The shifting patterns of progress

Publication of the final issue of Journal of Global Ethics for 2017 is an opportunity to look back at an eventful year and reflect on what might be in store for us next. As Martin Schönfeld, who is an environmental philosopher, is now co-editor of the journal, we thought this is a good opportunity to focus on environmental issues in our editorial article – particularly as the events of this year illustrate an ideological polarization on how to respond to Earth system overshoot.

In 2017, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 2. This is the illustrative calendar date when annual total consumption exceeded annual planetary capacity. The overshoot is a quantitative measure and it works like this: divide what the Earth system assimilates and produces in a year (environmental services plus biotic productivity) by what civilization puts in and takes out from it (ecological footprint), and multiply the resulting fraction with the number of days in a year. Ideally, the value of the fraction ought to be 1 or greater, but since the 1970s, it has been less than that, and it keeps falling. This signals a crossing of system limits. Civilization overshoots system capacity when collective human demand exceeds environmental supply.

A sustainable civilization would run out of a year's supply by December 31, if ever. Unsustainable cultures, however, do run out. How much eco-debt they rack up is told by the date. In 1971, global demand exceeded supply for the first time and civilization edged into unsustainable territory. Overshoot Day that year fell on December 21. In 1988, 30 years ago, civilization used up a year's worth of system capacity by October 16. When Journal of Global Ethics was founded in 2004, with volume 1 released in 2005, the overshoot date was September 2. This year's date, August 2, is the earliest yet. We now operate as if we lived on 1.7 planets.

The global average glosses over national differences, and these differences don't quite match long-standing expectations anymore – as if, for instance, rich countries must have big environmental footprints and incur large ecological debts, and poor countries would have to be their direct opposites. Of course, to an extent, the old pattern still persists. Norway, for instance, ranks highest on the UN Human Development Index (HDI) and had its national overshoot day already on April 18 – months before the global average. Honduras, by contrast, operated within planetary boundaries in 2017 and didn't run out of supply until December 31, but its HDI rank is only a modest #130 (out of 188 ranked countries).

On the one hand, these differences align with conventional expectations. Consider the contrast in sustainability, with wealthy Norwegians being wildly in overshoot, and modest Hondurans staying within Earth system limits. Location surely matters. Societies exposed to subarctic and arctic climate are bound to consume more energy and materials per capita and year than societies with a mild climate that varies from tropical at the coasts to temperate in the mountains. Furthermore, and unlike Honduras, Norway is a major oil producer, and extractive industries are notoriously energy-intensive. This adds to Norway's overshoot and large carbon footprint. At the same time, oil production also partially explains Norway's high level of human development – just as the lack of oil wealth accounts for the relatively modest development of Honduras. Before discovering oil in 1969, Norway's postwar economy had amounted to little more than fishing and farming, quite similar to the Honduran economy of the time.¹ Since then, crude oil extraction and the production of petroleum gases have become the central sources of Norway's wealth, while the Honduran economy shifted from farming and fishing to the manufacture of textiles, fabrics, and garments.² Profit margins for extracting light Brent Crude from near-shore, high quality oil wells are, unsurprisingly, higher than those for sewing clothes.

On the other hand, the data also suggest provocative new trends, particularly this year.³ How these emerging features defy expectations is encouraging. For example, Honduras's ranking at 130th place in this year's HDI doesn't mark its development as ‘low’. The rank belongs to the tier ‘medium human development,’ similar to that of Egypt (2017 HDI rank #111), Indonesia (#113), India (#131) or Nepal (#144). Furthermore, in terms of sustainability, Honduras is nearly on par with countries whose development is ‘high,’ such as Colombia and Cuba. Neither of these societies was doing badly in 2017. Colombia, which ranks #95 on the 2017 HDI, is now the fourth largest Latin American economy, and Cuba, which ranks #68, has the sixth highest level of human development of all Latin American countries.⁴ It is noteworthy that both Cuba and Colombia operate close to sustainability, with Colombia's national Overshoot Day on November 26, and Cuba's on December 2. Hence, defying expectations, the data suggest a new finding and a first thesis: a society does not have to stay in low development to keep to global system limits and become sustainable.

In case of the oil-producer Norway, the pattern is shifting even more profoundly. Although the combination of a large ecological debt and a high standard of living is all too familiar from last century's development matrix, Norway is poised to become the world's first post-carbon society. It follows European emissions standards (Norway is not in the EU), obtains an impressive 98% of its electricity from renewables, and has started to phase out petrol-powered vehicles. A nation-wide combustion engine ban will go into effect in less than a decade, by 2025. Because Norway also aligns with EU efficiency standards, its economy has been implementing closed-loop waste management. While other countries, such as Russia or the United States, are still enmeshed in a throwaway culture and find it difficult to move from dumping to recycling, Norway, in step with the other Nordic countries and the EU-28, is realizing the next developmental stage: to integrate recycling into a suite of recovery techniques, which include refurbish/remanufacture, reuse/redistribute, and maintain/prolong pathways. Add to this a cultural pathway based on socialist sharing practices, with tool- and toy-lending libraries, and this structural array helps to close the matter-energy production loop and gets the world a step closer to sustainability.

