Expert answer:Requirements— Your responses should be approximately the word total suggested for each of the five questions. These suggestions are approximate. Also, the text must be double spaced.
(NOTE: there is a 2/3 letter grade penalty for noncompliance with the underlined factor). For a heading on the paper, use whatever you like as long as your name is present.
Questions
1. According to Jamieson, there are several features of climate change that render the issues involved alien to our usual notions of commonsense morality. Discuss any two of them, explaining why they present such “hard’ issues. (100 wds.)
2. In thinking of ways to bring the harms of climate change within notions of commonsense morality, Jamieson discusses three possible methods of doing so. Ultimately he decides that only one of these even has any possibility of working. For that one possibility, he gives two theoretical strategies for accomplishing it, before concluding they might not work either. Briefly explain his reasoning regarding all this. (125 wds.)
3. Using both Jamieson and the article by Gardiner, explain which aspect of climate change both think is the hardest issue, and the prospects for using ethics to solve, or at least address, the issue. (100 wds.)
4. Jamieson notes several different ways of respecting nature. Explain each, and why he thinks we do (or should) respect nature in the first place. (100 wds.)
5. Jamieson notes a few reasons why the harms to nation-states associated with climate change don’t look like traditional injustice between states. He considers one of these to be the most serious. Describe all the reasons, but spend most of the word count to explain the most serious one. (100 wds.)
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stanford_researcher_examines_moral_significance_of_actions_causing_climate_change___________february_23.docx
we_were_warned.docx
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Center For Humans & Nature
We Are Not Not Evolved to Respond to
Climate Change
By: Jennifer Jacquet
·
One reason given for the inaction on climate change is that we humans are not evolved to
handle this kind of problem. In a 2006 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Harvard
psychologist Daniel Gilbert argued that the human brain evolved to respond to threats like
terrorism, not climate change.[1] In his 2014 book on climate change titled Reason in a
Dark Time, New York University philosopher (and colleague) Dale Jamieson noted,
“Evolution built us to respond to rapid movements of middle-sized objects, not to the slow
buildup of insensible gases in the atmosphere.”[2]
True, we were not built to solve climate change. We were also not built to read (the visual stress
of reading and computer work has exacerbated nearsightedness). We are not evolved for
democracy or scuba diving or high-sugar diets. Feathered animals were not, in fact, built to fly
(feathers evolved first for insulation).[3]
We are not built to solve climate change, but we were also not not built to solve it. This is
apparent from the high variability of climate-related action by both individuals and groups. Some
people live off the grid, others drive Hummers. Bristol, England plans to reduce the city’s carbon
emissions by 40 percent by 2020 (from a 2005 baseline). Hamburg, Germany plans to remodel
the city, including taking most cars off the road by 2034. Meanwhile, Miami, Florida remains
one of the world’s most vulnerable cities to climate-related threats but continues to irresponsibly
develop its coast.
Genetics cannot explain why some people and places are engaging seriously with climate change
and others are not. We should resist the temptation to explain inaction with the force of biology
or anything deeper than systems of belief, culture, power, and economic forces (which are quite
deep enough). It’s not just climate change where such temptations occur. The gender gap in
mathematics performance led to biological arguments for its existence (i.e., that boys are innately
better spatial thinkers). Yet, more recent work showed the gender gap between girls and boys on
math tests disappears in more gender-equal societies (and has been closing in the U.S. over
time), suggesting culture, rather than biology, is at work.[4]
When we ask how evolution influences our moral instincts, we must be cognizant of another
important question: does our perception that evolution affects our moral instincts affect our
moral instincts? Evoking evolutionary explanations for inaction on climate change might
actually exacerbate inertia on the issue. A study of undergraduates found that when they were
primed with a text about determinism—that free will is an illusion because the combination of
genes and environment dictate our behavior—the undergraduates cheated significantly more in
subsequent experiments compared to undergraduates who had read a neutral text.[5] That’s
because what we learn about ourselves affects how we behave, which is the basis of the placebo
effect—when an inert pill provides a real cure.
