Writing Feedback / THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE [2]

Since the turn of this millennium, scientists, especially climatologists, meteorologists and more recently, ethicists, have embraced in a rather frantic way, the question of 'what is really happening to our climate?' I presume ethicists can also be called scientists, with a substitutive value. Global temperatures are suddenly being expected to rise by between 3 - 5 degrees Celsius within the next few decades; climatic conditions have been severely altered, and have, for the most part been unpredictable; scientists say that a large contingent of our plant and animal species are almost certainly destined for extinction. As world affairs play out (in the face of the many natural disasters that have rocked the earth in the last year), it is most unlikely that scare-mongering and the raising of undue unrest, as a handful of people still unfortunately believe, is the motive behind the recent surge of media attention, political lobbying and governmental policing that climate change has aroused.However, many people,especially in the developing and under developed world, remain ignorant of climate change and its possible implications for our planet, while many others, consider it a genuine environmental crisis of our time.

First, what is the simplest possible definition of climate change? It has been defined as any changes in global temperatures and precipitation overtime due to natural variability or human activity. Some people, mostly in political agencies still pretend to be adamant as to the urgency of the (changes in global temperature and precipitation) issue, but then, no one seems to argue against the fact that there have been many unnecessary, unprecedented and inconsiderate human activities against the climate; activities which scientists blame for exacerbating these changes. This leaves us with the question, 'is there anything fundamentally wrong with "abusing" our climate?' If No, fine. End of discussion. If on the other hand the answer is in the affirmative, then, 'what frame of mind and what course of action is appropriate, not only to curb such abuses continuing into the future, but also to help our climate repair itself?'

Simple as the answer to this question may seem, philosophers and scientists, idealists and empiricists have, for the most part, disputed over possible answers to them, since not only does statistics show massive environmental impacts on such places as the Philippines, Turkey and New Zealand, it has also recorded huge economic gains for economies like China, India and the US (only that the current Eurozone crisis seems to have surpassed these gains). All these somewhat contradictory effects are believed (to a large extent) to be due to climatic abuse, thus presenting us with a scenario many moral philosophers will refer to as a moral dilemma.

In response to this moral dilemma, a group of philosophers, ecologists and environmentalists popularly known as Deep Ecologists are strictly of the opinion that humans ought to evaluate their 'contribution' to the ecosystem and if need be, implement a change of attitude towards it. Arnenaess and George Sessions are probably the best known proponents of deep ecology.

Andrew Brennan in his unique approach to this issue identifies that the ecosystem has been so abused simply because humans have not considered it to be a being with rights. He says therefore, that all ontological beings (i.e. beings that actually exist) have rights in themselves. Apparently, this argument is incomplete since Brennan does not demonstrate what it is in all ontological beings that makes them able to holda priori rights. And, say we agree that all ontological beings really have rights, is it likely that something which constitutes a right for humans will apply to, say, a tree or the ozone layer? That would certainly be a category mistake and furthering the argument would result in a kind of 'horizontal anthropomorphism' (if the other kind which involves God would be called vertical anthropomorphism). So how then do we determine what the rights of each of this other ontological entities are? The closest we can come to answering this last question would be to suggest that we can (arbitrarily) ascribe rights to them. But is that not likely to be an encroachment in the very rights Brennan claims they possess, after all? Again, arguing along the lines of Michael Tooley'sparticular interest theory, one can say that a being only has rights if it has an interest in its continued existence, bearing in mind that to have an interest presupposes self-consciousness, and to have self-consciousness is to have rationality, the possibility of which most anthropologists deny to any non-human being.

In The Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock proposes a different approach to the question of how to deal with the climate. He views the universe as a 'single, unified and holistic' entity. This point of view means that, against our religious background, humans are by no means superior to other creatures. Mechanicists are very likely to agree with this approach. It implies that, plants as well as humans have equal rights to exist and survive, as can be derived from one interpretation of Aristotle's principle of sufficient reason.Lovelock therefore considers it fundamentally problematic for the US, China and India, for example, to continue indiscriminately loading the atmosphere with all kinds of harmful elements, in the name of industrialization.