Norway's success in harmonizing development and sustainability provides real glimmerings of leadership. Its ability to engage in many of its innovative moves can be chalked up to re-investment of an enormous accumulation of wealth from petroleum, however. Its path is not available to all, and not one for others to emulate, at least in that particular aspect. In autumn 2017, Norway's Central Bank recommended fossil fuel divestment to the country's sovereign wealth fund, which is significant not the least because the fund is the largest per capita and the third-largest total in the world.⁵ Earlier, in summer, the newly elected parliament reaffirmed its commitment to leave the vast oil reserves at the Lofoten archipelago in the ground (est. at 65 billion USD, Economist 29 Aug 17). Norway's carbon footprint already peaked in 2004-2005. From 2004 to 2012, national waste generation declined 23% during a 13% increase in corresponding sectoral output.⁶ Norway's environmental footprint excluding CO₂ peaked in 2006. In 2007, then Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg declared that its country would seek to cut more emissions than its Kyoto Protocol commitments require, and that he expected Norway to be carbon-neutral by 2050.⁷ In response to the Paris Accord 2015, the Norwegian Parliament moved the target forward in 2016, now seeking carbon neutrality by 2030.⁸ Norway's eco-debt is falling, and this is what human-nature coevolution looks like.

Here we see a democracy trying to do the right thing: pursuing rational policies based on science; spreading the wealth so as to promote social justice; and stranding its oil assets while using the profits to finance decarbonization.⁹ Here's a country that's systematically reining in its overshoot and is doing consistently great at the same time. Norway stayed at first place in terms of standard of living, life expectancy, and literacy combined, while proceeding to close production loops and shrink its footprint. It occupied top HDI rank from 2001 to 2006, when its demand on planetary supply was growing, and it returned to first place in 2009 and stayed there, after its sustainability transition had begun. Hence, the data suggest a second thesis: development doesn't have to entail overshoot.

This shifting pattern of progress contrasts with the waning paradigm of premillennial civilization. On the other end of the spectrum are the worst planetary performers, the least sustainable societies in the world. They include major nations of the Anglophone hemisphere: Australia, Canada, and the United States. Each of them overshot their national share of this year's planetary budget already before the middle of March. On the 2017 HDI, Norway outranks Australia, while Canada and the United States tie for place ten. Like Norway, Australia owes its second place largely to an economy-boosting extraction of fossil and mining resources. Unlike Norway, Australia's government has shown little interest in reining in ecological overshoot and reducing its ecological debt. Second place, moreover, is a tie: Australia's equal in human development is resource-poor, far greener, and just as well-off Switzerland. Ranks three to nine are held by countries whose governments take sustainability seriously and whose policies differ from those of Anglophone leaders and their seemingly blind faith in Adam Smith's invisible hand; that is, Germany, Denmark, Singapore, Netherlands, Ireland, and Iceland.

Australia is Exhibit A for this civilizational maladaptation, and the long-term odds are not in its favor. Led by the science-skeptical Liberal Party, Australian governance differs from that of the feminists, greens, and socialists in Norway's parliament.¹⁰ Under the pro-business policies of Prime Minister Turnbull – whereby ‘business’ features mining, drilling, and extraction – shifting to a circular economics is not on the agenda. In 2016, numerous climatologists from the Atmosphere and Oceans Division of the federal science agency CSIRO were let go, even though the country is ‘ground zero’ for climate change, and climate change in the southern hemisphere is understudied.¹¹ Granted, Norway faces dramatic environmental shifts, too, and northern Scandinavia's indigenous Sami lifeways are at risk to global warming.¹² But Australia is already the driest nation on Earth, and this exposes its entire society to climatic impacts. Droughts, floods, and fires are the new normal of Australian news. Recent heatwaves were so severe that Australian meteorologists had to add a new color, violet, to their temperature charts. The warmer seas north of the continent keep spawning jellyfish blooms, some with highly toxic species that are beneficiaries of global warming. The globally unique Great Barrier Reef, a UNESCO Heritage Site, suffered such severe stress in 2017 that news organizations reported ‘unprecedented’ degradation (CNN), with ‘two-thirds damaged’ (BBC), and ‘large sections dead’ (NY Times).¹³ Apart from the catastrophic impact on biological diversity and nonhuman populations, the climatic effects on the Australian society are unequivocally negative. Making Australia even drier and hotter, and turning its seas into marine deserts is bad for the national aqua- and agriculture, for local fisheries, for the tourism industry, and for the nation's image.

