I've been presenting Al Gore's climate-change slide show for a year now, spreading the "message" to anyone prepared to receive it on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My version has evolved, along with the science, and the social and political landscape. But one part of Gore's presentation that I never embraced was his conviction that global warming is a moral issue. Now I finally can point to someone who can explain why it's a mistake to confuse moral imperatives with environmental advocacy: Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, whose essay in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine tackles the very existence of morality.
After exploring various moral dilemmas (the brother and sister who have sex -- with contraception, in secret, once; whether 'tis nobler to kill one to save many; and other trendy hypotheticals), explaining the biological origins of our shared sense of morality, and offering evidence for the existence of "something larger," Pinker takes on Gore's declaration, though he invoke no names:
... nowhere is moralization more of a hazard than in our greatest global challenge. The threat of human-induced climate change has become the occasion for a moralistic revival meeting. In many discussions, the cause of climate change is overindulgence (too many S.U.V.'s) and defilement (sullying the atmosphere), and the solution is temperance (conservation) and expiation (buying carbon offset coupons). Yet the experts agree that these numbers don't add up: even if every last American became conscientious about his or her carbon emissions, the effects on climate change would be trifling, if for no other reason than that two billion Indians and Chinese are unlikely to copy our born-again abstemiousness. Though voluntary conservation may be one wedge in an effective carbon-reduction pie, the other wedges will have to be morally boring, like a carbon tax and new energy technologies, or even taboo, like nuclear power and deliberate manipulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and contamination, and resting content when we feel the right feelings, can get in the way of doing the right thing.
It is good to read, first, that Pinker acknowledges the seriousness of climate change. I tend to call it "the greatest public policy challenge of our time," because, although even that may be understating the magnitude of the problem, I think it implies where the biggest challenges lie: at the top, rather than the grassroots.
Just as refreshing is a public recognition that bringing an end to the fossil fuel era is no more of a "moral" imperative than any other obstacle to building an equitable and just society. Is gun control a moral problem? Is health care? The fact is, with the exception of trivialities like grammar and spelling, someone's life is always at stake when it comes to organizing society and managing common infrastructure. So, yes, technically, everything's a moral issue. But as soon as you play the morality card, you end up demonizing your opponents and alienating everyone else who isn't already on your side. As Pinker writes about empirical investigation of morality itself:
... the science tells us that even when our adversaries' agenda is most baffling, they may not be amoral psychopaths but in the throes of a moral mind-set that appears to them to be every bit as mandatory and universal as ours does to us.
Climate change is a monstrous challenge, one that will involve massive upheavals in the distribution of power, both politically and electrically. But the only way we're going to come to a consensus on what to do about it is to ditch the holier-than-thou attitude and play up the win-win scenarios.
I don't see any real downside to replacing dirty, non-renewable, centralized power generation with clean, renewable, decentralized alternatives. And is there anyone (outside of the auto industry) who really believes that reviving passenger rail would be a bad thing? Morality has nothing to do with it. It just plain makes sense.
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James,
You say: "I don't see any real downside to replacing dirty, non-renewable, centralized power generation with clean, renewable, decentralized alternatives." That certainly seems reasonable. But if rapid mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in the developing world means sacrificing some improvement in the standard of living of impoverished people, then choosing among options for dealing with climate change would seem to involve elements morality, in addition to science and technology. It is a familiar refrain among the policy scholars that decision making involves consideration of values in addition to objective facts.
I agree, however, that the familiar guilt trip moralizing in the climate debate is counterproductive. I thought Gore was on the right track to suggest that there is a moral component to this debate in addition to a bunch of facts about the greenhouse effect. But after stating that climate is a moral issue in his movie, he fails to clearly explain why.
If climate change isn't a "moral" issue, what is? In fact, what do you mean by "moral"? The very old definition that I use is that the "moral" choice is what one "ought" to do. That "ought" is subject to the definitions of the speaker's cosmology. That's "world view" which may or not agree with yours. The Rev. Falwell, when presented with the "peak oil" thesis responded energetically with: "God will not let(silence & shut his mouth). I interpret this (on TV) performance to include "... this happen if we obey His commandments". For many the assumption of the of the benevolant pater precludes any fears for the future since "I am submissive and nothing can touch me or mine". And we have a President who, in his extended drug recovery programming, cannot afford to lose the certainty of Divine Intervention. For each any evidence contrary to the assumptions of their personal psycho-investments in convenient memes becomes an attack on their "values" derived from the Holy Authority.
Hence realists, atheists, skeptics and other Doubters MUST BE DENIED. That's a helluva life to live when contrary evidence piles up.
See Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and imagine the mentations of the people of Easter Island and especially the chap who cut down the last tree.
Fascinating article and replies. For what it's worth, there is a free, non-profit educational web site that has several full interviews with Dr. Norman Borlaug -- who is featured in the original article -- about his work in agriculture. Go to http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org and click on the "Media Resouces" for video podcasts of his interviews. Or go to the "Farming in the 50s-60s" section and click on the "Crops" subsection to see longer articles about the history and debate about the Green Revolution. Again, it's totally free and non-profit.
But the only way we're going to come to a consensus on what to do about it is to ditch the holier-than-thou attitude and play up the win-win scenarios.
Very well said! If you show a person how they can profit by cooperating with you, many times they won't care what religion or political party you belong to! As long as you are nice and cordial and polite, of course! LOL!
Dave Briggs :~)