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Writing for the Guardian, Donald Brown notes that how to respond to climate change is “an ethical issue, not only a scientific matter, because the consequences of delay could be so severe and the poorest people in the world as some of the most vulnerable.”
Imagine a handsome, smiling, well-dressed person saying to you, “I don’t care if I condemn your grandchildren to a living hell, I want vested interests in my bailiwick to be served.” Still having trouble imagining it? Here is a picture of Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA) who came out against the American Clean Energy and Security legislation because, “Any way you do it, it hurts Pennsylvania, especially western Pennsylvania.”
This blog has observed likewise before. Discussion of science and morality on Science Friday (MP3) prompted a recall of how complexity influences empathy.
Simon Blackburn, Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss were Ira Flatow’s guests. They also are panelists at a conference at Arizona State University on whether science can tell us “right” from “wrong”. During the NPR program there was a short discourse about whether the concern of morality is human flourishing and reducing human suffering?
Simply put, the BAUAAAE crowd is willing to accept an unacceptable risk. This blog has suggested before that this is a crime, as past lawmakers in the United States defined, yet, since it includes most current lawmakers, its enforcement is unlikely. T
“As long as there is any chance that climate change could create this type of destruction, even assuming, for the sake of argument, that these dangers are not yet fully proven, disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily morally reprehensible if it leads to non-action in reducing climate change’s threat.” “Well-intentioned” Congress critters may continue to ridicule the idea that carbon dioxide is harmful. In response, this blog has relayed a vital caution: a coal-ash slurry spill is something that you can see; you can see soot in the exhaust from coal-fired electric power plants; and, it is what you cannot see that could be much more harmful.
here are more hints that the international community may one day consider such failure to act as crimes against humanity. The United Nations released a report that inaction on climate change puts decades of human progress at risk.
“Climate change may be the single factor that makes the future very different, impeding the continuing progress in human development that history would lead us to expect. While international agreements have been difficult to achieve and policy responses have been generally slow, the broad consensus is clear: climate change is happening, and it can derail human development.”
“Disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily – if not criminally – irresponsible,” opines the Guardian article, “because the consensus scientific view is based upon strong evidence that climate change:
- Is already being experienced by tens of thousands in the world;
- Will be experienced in the future by millions of people from greenhouse gas emissions that have already been emitted but not yet felt due to lags in the climate system; and,
- Will increase dramatically in the future unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced from existing global emissions levels.
Sustainability, as a philosophy, is a form of consequentialism. Thus, sustainability, as a practice, is about accountability.
Threats from climate change include deaths and danger from droughts, floods, heat, storm-related damages, rising oceans, heat impacts on agriculture, loss of animals that are dependent upon for substance purposes, social disputes caused by diminishing resources, sickness from a variety of diseases, the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food, the inability to use property that people depend upon to conduct their life including houses or sleds in cold places, the destruction of water supplies, and the inability to live where has lived to sustain life. The very existence of some small island nations is threatened by climate change.
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