Canada is Exhibit B. The 2015 election of Prime Minister Trudeau of the comparatively moderate Liberal Party was an improvement over the neoliberalism of the previous administration. This progressive turn may put Canada on a track that makes it better prepared for the climate challenges to come. But despite diplomatic support for the Paris Accord, Canada's actual policies are not encouraging. The Trudeau government supports the expansion of drilling and mining operations of tar sands and oil shale deposits. Extracting and processing these so-called dirty fossil fuels leaves a large carbon footprint due to the additional energy needed for separating oil and gas from its sedimentary and mineral contaminants. In a keynote address at the 2017 CERAWeek petroleum energy conference in Houston, Texas (at the ironically labeled ‘Environment Leadership Award’ dinner), Prime Minister Trudeau promised the assembled oil executives that he would get ‘three new pipeline projects under way … [to] connect Canada's oil patch with energy markets around the world,’ and declared, ‘no country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.’¹⁴ In contrast to Norway, Canada has no intention of stranding its oil assets. Despite its reassuring diplomatic presence, Canada is an uncompromising actor in the carbon consensus of the Anglophone hegemony.¹⁵ Instead of another thesis, this raises a future-oriented question: how long can regimes that pursue unsustainable policies maintain the stability of their nation-states?

For the United States, Exhibit C of the old development matrix, the answer may well have come in this past year. The political turmoil of 2017 had been preceded by an erosion of welfare that even the recovery from the 2008 recession, full employment, and a booming stock market have failed to offset. From 2002 to 2014, real wages fell for 95% of Americans while prices rose 60% for energy, 20% for healthcare, and 40% for education.¹⁶ From 2014 through 2016, wages adjusted for inflation only rose for the top of the distribution but stagnated for those in the bottom and middle.¹⁷ Already in 2016, the combination of rising prices and falling wages had led to the circumstance that new cars had become too expensive for medium-income urban households; a situation that remained unchanged in 2017.¹⁸ Similar to the lack of universal health care, the creeping unaffordability of cars crosses an existential threshold. Americans depend on private mobility more than citizens in most other countries do, given the scarcity of public transit. This makes the quotidian existence of average US citizens fragile. Everything is fine unless one's car breaks down, for then, unable to get to work, and without union protection, one might lose one's job – and unless one falls seriously ill, for then, without universal health care, one might lose everything. This doesn't affect the rich, but it threatens everyone else. After a 2017 visit, the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights concluded that the United States is on track to ‘become the most unequal society in the world,’ adding that it has the ‘lowest rate of social mobility of any of the rich countries.’¹⁹

Political radicalization is the bitter fruit of steadily waning welfare. In 1995, 6% of Americans believed it would be better to live under military rule; by 2016, this segment had grown to 20%.²⁰ Democratic disenchantment is worst among the young. Only 30% of so-called millennials (Americans born 1980 or later) believe it is ‘essential’ to live in a democracy, and less than a third of millennials share a ‘deep allegiance to the democratic system.’²¹ There's also a difference in sympathy for authoritarianism by income, with waning support for democracy among the wealthy. In 2014, 34% of upper-income respondents believe it would be ‘good’ or ‘very good’ to have a ‘strong leader’ who doesn't have to ‘bother with parliament and elections’; this is up from 19% in 1995.²² This year has seen a consolidation of anti-democratic trends among conservatives. By mid-2017, a quarter of all voters, and particularly those on one side of the major party divide in US politics said in a poll they would support postponing elections if the president wanted it.²³ Fascist sentiments are not widely shared in the academic community, at least not yet, and this pits educators against radicals. While a majority of the American public still approves of institutions of higher learning, another 2017 poll found 58% of voters on one side of the US party divide convinced that universities exert a bad influence on the country.²⁴

A symptom of this radicalization is a nativist and inward turn of American policy.²⁵ At the December 2017 Berlin Foreign Policy Forum, German Foreign Minister Gabriel said that the United States’ withdrawal from its role as a guarantor of West multilateralism is changing the post-World War II global order, and concluded that relations with the US ‘will never be the same’ and that the ‘American Century’ has come to an end.²⁶ In his New Year's address, UN Secretary-General Guterres issued a ‘Red Alert’ to the world:

In fundamental ways, the world has gone in reverse … conflicts have deepened, and new dangers have emerged … climate change is moving faster than we are; inequalities are growing, and we see horrific violations of human rights.²⁷

Compounding the problem is that the administration that came into office in the United States in 2017 has conducted a year-long war on its own institutions and regulations. Government-led attacks on institutions began right after the presidential inauguration in January. Some of the attacks, as on the State Department, have been conducted by payroll reduction of diplomats and by dismissal of intelligence assets. At the end of this year, various ambassadorial posts remain vacant and foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential election has remained without proper intelligence response. Other attacks, such as on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have been performed by putting supervisors in charge whose backgrounds are almost comically opposed to the institutional mission. The result has been a rollback of environmental regulations, including the scrapping of oil drilling safety rules imposed after British Petroleum's 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the sale of public lands to private bidders, which includes the opening of the largest roadless American wilderness, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, to oil leasing.²⁸ The internationally visible symptom of this nativist turn has been the American opposition to the United Nations in 2017 – even though the name of the global institution was coined by a US president, its first meeting was held on US soil, and its current headquarters are located in a US city. In June, the United States announced its departure from the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC); in October, it announced its withdrawal from UNESCO; and in November, its delegates at the Climate talks in Bonn (COP-23) pushed for ‘clean coal’.

