The Transition Movement discussion

Chapter 21. Moving Toward a Global Moral Consensus on Environmental Action.

By Kathleen Dean Moore (School of History, Philosophy, and Religion/Oregon State Univ.) and Michael P. Nelson (prof. of environmental ethics and philosophy, Oregon State Univ.)

While the problems of climate and environmental changes are scientific, technological, and economic issues, the authors claim that they are also moral issues. As they put it, there is “an increasing awareness that environmental emergencies, especially those caused by rapid climate change, are fundamentally moral issues that call for a moral response" (p. 225; my emphasis); and cite comments by such diverse notables as James Hansen, Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama to support this claim.

They then point out that the logic of policy decisions generally entails both factual assumptions about how various policies will affect the real world, and a normative assumption, based on our judgment of what is right and good; that is, the goal we have, the real-world outcome that we are trying to achieve.

This, they claim, is the source of the denial of climate change science. The deniers cannot deny the normative goal about the kind of world we want to have, so they must deny the factual assumption that continuing on our present course will lead to the failure to achieve that goal.

The chapter then continues with the following sections.


Shared Moral Principles That Require Action

The following moral principles are stated as “fundamental moral principles of human and political action”, relevant to “a global moral response to climate change and other environmental crises.”

Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. (from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) “The consequences of global warming and widespread environmental degradation … are a systematic denial of human rights.” Denial by whom? “By the wealthy nations and the wealthiest subpopulations of all nations.” Denial for what purpose? “For the continuing consumption of material goods and the accumulation of wealth.”

Justice, and intergenerational justice in particular, require an equitable distribution of benefits and burdens. The people who will be hurt disproportionally by environmental degradation and catastrophe

are unlikely ever to see the putative benefits of the profligate use of fossil fuels and natural resources. Moreover, they are the people least responsible for causing the harm … those least able to speak in their own defense … They are the future people who do not exist and so cannot defend themselves against the profound destabilization of the world. They are plants and animals and ecosystems destroyed wholesale to support lifestyles of the present. They are marginalized people everywhere … And they are children. That is a violation of distributive justice.

Humans have an absolute obligation to protect children from harm. At this point, few can genuinely claim ignorance of the consequences of our environment-affecting actions. As one notable has said “This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children.” (Barack Obama)

We have an obligation as moral beings to act with compassion.

Of all the virtues … the greatest may be compassion … If virtuous people are compassionate, if compassionate people act to reduce suffering, and if climate change will cause suffering around the world, then we who call ourselves virtuous have a moral obligation to avert the effects of the coming storms.”

It is wrong to wreck the world. Albert Leopold wrote, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Moral integrity requires us to make decisions that embody our values. Gus Speth has said, “All we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and ecosystem and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing what we are doing today.”

Between the polar opposites of blind hope and blinding despair that are the two extreme reactions to this realization, “is a vast and fertile middle ground, which is integrity.” Moral integrity “is a fundamental moral obligation – to act in ways that are consistent with our beliefs about what is right.”


A Competing Moral Value that Blocks Climate Action

The moral value of “personal freedom”, which would likely have to be restricted to some extent if climate change is to be addressed effectively, is mentioned. The authors summarize this value conflict by saying, “What the world faces is a choice between social constraints democratically chosen and the fierce, uncontrollable, lethally unleashed constraints of flood, fire, and the societal chaos that will accompany rapid ecological changes.” Although this may be dramatizing what will happen somewhat it does seem likely that there certainly won’t be much left of “freedom” for the average person.

Box 21-1, titled Ethics at the End of the World, discusses some possible ways in which ethics might be altered if things go bad. The quotes in this box are from the extraordinary memoir of psychiatrist Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.


From Moral Imperative to Moral Action

The concluding section of the chapter discusses several ways in which people are working "to harness the power of moral conviction in efforts to slow climate destabilization and ecological disruption”:

Moral Rights (the 2000 Earth Charter, the formal legal rights granted to the earth by Ecuador and Bolivia in recent years, and a campaign in Britain to make “ecocide” an international crime);

Conscientious Action (the campaign by Bill McKibben and 350.org against the Keystone XL pipeline – to which can be added the fossil fuel divestiture campaign by the same);

Faith-based Action (actions by the Evangelical Environmental Network and the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate);

Reimagining Ethics (the recognition that a human/nature dualism, and human exceptionalism are fundamentally mistaken; and development of an earth-based ethics “to replace anthropocentric utilitarianism, which measures acts by their usefulness to human ends”);

and Reimagining Institutions (the end of the “business-as-usual” corporation, in favor of a corporate paradigm which integrates social benefit directly into the mission and charter of business).


A Paradigm Shift in Worldviews

The authors summarize

Along with these moral responses to climate change comes the call for a Great Turning, as Joanna Macy puts it, toward a paradigm shift in worldview, away from the conviction that humans are separate from and superior to the rest of creation … Because we are part of the earth’s systems, humans are utterly dependent on their resilience and thriving. How soon we grasp that reality will determine not only our ecological and social future but our moral future as well.

It’s pretty easy to dismiss the views in this chapter as wishful thinking. But I think it’s worth recalling how attitudes and commonly held outlooks can change quite rapidly, especially when a large number of people start to believe that an ethical principle, or an issue of justice, is at stake. Not only has this happened in the past, but it can happen much more easily in today’s world of the internet and world-wide social web-sites.

I see both the U.S. Civil Rights revolution in the 1960s, and the recent U.S. swing in attitudes toward gay marriage as illustrations of this. Neither of these were easy, nor are either of them really complete, but enough did change so that institutions and laws were swiftly and fundamentally changed.

And of course the attitudes, which this chapter is largely talking about, changed before the institutions and laws; it was the changed attitudes which caused the societal changes.