Conservation ethics seems to complete Lovelock's argument. It advocates that, as an incentive, it is important for humans to know that it is in their own interest to conserve the rest of the Gaia (ecosystem). This is the line of thought that was developed in the International Rio Summit in 1992 and it is perhaps the closest thing to a consequentialist position on the issue of environmental ethics. In the light of current world events, a conservation ethicist would put his/her argument thus: 'it is in the world's interest to fore-stall a repeat of the Uganda, the Philippines andthe Christ Church (New-Zealand) natural disasters (to name a few), by acting responsibly towards the ecosystem.' This position (to a huge extent) bases its ideas on the possible consequences of what Thomas Aquinas would refer to as Human Acts on the climate - the human activity mentioned in the definition of climate change. The problem with this argument, as I see it, is that it seems to take for granted that we humans always know vividly what is in our own interest on an action-to-action basis, whereas human experience has shown that this is not always the case.Whether an action is for or against our interest (in most cases) remains to be determined by its consequences on us and the people and things around us, and these consequences cannot be determined prior to such acts. One can also argue that my argument (above) can only hold the first time an act is done. Simply put, this means that if I perform an act today, and become aware of its possible consequences, I am able to predict the consequences of such act in the future. While I agree that this point can be true in some situations, proponents of such argument might need to consider 'what happens when one is not able to preempt the results of that act correctly? Are we ready to bear the consequences of such failure? ' This questions flow from the consideration that no one act can be repeated, in the truest sense of the word. The context, for example, would affect the consequence of an act. For example, not using inclusive language in your spiritual journal is not likely to have the same consequence as not doing same in an academic paper written in St. Joseph's Institute, though both scenarios involve not using inclusive language.

Martin Buber, a well known existentialist philosopher, also postulated a doctrine which in the long run could have implications on the environment. He posited that the relation between humans should always be an I-THOU meeting, whereas, the relation between a human being and other non-human beings, is to be an I-IT co-existence. James Brown, one of the many writers on this doctrine explains the I-IT relations as 'the attitude of knowing, experiencing, using' (1962: 109). Buber, expounding the I-THOU, taught that the human being is not by any chance to be seen as a means to an end, as a result of which one can deduce that he allows that our environment (which he always places in the object position) can serve as a means to an end. There is a difficulty with this vantage point on two counts. First, he takes for granted the real situations of life in which it is clear that there is a sense in which all beings-in-the-world, are necessarily to be seen as a means to an end. Parents use their children to attain parental status, for example. This is not necessarily negative. Secondly, it is imperative for him to have stated the fundamental reason behind his dichotomizing creation in such an 'arbitrary' way. On what grounds does he posit that non-human beings are to be used by humans as a means to their ends? This doctrine practically allows industrialized nations to use the environment to achieve whatever their aims are.

From the times of the Roman civilization (the dominance of Christian ethics), the Divine Command Theory held great sway, and continues (perhaps with subtlety) to influence the minds of people in their attitude towards the rest of creation. The Christian account of creation presents the rest of creation as something created by God and given to humans to 'subdue and conquer'. This, I believe, is the point at which mis-interpretation encroaches into this beautiful teaching. Many Christian philosophers, theologians and even scientists have unfortunately understood this to give humans the power to do 'whatever' they wish with the rest of the ecosystem. The question then is:'would such a holy and loving God as ours, just after artistically designing creation, wish that we be allowed to destroy it in the way we are currently doing?' Is it not more plausible to interpret our mandate to subdue the earth as a call to responsible co-habitation with other creatures? After all, Jesus Christ (the Christian exemplar) has shown us that the power of God is shown not in domineering and destructing, but in loving and caring, implying that we too are called to display our power over creation by loving and caring for it.

In conclusion, I find that the weakness which most approaches to the issue of the climate (environmental ethics) are exposed to exists because they seem to have pre-supposedly made it a question of rights and interests.With Andrew Brennan asserting that all ontological beings be ascribed rights, the conservation ethicists clinging to human interests, Martin Buber reducing all non-human beings to objects and the Divine Command theory claiming humanity's rights to deal with the earth as it wishes, I feel that a better attitude can be achieved if it is made a matter of respect for oneself and for the rest of creation, for no just cause. Is this not the kind of respect that Christian morality expects from us, after all? The situation I envisage is one in which humanity would not be impelled to give respect(whatever that may mean) to the rest of the ecosystem because of something it has done to/for them. This respect is to be as unconditional as the respect given to corpses in many cultures, dead as they are. With this as our reference point, it is very likely that we will use the environment and not abuse it; and in return, the environment will protect us and not harm us.

SOURCES: Brown, J 1962. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Buber and Barth.New-York: Collier books; Vardy, P & Grosch, P 1999. Puzzle of Ethics.London: Harper Collins publishers; Hogan, L (ed) 2008. Applied Ethics in a World Church: the Padua Conference. New-York: Orbis Books.