So soon after this eventful year it is impossible to say whether the transformation of the erstwhile superpower in 2017 will be a rupture that can be repaired by future administrations, or whether, in retrospect, it will be regarded as a watershed moment of irreversible changes that have now begun. Either way, the political and philosophical concept of an ‘American Disenlightenment’ is gaining in substance.²⁹ Facing the overshoot, there is now a danger that this transformation may lock the nation into a nonviable development model. At present, the United States and other leading nations of the Anglophone hegemony fail to see the opportunities of the shifting pattern of progress: a ‘safe operating space’ for development on an equitable social foundation and beneath a sustainable environmental ceiling.³⁰ The missed opportunities of transitioning to sustainability in Australia, in Canada, and in the United States raise the issue of who or what will fill their hegemonic void. And this is the third thesis: the crisis of the Anglophone hegemony is an opportunity for new leadership on equity, decarbonization, and sustainability.

Who these actors are remains to be seen, but hope comes not only from the geopolitical contenders named in this essay, but also from the People's Republic of China. The 19th Congress of the Communist Party in October 2017 was a landmark event. In his report, President Xi Jinping laid out a new model of development, which he calls ‘Socialist Ecological Civilization’ (社会主义生态文明; shehui zhuyi shengtai wenming).³¹ He said that China will assume the leadership in climate change mitigation, that the Party will step up efforts to facilitate green, low-carbon, and circular development, and that ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ (中国特色社会主义; zhongguo tese shehui zhuyi) entails modernization with humans developing in harmony with nature.³² Despite a struggle with corruption, acknowledged by Xi, China's advantage is a buffer between state administration and corporate interests that is not found in the liberal market democracies of the Anglophone Far West. This buffer concerns what Anglophone media call ‘state capitalism’ and which, in China, is Leninist economics (New Economic Policy). In the Soviet economy, prior to Stalin's collectivization, Lenin sought to balance collective and private ownership. Banks, railroads, utilities, and industries were nationalized, while free enterprise was permitted in the agricultural and commercial sectors (farms, stores, and shops). Mao Zedong adopted Stalinism, with disastrous results, but his successor Deng Xiaoping returned to Leninism and thus laid the foundation for present-day China. Deng abolished collectivization and promoted private enterprise, while retaining state control over sectors such as finance, utilities, and transport. Free enterprise, however, is not entirely free because it is checked by government planning. Xi, his successor (after Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao), builds on Deng's Leninist foundation by retaining Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, but gives it a green twist by directing progress towards a Socialist Ecological Civilization. This is the buffer; it separates state and market, and it allows for more strategic responses to the climate crisis than a US-style liberalism hamstrung by market dynamics, private interests, and short-term goals.

Whether President Xi can deliver on his model of development remains to be seen. But with regard to science-based policies, China is off to a good start. In 2017, the country more than doubled America's investments in clean energy; the domestic market that year accounted for half of the globe's investments in solar; the government boosted clean energy spending by 24% and nearly doubled the planned installation of photovoltaic (PV) capacity in a ‘runaway’ decarbonization, installing 53 gigawatts of PV in 2017, 20 more gigawatts than projected.³³ Add to this a hopeful cultural fact: China has a record of managing resources sustainably, and the earliest argument for sustainable development comes from Confucianism (Mencius, 1A.3).

In sum, from the perspective of political philosophy, global ethics, and human rights, 2017 was a year of dramatic changes. The ‘acceleration of history’ predicted by Lester R. Brown in 1996 as a consequence of overshoot is now in full swing.³⁴ As provisional as it must be at this point, a fourth and final thesis is evident: over environmental progress and human development, the baton passed in 2017 from the Anglophone hegemony to something entirely new.³⁵

If this philosophical survey leaves the reader with a sense of unease, so much the better, for this issue of Journal of Global Ethics contains a special section on an alternative to conventional geopolitical leadership. If nation-state contenders, whether this be America or China, are found wanting, might there not be a better way? At present, civil evolution points to a post-carbon, post-consumerist, and post-neoliberal future. Should it also point to a post-national future; that is, to a cosmopolitan order with an authoritative and impartial league of nations as envisioned by Kant in Perpetual Peace, which may grow into a world government? Clearly, for reining in the overshoot, a fragmented, multipolar global community is a liability. In the guest-edited section ‘World Government,’ section editor Attila Tanyi has assembled a group of authors who explore this question: Vuko Andrić, on ‘Affected Interests and Global Democracy’; András Miklós and Attila Tanyi, on ‘Institutional Consequentialism and Global Governance’; Henning Hahn, on ‘Political Reconciliation at the Level of Global Governance’; and Alice Pinheiro Walla, on ‘Global Government or Global Governance? Realism and Idealism in Kant’. Please see the introduction to the special section by Attila Tanyi for further details on these offerings.

