Dec. 21, 8:33 a.m. | Updated below |
David Roberts at Grist yesterday posted a deeply moving essay about using empathy as a means to take on tough issues. He built the piece around President Obama?s heartfelt reaction and response to the Connecticut elementary school massacre and, followed by Joe Romm, noted the lack of any such response from the president or society on the greenhouse buildup despite the risk posed by human-driven climate change. (Current and past greenhouse-gas emissions will affect the climate for generations, actually millenniums, to come).
Roberts? piece should be read in full. There?s a wonderful section, for example, on the reality that humans? ?circle of concern? is rapidly expanding through global connectedness ? echoing my explorations of what I call ?Knowosphere? as well as a?prediction of Darwin in 1871.
But Roberts? main interest is in harnessing empathy ? for yet-unborn generations as well as today?s vulnerable people ? as a path to progress on greenhouse gases. This is where I think his argument, as laid out, weakens. Here?s the most relevant portion of the post:
We know that the decisions we are making today are on track to create irreversible and inexorable changes in the global climate that our children and their children will inherit. We know that those changes threaten to slow or reverse our hard-fought gains in peace and health, leaving our?descendants?a world in violent, unceasing transition, with rising seas, greater droughts, more intense storms, shifting zones of fertility and disease, and waves of climate refugees. We discovered this not through shock or confrontation but through the slow accumulation and careful interpretation of evidence. It is still, to most people, almost entirely an intellectual phenomenon, something they know but do not feel. Relative to the gut-wrenching images out of Newtown, the evidence of the climate threat to children is, by and large, abstract and ethereal. Even those who ?know? the extent of climate change find it difficult to feel?authentic moral outrage?about it.
Yet for every ton of carbon we emit, we are firing a bullet into the air. We may not live to see it, but those bullets will rain down on the children of the future, and they will suffer for it. Obama said of the nation?s young:
We know we?re always doing right when we?re taking care of them, when we?re teaching them well, when we?re showing acts of kindness. We don?t go wrong when we do that.
He also said, of our efforts to protect them: ?Surely we can do better.?
Yes. Surely we can do better in protecting today?s children from random acts of violence. But surely we can also do better in protecting tomorrow?s children from suffering that, however distant and theoretical it may seem to us now, will yield just as many broken lives and broken hearts.
It?s great to see this line of thinking, and feeling, explored afresh. I?ve been criticized in the past for seeing work that builds the human capacity for connectedness and empathy as more valuable than demanding targets for the concentration of carbon dioxide.
The problem with the argument for greenhouse-gas action based on morality and empathy is that it clashes with other moral imperatives.
The two billion people on the planet who lack a light bulb or scrabble for firewood for cooking or heat (sometimes getting into knife fights in the process) need affordable, convenient energy sources now ? whether from a solar panel or biogas, or from a conventional power plant or propane tank.
People in fast-growing countries like China and India?would almost certainly expect a concerned person in a wealthy nation to recognize the primacy in such places of real-time energy needs over long-term climate concerns. Their leaders absolutely do, and that?s why, even though they will be the dominant source of warming gases in coming decades, the climate treaty talks have remained stuck in ?you first? mode.
The issue of inter-generational empathy on climate risk butts up against even tougher barriers, the ones that make this a truly ?super wicked? problem. One is our habit of ?hyperbolic discounting? of long-term, murky threats, but that?s just the start. Much more is summarized by Richard Lazarus in a paper (cited here several times) subtitled ?Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future.?
Read that paper and the vital early paper that underpins it, by Kelly Levin and others, then circle back to the top of this post and consider the response to the Newtown shootings and the realities of global warming.
In the end, I see efforts to boost the global capacity for connectedness and empathy ? to concretize the once-fuzzy notion of the ?global village? ? as vital if the goal is a relatively smooth ride for humanity in this century and beyond (along with the capacity for innovation and resilience). Spend 45 minutes with one of my ?Knowosphere? talks to get the details.
But it?s vital to recognize that a full assessment of moral gaps, and responsibilities, includes far more than figuring out ways to constrain greenhouse gases.
When I do that, the importance of curbing carbon dioxide emissions falls well behind* the immediacy of energy gaps (and work to limit vulnerability of poor places to today?s norms for climate and coastal hazards).
I?m sure others considering this question would feel (I use that word with precision; emotions dominate calculations in this arena) differently.
And that, to a significant extent, is the point of this piece.
1:19 p.m. | Addendum | I encourage you also to consider the latest essay on the climate challenge by Robert H. Socolow of Princeton University: ?Truths We Must Tell Our?selves to Man?age Cli?mate Change? (Van?der?bilt Law Review, Vol. 65, Num?ber 6, pp. 1455?1478).
Dec. 21, 8:23 a.m. | Amplification |* The line marked by an asterisk, on reflection, is not consistent with my well-established line of thinking. I should have written:
When I do that, aggressive curbs on carbon dioxide emissions fall well behind the immediacy of filling the world?s energy gaps (and work to limit vulnerability of poor places to today?s norms for climate and coastal hazards).
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