I worry how our perception of ourselves might affect our environmental behavior. I am even
concerned about the name of the newest epoch, the Anthropocene, which begins with the
Industrial Revolution and implicates humanity as a geologic force. The ‘Anthropocene’ provides
a framing that suggests that humans (rather than certain humans armed with certain economic
systems and technologies) are destined to continue to overexploit environmental resources. The
‘anthropocebo effect’ describes the pessimism that might lead us to accept humans as a geologic
force and destruction as inevitable, therefore exacerbating human-induced damage.[6] A similar
problem could result from the argument that our incapacity to solve climate change is genetic.
The problem of anthropogenic climate change is as impaired by human genetics as the problem
of the human-caused hole in the ozone layer, which we solved. Not that these problems are easy
to compare, namely because energy is at the foundation of industry and standard of living, which
was not true of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). But, that humans succeeded in
implementing a ban on CFCs nonetheless shows that factors other than evolution are at work in
the proliferation of greenhouse gases.
Even without genetics, climate change remains a difficult problem to comprehend and to
address. Dale Jamieson points to the difficulties of conceptualizing the issue of climate change as
a moral problem, including the challenges of understanding who (or what) is most responsible
for the harm (in terms of both the producers and consumers of fossil fuels), whether it is
intentional, and how closely the action and the harm are related in space and time. New research
is beginning to illuminate some of these points. A recent study showed that just ninety
corporations (some of them state-owned) are responsible for supplying nearly two-thirds of
historic carbon dioxide and methane emissions.[7] So we should ask whether our economic
systems are arranged to forgo profits for the sake of solving climate change. Cities around the
world are responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. We should wonder what
makes some cities higher or lower emitters. What makes some more active toward reducing
emissions than others?
Cultures have flattened heads, bound feet, and mutilated genitals. Others have lowered birth
rates, traveled into space, fostered delayed gratification, and instituted civil rights and laws to
protect children. An argument that we were evolved to do any of these things would be as
difficult to make as the argument that we were evolved not to.
Morality is plastic. For better and worse, both women’s rights and a tradition of genital
mutilation persist on the basis of ingenuity rather than hardwiring. Rather than focusing on
which problems we were built to solve, we should instead ask which problems we need to solve,
whether we want to solve them, and how.
Now we have a moral duty to talk about
climate change By Mark Lynas, August 31, 2017
On search and rescue mission with US Navy
(CNN) This is what climate change looks like. Entire metropolitan areas — Houston in the
United States and Mumbai in India — submerged in catastrophic floods.
Record-breaking rainfall: Harvey’s 50-plus inches of torrential deluge set a new national tropical
cyclone rain record for the continental United States.
They used to make Hollywood disaster movies about this sort of thing. Now it’s just the news.
Officials as senior as Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, have suggested
that now — during a natural disaster — is not the time to raise the divisive and highly politicized
issue of global warming. But if not now, when? After the waters subside, the news crews pack
up, and the long task of rebuilding begins, the world’s attention inevitably moves on.
Watching Trump tour the flooded areas, I was reminded of his Rose Garden press conference
less than three months ago announcing the US withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty. In that
act of wanton international vandalism, Trump was helping condemn millions more people to the
threat of intensified extreme events in future decades.
It is not politically opportunistic to raise this issue now. Instead we have a moral duty not to
accept the attempted conspiracy of silence imposed by powerful political and business interests
opposed to any reduction in the use of fossil fuels. We owe this to the people of Texas as much
to those of Bangladesh and India, and Niger — which was also struck by disastrous flooding this
week.
Climate disasters demonstrate our collective humanity and interdependence. We have to help
each other out — in the short term by saving lives and in the longer term by cutting greenhouse
gases and enhancing resilience, especially in developing countries.
No, of course climate change did not “cause” Harvey in any singular sense. Nor does smoking
definitively “cause” any individual case of lung cancer. Smoking increases the risk of cancer, just
as increased global warming increases the risk of extreme rainfall events.
This is not scientifically controversial. There is a straightforward physical relationship between a
warming atmosphere and extreme rainfall potential. Hotter air can hold more water vapor. And
hotter water can provide the fuel for more intense tropical storms.
Yes, the vagaries of the weather played a part. Harvey stalled close enough to the Texas coast to
continue drawing in tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico that was supercharged with moisture.