From our regular stream of article submissions we have gathered for this issue a set of papers, the first of which is ‘Political Efficacy, Respect for Agency, and Adaptive Preferences,’ by Steven Weimer. Weimer considers Serene Khader's perfectionist account of wellbeing – the view that there are identifiable standards of wellbeing – and Rosa Terlazzo's autonomy-based account, in which what Terlazzo dubs ‘content-neutral’ autonomous preferences are authoritative. Though both authors would allow that it is reasonable to expect that people do not wish to retain preferences inconsistent with their basic welfare, the details of just how their decisions might be judged as autonomous, as opposed to adaptive, remain a point of discussion. Weimer proposes a theoretical account that cleaves more to Terlazzo's approach, with added emphasis on the agent's critical reflection as the source of a marker of agency for the formation of autonomous preferences. Weimer's approach to adding the agent's conception of value, which he calls ‘meaningful agency,’ might be surveyed as an alternative option to Terlazzo's own account of ‘secondary recognition respect’ for agents’ decisions.

In ‘Climate Justice after Paris: a Normative Framework,’ Alexandre Gajevic Sayegh suggests a real-world interpretation of the common but differentiated responsibilities laid out by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC, art. 3.1 and 4.1). Because of the harms imposed by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and because mitigation imposes burdens on agents, climate change is a concern of global ethics and theories of justice. Influential theoretical approaches, such as those by Peter Singer, Dale Jamieson and Simon Caney, focus on distributing GHG emission rights. Such distribution proceeds from egalitarian considerations (to divide allocations based on ‘equal sacrifice’) supplemented by historical responsibilities, the benefits derived from past emissions, and the capacity to pay for mitigation. Actual climate negotiations, however, show that this approach runs into the so-called development challenge: the difficulty of pursuing the goals of mitigation and development at the same time. The problem is that the development of poorer countries, at least initially, causes an emissions spike. While a global emissions trading scheme might be a solution, there is as yet no institutional structure for a global cap-and-trade system. But there are institutions for addressing the development challenge in a climate context: the finance mechanism of the Green Climate Fund. Gajevic Sayegh argues that a switch in approach, from mitigation to finance, would be more realistic. In his examination of climate justice, he constructs a normative framework for mitigation while allowing for development by distributive principles that regulate finance.

Another way of financing development or restoration would be by compensating victims for the harms inflicted. In ‘How Should Citizens’ Collective Liability for State Action Be Grounded?’ Robert Huseby examines the democratic authorization account, which has recently been defended by John Parrish and Anna Stilz. According to this account, citizens are liable for the actions of their state, since their electoral choices constitute a collective authorization of the state's actions. Huseby agrees with this account, but worries about the extent to which citizens of a state can be held liable and where the line should be drawn. A further issue concerns the actual democratic authorization of the policies of the perpetrating state, such as the extent of its democratic rights, or how ‘democratic’ the perpetrating state really is. Parrish and Stilz illustrate this concern with the Anglo-American war on Iraq that began in 2003, a textbook case of an unjust war that led to an estimated 650,000 deaths by mid-2006, according to a well-known study published in Lancet, but whose perpetration did not clearly fall within the democratic mandate of the state – since the US and UK misled their citizens about the casus belli; since black US voters are regularly disenfranchised based on racial profiling; and since the war was controversial in either country. Such concerns do not undermine the democratic authorization account, but they highlight its limitations. For Huseby, this means that the account requires a supplement, and his examination concludes with the proposal of a subsidiary account based on ability, and incentives, and distributive concerns, such as differentiating collective liability based on individual moral responsibility – for example, which US and UK citizens prior to the Iraq War were ‘war mongers’ or ‘antiwar demonstrators’.

‘Toward Decolonial Global Ethics,’ by Robin Dunford, is an argument for the heuristic potential of decolonial theory. Decolonial perspectives deserve a place in global ethics, Dunford argues, even though they transcend the premises of moral cosmopolitanism. This does not mean that they are mutually exclusive opposites. Like cosmopolitanism, decolonial ethics rejects the differentiation of normative commitments based on political or cultural boundaries. Unlike cosmopolitanism, it endorses the worth of intercultural dialogue over abstract universal principles. While moral cosmopolitanism emphasizes individual agency and is only about humans, decolonial global ethics integrates both communal entities and nonhuman collectives in its moral domain. Examples of such integration are the South American state policies and Aymara and Quechua outlooks that converge on the holistic value of buen vivir; that is, flourishing in tune with one's community and within one's environment or pachamama, Mother Earth. The progressive Zapatista movement in Mexico illustrates the heuristic potential of intercultural dialogue through its synthesis of nonwestern (indigenous) and western (Marxist) traditions. Dunford argues that decolonial ‘pluriversality’ better accounts for such dialogical synthesis than cosmopolitan universality can. Drawing from the work of Enrique Dussel, Arturo Escobar, Ramon Grosfoguel and others, Dunford shows how such perspectives augment cosmopolitan approaches by accounting for complex real-life situations. While universality is exemplified in inalienable human rights, pluriversality evokes a civil evolution, as the Zapatista would have it, toward a world in which many worlds fit and where many worlds are possible.

