Debating Climate Ethics Revisited

ABSTRACT

In Debating Climate Ethics, David Weisbach and I offer contrasting views of the importance of ethics and justice for climate policy. I argue that ethics is central. Weisbach advocates for climate policy based purely on narrow forms of self-interest. For this symposium, I summarize the major themes, and extend my basic argument. I claim that ethics gets the problem right, whereas dismissing ethics risks getting the problem dangerously wrong, and perpetuating profound injustices. One consequence is that we should reject the alleged “feasibility constraint” of short-term, economic self-interest.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate justice
• climate policy
• feasibility
• David Weisbach
• climate politics
• Eric Posner

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Parts were presented at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (2016) and the American Philosophical Association, Central Division (2021). I thank those audiences, particularly Monica Aufrecht, Rachel Fredericks, Olufemi Taiwo, Gwynne Taraska and David Weisbach. I am especially grateful to Andrew Light.

2. That is not to say that there are not important disagreements within climate ethics. In my own case, see Gardiner 2011a (on Dale Jamieson on responsibility, e.g., Jamieson 2010); Gardiner 2013a (on Simon Caney on human rights, e.g., Caney 2010); Gardiner 2017a (on Jamieson and Darrel Moellendorf, e.g., Jamieson 2014, Moellendorf 2014); Gardiner 2017b and Gardiner in press (on John Broome on making the grandchildren pay for mitigation, e.g., Broome 2012, 2017; Broome and Foley 2016).

3. For instance, the UNFCCC states that its major objective is the prevention of ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference’ with the climate system, for the purpose of protecting current and future generations of mankind, and in accordance with norms of equity, responsibility, and the right to sustainable development (UNFCCC, 1992). This treaty was ratified by all major nations, and has subsequently been reaffirmed through various subsidiary agreements (e.g. UNFCCC, 2015).

4. The reason is that ‘a climate treaty is possible only if it makes all countries better off than the status quo’, since ‘treaties are deals that countries enter into in order to advance their interests’.

5. There is some discussion of a surplus that might be distributed on ethical grounds. But ultimately they seem to think this will not happen (cf. 58–59).

6. ‘This is not to say that the rich countries should ignore the moral claims of poor countries. But these claims should be based on their poverty … . Aid and other forms of assistance … based on humanitarian considerations … already take place outside any climate treaty. And that is where they should stay. ’ (Posner, 2013)

7. Similarly: ‘it is in our self-interest to … reduce emissions to near zero in the not-too-distant future … solely [on the basis of] the simple self-interest of people who are alive today, their children, and their grandchildren’ (170); ‘while I believe in a broad notion of self-interest and well-being, we need not engage in debates about exactly what this means to know that we should want to limit climate change’ (154).

8. When one adds other greenhouse gases, the rise is equivalent to around 60%.

9. For a more detailed discussion – including of the paradigm cases of ‘the pure intergenerational problem’ and ‘the intergenerational arms race’ – see Gardiner (2003), Gardiner (2011b), and forthcoming 1).

10. A core example is theories that effectively combat the tyranny of the contemporary. Other sample issues are raised by Broome (2005), Palmer (2011), Parfit (1985), as well as Gardiner (2009, 2011b, 2011c).

11. One common slide occurs when economic realists begin by saying that they endorse a ‘pure policy’ approach that somehow opposes ethics, then proceed to invoke a thin, but ethically-loaded version of self-interest, then move on to embrace various thicker ethical views based on the lone value of welfare.Another slide involves talk of self-interest that moves quickly between (i) a very short-term, narrowly economic conception, to something grander, such as (ii) a more substantial three-generation model (‘us, our children and grandchildren’) that includes broader interests, or even (iii) to some vision of the substantive destiny of the nation as a whole, considered across indefinitely many generations.

12. The worry is that such shifts disguise what is going on. They take advantage of whatever the strengths of a particular conception would be in answering one question before moving on to another conception when the first comes under pressure. If one is not careful, one soon finds oneself trapped in a perpetual argumentative loop, cycling through a variety of different arguments and conceptions, as each tries to make up for the defects of the last, until one ends up back at the beginning, only to start all over again. This would be a particularly serious kind of theoretical inadequacy, and underscores the challenge of the theoretical storm.

13. This assumption – of effective intergenerational stewardship – is often a crucial, albeit implicit, component of the dominant tragedy of the commons analysis.

14. Another example is that outsourcing justice seems likely to make the prospects for a foreign aid treaty even worse (95).

15. Posner and Weisbach claim that ‘Nearly all states, even the very poor ones, have bargaining power. If poor states are left out of a treaty, they can become havens for GHG emitting industry, and in the long run subvert much of the progress.’ (PW 188). I agree that this is a threat (Gardiner, 2004b), but suspect that rich countries can extinguish it through other means.

16. Moreover, if even moral commitments to environmentalism (‘Animals and trees have rights!’) are absorbed and rebranded under the umbrella of an agent’s self-interest, perceived self-interest is largely vacuous: anything can count that the agent cares about or takes as a reason for action.

17. He goes on: ‘While I believe in a broad notion of self-interest and well-being, we need not engage in debates about exactly what this means to know that we should want to limit climate change’.

18. E.g. think of the situation of the current grandchildren on the three-generation model.