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The Temporal and Spatial Scales of Global Climate Change and the Limits of Individualistic and Rationalistic Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2011

J. Baird Callicott
J. Baird Callicott
Affiliation:
University of North Texas
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Extract

Here I argue that the hyper-individualistic and rationalistic ethical paradigms – originating in the late eighteenth century and dominating moral philosophy, in various permutations, ever since – cannot capture the moral concerns evoked by the prospect of global climate change. Those paradigms are undone by the temporal and spatial scales of climate change. To press my argument, I deploy two famous philosophical tropes – John Rawls's notion of the original position and Derek Parfit's paradox – and another that promises to become famous: Dale Jamieson's six little ditties about Jack and Jill. I then go on to argue that the spatial and especially the temporal scales of global climate change demand a shift in moral philosophy from a hyper-individualistic ontology to a thoroughly holistic ontology. It also demands a shift from a reason-based to a sentiment-based moral psychology. Holism in environmental ethics is usually coupled with non-anthropocentrism in theories constructed to provide moral considerability for transorganismic entities – such as species, biotic communities, and ecosystems. The spatial and temporal scales of climate, however, render non-anthropocentric environmental ethics otiose, as I more fully explain. Thus the environmental ethic here proposed to meet the moral challenge of global climate change is holistic but anthropocentric. I start with Jamieson's six little ditties about Jack and Jill.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 69 , October 2011 , pp. 101 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2011

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References

1 These ‘ditties’ (as I call them) were first published in Jamieson, Dale, ‘The Moral and Political Challenges of Climate Change’, in Moser, S. and Dilling, L., eds., Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 475–484CrossRefGoogle Scholar. They have been variously presented in subsequent work by Jamieson as ‘examples’ or ‘cases’. I take responsibility for calling them ‘ditties’ (in homage to the song ‘Jack 'n Diane’ by John Mellencamp) and I have also taken the liberty of editing them for a bit more elegance and clarity of phrasing.

2 Jamieson, Dale, ‘The Post-Kyoto Climate: A Gloomy Forecast’, Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 20 (2009): 537–551Google Scholar, 545.

3 Notable among such philosophers are Gardiner, Stephen M., ‘Ethics and Global Climate Change’, Ethics 114 (2004): 555–600Google Scholar; Garvey, James, The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World (London: Continuum, 2008)Google Scholar; Jamieson, Dale, ‘Climate Change and Global Environmental Justice’, in Edwards, P. and Miller, C., ed., Changing the Atmosphere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001): 287–308Google Scholar; Shue, Henry, ‘Climate’ in Jamieson, D., ed., A Companion to Environmental Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001): 449–459Google Scholar; and Singer, Peter, [Chapter] 2. ‘One Atmosphere’ in One World: The Ethics of Globalization, Second Edition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Nota Bene, 2004): 14–50Google Scholar.

4 Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

5 Ibid. 358.

6 Singer, Peter, Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays on Ethics, Kuhse, Helen, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002)Google Scholar.

7 Singer, Peter, ‘On Being Silenced in Germany’, New York Review of Books (August 15, 1991)Google Scholar.

8 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

9 ‘Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’, US Department of Commerce/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

10 ‘IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers’, in Solomon, S.D., Qin, D., Manning, M., Chen, Z., Marquis, M., Avery, K.B., Tignor, M., and Miller, H.L., eds., Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

11 For a recent and sober assessment see McKibben, Bill, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (New York: Henry Holt, 2010)Google Scholar.

12 ‘IPCC, 2007’; McKibben, Eaarth.

13 Caldeira, K. and Wickett, M. E., ‘Anthropogenic Carbon and Ocean pH’, Nature 425 (2003): 365–365.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

14 Garvey, Ethics of Climate Change, nicely brings out the centrality of consistency in the classical moral paradigm.

15 Ronald Bailey, ‘The Pursuit of Happiness: Peter Singer Interviewed by Ronald Bailey’, Reason (December 2000) http://reason.com/archives/2000/12/01/the-pursuit-of-happiness-peter; Anonymous, ‘Peter Singer: A Slippery Mind’ http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/2008/03/peter-singer-slippery-mind.html

16 Leopold, Aldo, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), 201Google Scholar.

17 Ibid. 202.