In ‘Gandhi's Perspective on Non-violence and Animals: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice,’ Nibedita Jena presents a detailed examination of a familiar topic – Gandhi's conception of ahimsa, or non-harm – exploring it within a little studied area, harm to animals. Jena provides a useful interpretation of Gandhi's consideration of non-harm as rooted in individual intention and act. Gandhi relates his interpretation of ahimsa to the Bhagavad Gita, which is, ostensibly, a text focused upon battle. Gandhi's interpretation of the text which takes the Gita as a text that concerns personal inner struggle, includes aspects that he credits to Leo Tolstoy. Jena also introduces some material that is difficult to assimilate: for example, Gandhi accepted the custom of serving animal flesh to some guests, apparently elevating compassion towards them above that displayed for the animals that were sacrificed for their comfort. Yet Gandhi also held that he would prefer to receive death rather than deliver it in an unavoidable engagement with a snake or a tiger. Through her detailed examination of Gandhi's vision and his choices, Jena improves our practical understanding of ahimsa as a complex choice that is, in Gandhi's words, ‘not a mechanical matter, it is personal to everyone.’

We wish all the best for 2018 and hope that you will continue to enjoy the discussion that Journal of Global Ethics will offer in coming years.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Postscript

Publication of this issue coincides with the untimely passing of Sirkku Hellsten, who was a founding editor of the journal: an obituary follows the editorial. As one of a collective of three lead editors who began their work in 2005, Sirkku developed the journal alongside Christien van den Anker and Heather Widdows, presenting a new offering at a time when global ethics as a field of research was just beginning to gain intellectual and political attention. Since that beginning the journal has grown in readership and in the pace at which manuscripts have arrived, and it has gained its place as an academic journal of ethics that aims for the broadest global reach among readers and contributors. With Martin joining the editorship of Journal of Global Ethics this past year, the journal expands its focus to engage more thoroughly with environmental issues, climate change, and human-nature coevolution, also with regard to developments in Japan, China, and Taiwan. This gain is, regretfully, now paired with a loss, most particularly in our expertise in African philosophy. We particularly note and greatly appreciate Sirkku’s legacy of building bridges for the journal to African philosophy. Her work in this respect was key for the development of a global audience for African experts in ethics and development, and it had been vital for the standing and success of the journal.

Eric and Martin, who continue to carry this journal forward, are deeply saddened by this tragic turn of events. We will miss Sirkku as a steadfast friend and as an exemplary human being. Upon her passing, one of her Tanzanian friends, Wilman Kapenjama Ndile, exclaimed, “A great intellectual, a woman of integrity, and a revolutionary with a humble face has gone!” We will remember Sirkku for her great commitment to providing a forum for the discussion of global ethics over these many years.

This note is composed just one week after Sirkku Hellsten passed away, and it is inserted as this issue of the journal goes to press. A memorial to celebrate Sirkku’s contributions to our lives was also arranged on this same day at the University of Dar es Salaam, in which Sirkku worked for many years. Colleagues at the university worked to create the memorial event: particularly the Principal of the College of Humanities, Dr. Rose Upor, and Sirkku’s student, Mr. Jackson Coy, Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies – a department that Sirkku co-founded during her years at Dar es Salaam. Professor Helen Lauer, recently arrived at the university, has been so kind as to join us in composing a professional obituary for Sirkku, which follows this editorial piece.

Notes

1 O. H. Grytten, “Economic History of Norway” (Economic History Association: EH.net, 2008) URL https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-history-of-norway/; O. Berthelsen, website editor, “Norway's Oil History” (Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, 2013) URL https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/energy/oil-and-gas/norways-oil-history-in-5-minutes/id440538/; “Mapping Paths to Prosperity: Honduras, Export Tree Map 1968” in R. Hausman, C. Hidalgo et al., Atlas of Economic Complexity (Harvard University Center of International Development and Harvard Kennedy School, revised edition 2014), 185 URL https://atlas.media.mit.edu/publications/.

2 As a share of Norway's export economy, oil and gas production rose from zero in 1968 to 40% in 1988 to 76% in 2008; cf. 264–265 in Economic Complexity, loc. cit. In Honduras, exports from agriculture and fisheries fell from 71% in 1968 to 64% in 1988 to 26% in 2008 compared to the national export total, while the share of exports of garments, fabrics, and textiles, during the same period, rose from 1% to 51%.