But the climate change fingerprint is undeniable, too. Sea surface temperatures across the Gulf
on August 23, just before Harvey made landfall in Texas, were ominously warm, 1.5 to 4 degrees
Celsius (2.7 to 7.2 F) hotter than the average of a few decades ago. These warm waters helped
Harvey develop from a mere tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in just 48 hours.
If disasters ever have a silver lining, it is that they bring us together. Witness how ordinary
people risked their lives to save others as the floodwaters rose around Houston. These were not
unusual heroes; they were just normal people doing what they knew was right.
In life-threatening situations our human empathy swamps our day-to-day divisions of politics,
nationality or religion. In South Asia, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is
already supporting 200,000 people in direst need of food and shelter.
Somehow, we need to find a way to extend our capacity to empathize and support each other
across political and social divides in the long term. If climate change remains as politically toxic
as it is today in America, we will never be able to address it properly.
We all have a duty to confront denial and speak out. If we fail, the Harveys, Katrinas and Sandys
of the future will be even worse than the storms we experience today. And in the future, as now,
each subsequent climate disaster will just be “news.” Surely we can do better than that.
Stanford researcher examines moral significance of
actions causing climate change
February 23, 2017 By Alex Shashkevich
Stanford doctoral candidate Blake Francis hopes to create a framework that governments could use to
evaluate their climate change policies and consider when it’s morally justified for them to emit
greenhouse gases.
Lawmakers around the world struggle to create policies that balance their nations’ needs and interests
with their impacts on global warming.
Trying to figure out what to prioritize is a tough call for many.
Blake Francis, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Stanford and a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at
the Stanford Humanities Center, hopes to help guide those decisions by identifying the harms of climate
change and assessing their moral significance.
Blake Francis, doctoral candidate in philosophy, is working to create a framework that governments could
use to evaluate the moral implications of energy and transportation policies that affect the environment.
(Image credit: L.A. Cicero)
Through his research, he aims to create a framework that governments could use to evaluate the moral
implications of their energy, transportation and other climate change policies in order to consider when it
is morally justified for them to emit greenhouse gases.
“We often have debates in climate change about how to trade off benefits and burdens without adequately
considering what constitutes benefits and burdens – and whether all burdens are of the same kind,” said
Debra Satz, a professor of philosophy and senior associate dean for the humanities and arts. “Blake’s
approach introduces an important dimension – not all burdens to people count as harms.”
For example, a wealthy company losing a small portion of its assets is less harmful than a person losing
his or her subsistence – even if the dollar amount of the company’s loss is greater than the individual’s
loss, said Satz, who is also Francis’ advisor.
“This research is poised to make a significant contribution to our obligations to others in the context of
the differential consequences of climate change,” she said. “It’s political philosophy at its best –
illuminating, deep and action-guiding.”
Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, said the philosophical
perspective on climate change is crucial for approaching the problem in an efficient way.
“As natural scientists, we know a lot about what controls the climate and what kind of impacts we’re
likely to see in the future,” said Field, a professor of biology and of Earth system science and a member of
Francis’ dissertation committee. “But increasingly the important questions are human ones. What will
people decide is important regarding climate change? Natural science can’t speak to those issues and
philosophy can.”
Dissecting tough calls
As part of his research, Francis has looked at hard decisions governments across the world have made
regarding climate change.
Some of the cases he has examined include the debate over fracking technologies in the United States and
the energy crisis in Pakistan.
Over the past several years, Pakistan has been dealing with a shortage of electricity as a result of its weak
supply and infrastructure that leads to frequent blackouts affecting millions of citizens.
The country struggled with the decision of whether to convert to renewable energy, extract more coal or
continue to rely on importing oil for its energy needs. Officials eventually decided to extract more coal
despite the adverse environmental effects.
“This has helped me get a sense of the stakes involved in these types of debates,” Francis said.
Subsidized gas prices are another example of a moral challenge nations face, he said.
“Americans aren’t paying the true price of gasoline,” Francis said. “And I think there is something very
worrying about the fact that because of government subsidies we are not paying that true cost. But it’s
complicated because we know that keeping gas prices low is really good for the poor and the middle
class.”
