing insecurity in their existence brought about by the nuclear arms race and the ability of few to destroy many, the flaws of modern thought became progressively apparent.
Today, we have come to face a similar crisis, and in fact the crises that brought about the advent of postmodernism overlaps significantly with the crises that may end it. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have been steadily increasing in number and carbon output due to over-consumption of goods. This increased carbon output has steadily warmed the globe through the greenhouse effect, and if we do not stop it, the effects of climate change will be devastating to humans in coastal and warmer areas. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus on the matter, some still cling to ignorance regarding our culpability for this problem.
Climate change is an issue of major contention amongst politically engaged individuals in America and across the globe. The question of climate change, its relationship to human activity, and policies surrounding environmental concerns raises deeper questions about the nature of truth, the specter of modern philosophy in today’s technology, and our ethical responsibilities regarding the planet. Humanity is facing its first crisis that threatens the existence of not only our culture locally, but our survival as a species. A change in cultural attitude will either rise up to meet the challenges posed by climate change, or we will die out and the questions raised will no longer require an answer.
The global atmosphere and climate are a public, common good insomuch that no one may claim ownership of them; this means that the problem of climate change can be understood through a version of the Prisoners’ Dilemma known as the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy starts with two basic premises: 1) it is in everyone’s best interest to maintain and preserve common goods so that they are not exhausted, and 2) everyone can benefit individually from exploiting common goods. If the lesson taught by the Prisoners’ Dilemma is followed, that as individuals it is in our best interest to act selfishly, and we do not change our approach to such ethical topics as to consider more than our individual well-being, then the tragedy plays out as it is named, tragically, with the common good being exhausted completely.
The developed nations of the world have been the largest beneficiaries to greenhouse gas emissions, and have contributed the most to anthropogenic climate change. This seems to suggest that, when splitting the bill for climate change mitigation, the largest portion (nearly all) of the bill should be passed to the Western, developed nations, especially the United States. The issue with this approach is that the Western world, in contributing to greenhouse emissions, has also built the largest economy, and with that, has assembled the most political power. Any international political power looking to mitigate climate change must offer up solutions that developed nations would agree to participate in, and if a solution demands that the developed world pay its fair share towards mitigating climate change, there is little hope of ever getting the cooperation of nations like the United States. This politically aware approach demands an even more prudent solution due to the “America First” rhetoric of the Trump administration. Despite growing scientific evidence supporting the conclusion that climate change is anthropogenic and a threat to human survival, the epistemic surety of the United States has fallen into such disarray that at least enough of the public does not believe in scientific evidence supporting anthropogenic climate change to elect a climate change denier into the office of the President. As such, a brief examination of climate evidence is mandated by our current political climate.
In search of a valid source that supports the existence of anthropogenic climate change, one need not look far. In my research on the topic I found a total of zero sources claiming anything other than anthropogenic climate change, and these sources date back to at least 1991, when Shell (the oil company) produced a documentary called Climate of Concern, reporting on U.N. and in-company research about the effects burning fossil fuels have on the global temperature. Despite being publicly aware of climate change concerns, Shell and other oil companies continued to invest heavily in oil production. Some oil companies have even hired the same research firms who raised doubts about the health effects of smoking to create reports designed to raise doubts as to whether climate change is anthropogenic. [1]
In response to further bleak reports on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed to create an authority consensus on climate change and its effects. This panel has significant input from countries with high interest in the success of the fossil fuel industry like the United States and Russia, but in spite of this conflict of interest, the IPCC still reports a bleak outlook if nothing is done about our carbon emissions.[2] Furthermore, we are now witnessing the effects of climate change on local markets and agriculture. The production of maple syrup has slowed considerably in the northeast United States, where maple syrup used to be a large agricultural force. Now, the industry has been forced northward into Canada, where the climate has warmed enough to make maple syrup production more economically viable.[3]
Several international agreements have been made regarding the mitigation of climate change in the past. The first of these was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, which provided the groundwork for other international agreements to be made. The second was the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which extended the UNFCCC and provided emissions targets to member countries, the United States failed to ratify it in the Senate. The last, and most recently famous, is the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement does not mandate a punishment for member countries that fail to meet emissions regulations, but it does require that member countries analyze and report the findings on their domestic emissions and their relationship to the goals of the UNFCCC. The United States pulled out of the Paris Agreement because of a question regarding how our membership was ratified. Nonetheless, these international efforts, while moving us in the correct direction, have done very little to move us towards solving the issue at hand, especially without cooperation from the United States.[4]
The arguments that normally revolve around the topic of climate change raise questions as to whether we can really be certain of anything we hear secondhand and do not experience ourselves. This distinctively postmodern mindset being applied to such an existential crisis has led to a sudden awareness of the failures of postmodernism in providing enough guidance to the mostly unphilosophical public in terms of action and truth. Postmodernism works in such a crisis only if everyone is equally informed, otherwise it ensures that we can never agree enough to work together. Unfortunately, the primary reactions to this realization of the failures of postmodernism in guiding the uninformed have been either a re-entrenchment of the fundamentalist modern mindset or a nihilistic skepticism without the counterbalance of the existentialist search for meaning. Neither of these systems of thought alone can provide an adequate solution to climate change, and a new paradigm shift is required if the problem of climate change is to be dealt with.