3 At risk of pointing out the obvious: due to an inevitable time lag in processing complex societal and environmental information on the global scale, both the UNDP's Human Development Index and the Global Footprint Network's Earth Overshoot Day Index are representations of the state of the world from ca. 20 months ago. That is, the 2017 indices rely on data collected 2015, processed 2016, and vetted 2017.

4 UNDP, Human Development Index 2017, composite index; URL http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI; this is not in comparison to Caribbean islands such as Mauritius or the Bahamas, but in comparison to Latin American countries. Higher than Cuba rank Costa Rica (66), Panama (60), and Uruguay (54), all tiered ‘high development’; and Argentina (45) and Chile (38), both tiered ‘very high development’.

5 C. Stückelberger et al., Sovereign Wealth Funds: An Ethical Perspective. Globe Ethics Global 15 (Geneva: Globeethics.net, 2016), 21–27; URL http://www.globethics.net/documents/4289936/13403236/GE_Global_15_isbn9782889310838.pdf; cf. also “Norway's Wealth Fund Considers divesting from Oil Shares,” NY Times, 6 Nov 2017.

6 European Parliament, Closing the Loop: New Circular Economic Package (EU Briefing: January 2016), 3.

7 Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, “Speech to Labour Party Congress 19 April 2007,” Historical Archive, Government of Norway, URL https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/Speech-to-the-congress-of-the-Labour-Par/id463749/.

8 “Norway Brings Forward Carbon Neutrality Goal to 2030,” Reuters 7 June 2016. Achieving this goal is realistic under the assumption that carbon neutrality is partly gained by the purchase of carbon credits abroad. Cf. also the critique of a 2008 version of Norway's carbon reduction plan by E. Rosenthal, “Lofty Pledge to Cut Emissions Comes with Caveat in Norway,” NY Times 22 March 2008.

9 In classical economics, a stranded asset is an asset that has ‘suffered from unanticipated or premature write-downs, devaluations, or conversion to liabilities’ (Caldecott, 51). In sustainability science, stranding assets describes divestment from fossil fuel resources. The political challenge for nation-states is that such asset-stranding must happen fast enough so as to mitigate climate change and minimize environmental risks, but slow enough so as to preserve societal stability and minimize economic risk; cf. B. Caldecott, “Avoiding Stranded Assets,” in Confronting Hidden Threats to Sustainability, ed. G. Gardner et al. (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2015), 51–63.

10 The usage of ‘liberal’ differs in different polities. In Australia, Japan, and in various member states of the European Union, ‘liberal’ denotes conservative or center-right politics, with an emphasis on market liberties; e.g. Australia's Liberal Party, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, and in Europe, for instance, the Liberal Popular Alliance in Italy, the Freedom Party of Austria, the Liberal Alliance of Denmark, or the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany. In Canada, the United States, and Norway, by contrast, ‘liberal’ denotes progressive or center-left politics with an emphasis on cultural liberties and civil rights, as with Canada's Liberal Party, the ‘liberal’ wing of the U.S. Democrats, and Norway's Liberal Party.

11 “Australia Cuts 110 Climate Scientist Jobs,” Scientific American online, 8 Feb 2016.

12 K. Tervo-Kankare et al., “Costs and Benefits of Environmental Change: Tourism Industry's Responses in Arctic Finland,” Tourism Geographies 20 (2018), pre-pub online 21 Sep 2017, doi:10.1080/14616688.2017.1375973, cf. also ‘Climate change in Lapland,’ Independent 23 Dec 2017.

13 “Great Barrier Reef Suffering ‘Unprecedented’ Damage,” CNN 16 Mar 2017; “Great Barrier Reef: Two-Thirds Damaged in ‘Unprecedented’ Bleaching,” BBC 10 April 2017; ‘Large Sections of Australia's Great Reef Are Now Dead, Scientists Find,” NY Times 15 March 2017.

14 Full transcript ‘Justin Trudeau's speech in Houston,’ Maclean's 10 Mar 2017. For an environmental response, cf. B. McKibben, “Stop Swooning over Justin Trudeau. The Man is a Disaster for the Planet,” Guardian 17 Apr 2017.

15 There's by now a strongly convergent scientific conclusion that ‘leaving the oil in the ground’ is vital to ensure human survival. If all remaining fossil fuel deposits were used, the ensuing carbon pulse would push the global system into non-viability. Climatologist James Hansen summarizes: ‘The practical concern for humanity is the high climate sensitivity and the eventual climate response that may be reached if all fossil fuels are burned. Estimates of the carbon content of all fossil fuel reservoirs including unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands, tar shale and various gas reservoirs that can be tapped with developing technology imply that CO₂ conceivably could reach a level as high as 16 times the 1950 atmospheric amount. In that event, [our calculation] suggests a global mean warming approaching 25°C, with much larger warming at high latitudes … The result would be a planet on which humans could work and survive outdoors in the summer only in mountainous regions – and there they would need to contend with the fact that a moist stratosphere would have destroyed the ozone layer.’ Cf. J. Hansen et al., “Climate Sensitivity, Sea Level and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 371 (2013), doi:20120284, 17.