In addition to examining specific cases, Francis is studying climate change policies and their evolution on
the national and international level to determine the current moral assessment the public has about actions
that lead to global warming. He is also researching the rules of organizations, such as the World Bank and
the World Health Organization, regarding climate change, the restrictions they put on projects they help
finance and how those policies were decided.
The information and insight Francis gains will be used to help create the moral framework so that nations
can choose wisely when it comes to climate change policy. But that framework will require a long time
and an effort from experts of all disciplines.
“Ultimately, it’s a big interdisciplinary task that philosophers by themselves won’t be able to
accomplish,” Francis said. “But I think there is a big chunk of it having to do with what counts as a harm,
how to trade off benefits and harms and when emitting is wrong that I could have a say in.”
Unhappy with current philosophical takes
Francis, who previously worked for the forest service in Arizona and Alaska, has been passionate about
the environment since an early age.
He was first exposed to climate change ethics at the University of Montana before coming to Stanford in
2010. Francis said he decided to home in on climate change and morality after being unsatisfied with the
take on the subject by current philosophers, who either talk broadly about how nations and individuals are
harming others by greenhouse gases for their own benefit or suggest that humanity needs a new set of
moral tools to deal with climate change debates. Some in the literature also simply deny that greenhouse
gas emitters do any harm.
Francis said he believes challenges, such as air pollution, are similar to the complexity of the climate
change debate. Pollution is regulated but is not outlawed because its presence also means there is a
production of goods, Francis said.
“Carbon dioxide emissions won’t ever go away – we exhale it,” Francis said. “So there is nothing
inherently wrong with emitting carbon dioxide. But there does seem to be something terribly wrong with
the scale of human emissions since the Industrial Revolution. But at the same time, we are all the
beneficiaries of incredibly important advancements in medicine, science, infrastructure and other areas
from the Industrial Revolution.”
The current international discussion around climate change is complicated because different countries
have varying perspectives on how to distribute the burdens of combating it, Francis said.
“I think there is a strong feeling among government officials in some countries that large emitting
countries are more responsible for doing something about climate change,” Francis said. “But there are
also others, including members of our government, who are only concerned with satisfying national
interests – even at the expense of others.”
In the 1990s, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change formulated a distinction
between the developed and the developing countries by putting more responsibility on the developed parts
of the world to curb their emissions, which were larger than those of other countries at that time.
But since then, the emissions produced by developing countries have skyrocketed. China is now the
largest emitter of carbon dioxide, although the United States is still considered to have produced the most
emissions in total since the Industrial Revolution.
“Is China doing wrong by basically leading the biggest anti-poverty movement the world has ever seen?”
Francis said. “To actually determine whether a country’s emissions are morally justified, I think you have
to go case by case. There is a certain degree of greenhouse gas emissions that could be justified by the
benefits they produce.”
New York Times
We Were Warned
By ANTHONY DOERRNOV. Nov. 18, 2017
Twenty-five years ago this month, more than 1,500 prominent scientists, including over half of
the living Nobel laureates, issued a manifesto titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” in
which they admonished, “A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is
required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be
irretrievably mutilated.”
They cited stresses on the planet’s atmosphere, forests, oceans and soils, and called on
everybody to act decisively. “No more than one or a few decades remain,” the scientists wrote,
“before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost.”
I was 19 years old when their warning was published and though I understood, in a teenager-y,
“Rainforest Rap” sort of way, that humans were messing with the planet, the document freaked
me out. It was so urgent, so dire. E. O. Wilson had signed it. Carl Sagan had signed it!
So did I act immediately and decisively? Um, I did not. In the ensuing years I wrote checks to
some conservation organizations, replaced some incandescent bulbs and rode my bike to work. I
hammered together a composting bin that promptly fell apart. I gave a self-important lecture to a
neighbor on the importance of using his recycling can.
I also hurtled through the troposphere on hundreds of airplanes (each round trip from New York
to London costs the Arctic another three square meters of ice), bought and sold multiple
automobiles and helped my wife put two more Americans onto the planet. Our air-conditioning
compressor is at least a decade old, my truck averages 15 miles to the gallon and I routinely walk
up to a podium, open a brand new plastic bottle …
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