Before I present my view on this potential paradigm shift, it is necessary to examine two other possible solutions to the problem of climate change. The first of these solutions is that offered by the modern mindset. This solution could be called the superhero, deus ex machina, solution, but the more accurate name for it is the geoengineering solution. This solution requires that we treat the earth’s biosphere as one large, potentially devastating laboratory.[5] We are currently capable of technical, engineered, high-tech solutions to the climate issue, but in order to implement these solutions, we would need to roll the dice on potentially catastrophic outcomes should any factors be unconsidered in predicting how these solutions might affect the biosphere in the long-term. Some of the proposals of the geoengineering solution are injecting the earth’s atmosphere with reflective particles to reflect a portion of sunlight away from the earth, effectively putting a sunshade on the entire planet, allowing us to continue the emissions of greenhouse gases without further warming effects. Other solutions involve satellite arrays which can deploy to reflect sunlight, and carbon removal machines.[6]
The second potential solution is to consider the role of the individual in climate change mitigation. Most people are uninformed about the role they play in climate change and are overwhelmed by the controversy surrounding the topic. Yet, when Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, several mayors and local communities voiced that they would still fulfill their obligations to the goals of climate change mitigation. If proper education and discussion on the topic of climate change can rise above the level of heated argument, then people have shown that they desire to be a part of the right side of this issue. No one wants to be the bad guy of the story, even if that means they have to sacrifice. The ethical pressure on individuals to cut back on carbon emissions needs to be made known in a compelling manner. The zero emissions year (year in which we can no longer emit greenhouse gases) for avoiding the bulk of damage that would be caused by continued emission of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is fast approaching, in fact it is somewhere between 2030 and 2050, depending on how quickly we cut back on our emissions now. If we cut back more now, it allows us a greater amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the future, buying us precious time in which to find a better solution. We each have a role to play in maintaining a lean carbon budget for the betterment of future mankind, and the cause of the problem in the first place, while almost entirely corporate greed, is also due to complicit individuals and conspicuous consumption.[7]
Joseph Grange presents a peculiar amalgamation of American philosophy and Confucianism in his article, Healing the Planet. He argues that both Western and Eastern philosophies contain, within their past, the philosophical toolkit necessary to properly address the issue of global warming. This toolkit can be found in the American philosophical approach to ethics in that, finding little value in empirically-based ethics that cannot reach beyond nihilism, most American philosophy looks to aesthetics to shape our ethics. This view is best expressed by Charles Saunders Pierce, who regarded aesthetics as the ground of ethics, epistemology, and even logic. Thus, feeling, which is the driving principle behind aesthetics, also becomes the ground of intelligence. Knowledge without praxis (the embodiment/actualization of knowledge) is not intelligence.[8]
Thus, Western philosophy provides a framework for understanding Confucian non-dualism in today’s context. Confucius places the role of knowledge in intimate conversation with that of feeling in his idea of xin, the heartmind.[9] On each side of the conflict caused by climate change we see a form of dualism that has ceased to be helpful in our context of potential risk to human existence. The artificial division between us and our environment hinders our ability to see how small daily decisions relate to the systematic exploitation of the environment. Our interdependence on our environment goes further than merely our material sustenance. Our very consciousness and identity arises because of our consideration of that which is not us (our environment), and thus our identity is the gap between us and our environment. To say it briefly, our consciousness is the space between that which we are, and that which we are not. Without both of these components, we are nothing.
This non-dualism applies to the situation of climate change in several different ways. It provides a foundation for claiming earth-care as an ethical duty, since the border between individual and nature is no longer clear in non-dualism. This paradigm shift is mere speculation, but no other ethical system can adequately answer the questions raised by anthropogenic climate change. Non-dualism provides a basis to rethink our relationship with each other as well as with property and consumption. Ignoring climate change is no longer a viable option in non-dualism, let alone an ethical one.
Works Cited:
Deady, Erin L. “Why the Law of Climate Change Matters: From Paris to a Local Government Near You.” The Florida Bar Journal 91, no. 9 (2017): 54-58. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
Fuente, de la Alberto, Rojas, Maisa, and Lean, Claudia Mac. “A human-scale perspective on global warming: Zero emission year and personal quotas.” The Public Library of Science One 12, no. 6 (2017): 1-16. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
Grange, Joseph. “Healing the Planet.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 40 (2013): 251-269. Philosopher’s Index, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
Romar, Edward J. “Snapshots of the Future: Darfur, Katrina, and Maple Sugar (Climate Change, the Less Well-Off and Business Ethics).” Journal of Business Ethics 85, (2009): 121-132. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
Steadman, Hugh. “Climate Catastrophe.” New Zealand International Review 42, no. 4 (2017): 19-23. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
Stilgoe, Jack. “Geoengineering as Collective Experimentation.” Science and Engineering Ethics 22, no. 3 (2016): 851-869. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Hugh Steadman, “Climate Catastrophe,” New Zealand International Review 42, no. 4 (2017): 19-23, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Hugh Steadman, “Climate Catastrophe,” New Zealand International Review 42, no. 4 (2017): 19-23, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Edward J. Romar, “Snapshots of the Future: Darfur, Katrina, and Maple Sugar (Climate Change, the Less Well-Off and Business Ethics),” Journal of Business Ethics 85, (2009): 121-132, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Erin L. Deady, “Why the Law of Climate Change Matters: From Paris to a Local Government Near You,” The Florida Bar Journal 91, no. 9 (2017): 54-58, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Jack Stilgoe, “Geoengineering as Collective Experimentation,” Science and Engineering Ethics 22, no. 3 (2016): 851-869, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Jack Stilgoe, “Geoengineering as Collective Experimentation,” Science and Engineering Ethics 22, no. 3 (2016): 851-869, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Alberto de la Fuente, Maisa Rojas, and Claudia Mac Lean, “A human-scale perspective on global warming: Zero emission year and personal quotas,” The Public Library of Science One 12, no. 6 (2017): 1-16, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Joseph Grange, “Healing the Planet,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 40 (2013): 251-269, Philosopher’s Index, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).
- Joseph Grange, “Healing the Planet,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 40 (2013): 251-269, Philosopher’s Index, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2017).