16 N. J. Hagens, “Energy, Credit, and the End of Growth,” 21–35 in Confronting Hidden Threats to Sustainability, loc. cit., cf. 21.

17 J. Shambaugh et al. 2017. Thirteen Facts about Wage Growth, Economic Facts September 2017. Washington, DC: Hamilton Project/Brookings Institution), 2, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/thp_20170926_thirteen_facts_wage_growth.pdf.

18 Bankrate.com analysis 2016 and 2017; “New Cars Are Too Expensive for the Typical Family, Study Finds,” NY Times 2 Jun 2016; “New Cars Are Unaffordable for Most Americans,” Fortune 28 Jun 2017

19 “Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Aston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights,” 15 Dec 2017, UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, URL http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533; Philip Alston, twitter (@Alston_UNSR), 15 Dec 2017.

20 R. S. Foa/Y. Mounk. 2016. “The Danger of Deconsolidation: the Democratic Disconnect” Journal of Democracy 27: 5–17, esp. 12.

21 Foa and Mounk, “Deconsolidation,” loc. cit., 7, 13. Statistical source: World Values Surveys. Cf. also Y. Mounk, “Yes, American Democracy Could Break Down,” Politico 22 Oct 2016.

22 Foa and Mounk, “Deconsolidation,” 14.

23 A. Malka/Y. Lelkes survey; cf. “In a New Poll, Half of Republicans Say They Would Support Postponing the 2020 Election if Trump Proposed It,” Washington Post 10 Aug 2017.

24 “Sharp Partisan Divisions in Views of National Institutions: Republicans Increasingly Say Colleges Have Negative Impact on U.S.,” Pew Research Center, 10 Jul 2017, URL http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in-views-of-national-institutions/.

25 This inward turn has been described as an ‘abdication’ of leadership by, for example, U.S. diplomat and Council of Foreign Relations head R. Haass, “America and the Great Abdication,” Atlantic 28 Dec 17; and cf. The Economist, lead 9 Nov 2017 “America's Global Influence Has Dwindled Under Trump”.

26 Sigmar Gabriel, “Keynote Speech at the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum,” Koerber Foundation (Körberstiftung) 5 Dec 2017; cf. also ‘Sigmar Gabriel: To Survive, the EU Must Become More Assertive,’ Deutsche Welle 5 Dec 2017.

27 ‘UN Chief Issues ‘Red Alert,’ Urges World to Come Together in 2018 to Tackle Pressing Challenges,’ UN News Centre 31 Dec 2017.

28 “Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Now Has a $1bn Price Tag on It,” The Guardian 20 Dec 2017; “Trump Administration To Overhaul Safety Monitoring Rules for Offshore Drilling,” Washington Post 28 Dec 2017; “The Ten Worst Things Scott Pruitt's EPA Has Already Done,” The Daily Beast 29 Dec 2017.

29 The term ‘American Disenlightenment’ was coined by Kevin Philips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21^st Century (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006).

30 J. Rockström et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461 (2009): 472–475, doi:10.1038/461472a; cf. also K. Raworth. 2013. “Defining a Safe and Just Space for Humanity”, in Is Sustainability Still Possible? edited by E. Assadourian and T. Prugh, 28–38. Washington, DC: Island Press.

31 “Xi Jinping's Report at 18^th CPC National Congress,” China Daily 4 Nov 2017; cf. also J. Oswald, ‘What Does Eco-civilization 生态文明 Mean?’ The China Story/Zhongguo de Gushi 中國的故事, Australian Centre on China in the World/zhonghua quanqiu yanjiu zhongxin 中华全球研究中心.

32 Xi Jinping, Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Full transcript (66); speech delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, October 18, 2017, URL http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/Xi_Jinping's_report_at_19th_CPC_National_Congress.pdf.

33 To put this in perspective: modern coal power plants usually produce around 500 MW, and nuclear power plants produce around 1000 MW or 1 GW. China's 53 GW installation in solar power this year is equivalent to adding one hundred coal power plants or fifty nuclear plants. Cf. Bloomberg New Energy Finance, State of Clean Energy Investment Public Trends Report 2017, URL https://about.bnef.com/clean-energy-investment/; cf. also ‘China More Than Doubles America's 2017 Investments in Clean Energy, in a ‘Runaway’ Year,’ Greentech Media 16 January 2018.

34 Lester R. Brown. 1996. “The Acceleration of History,” State of the World Report 1996 World Watch Institute. New York: Norton, 3–20.

35 Previous material in this editorial produced by editor Martin Schönfeld.