Points of No Return: Climate Change and the Ethics of Uncertainty (original) (raw)
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CLIMATE, ENERGY, ETHICS-working papers, 2024
The problem of climate change arguably constitutes the greatest challenge to humankind. However, climate ethics has so far been better on the side of the diagnosis rather than of the solution or therapy of that problem. We attempt to show why this is the case and we outline what is needed for helpful ethical contributions to overcoming the climate problem. For this we focus on what may be called the argument from catastrophe in climate ethics, assessing the standard use of a catastrophic precautionary principle by Henry Shue and the non-standard use of the principle by Eugen Pissarskoi. That argument focuses on the single catastrophe of climate change and treats the problem of taking the necessary means to avoid the catastrophe mainly as a motivation problem. What is overlooked is that the solutions are not at hand, that fighting climate change involves intricate normative conflicts of goals, and that potential measures may themselves be riddled with (catastrophic) risks.
APPROACHING THE TIPPING POINT CLIMATE RISKS, FAITH AND POLITICAL ACTION
2008
Scientific and media reports have become enthralled by the apocalyptic overtones of climatic 'tipping points'. These are thresholds after which a relatively small shift in the Earth system (e.g. melting Arctic perma-frost) has a big, sudden impact on the overall system. Related is the prospect of runaway or 'irreversible' global warming. But they have also revived an interest in the original sociological sense -i.e. tipping points in social and political movement. How do we relate the two? Given the possibility that certain catastrophic events may be unavoidable, climatic tipping points present a situation of global risk unlike any considered before. They introduce an element of radical uncertainty into the very value of taking action. In this paper I argue that ethical bases for taking action must think beyond thresholds assumed by calculations of traditional probabilities of risk such as the precautionary principle or cost-benefit analysis (or simply the assumption that 'my actions will be meaningless unless this happens by this time'). I demonstrate this by reporting from an emerging political movement in the UK that is demonstrating precisely the value of risktaking in the 'public sphere' of non-violent direct action. Appropriately enough for (Hansen's) reference to the question of redemption (below), theological insight may indeed have something to contribute here. For an ethics that places imperatives for faith in action prior to epistemic certainty (doing, in other words, comes before knowing) lies arguably at the root of many religious or otherwise utopian traditions.
What Lies Beneath: The understatement of existential climate risk
Human-induced climate change is an existential risk to human civilisation: an adverse outcome that will either annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential, unless carbon emissions are rapidly reduced. Special precautions that go well beyond conventional risk management practice are required if the increased likelihood of very large climate impacts — known as “fat tails” — are to be adequately dealt with. The potential consequences of these lower-probability, but higher-impact, events would be devastating for human societies. The bulk of climate research has tended to underplay these risks, and exhibited a preference for conservative projections and scholarly reticence, although increasing numbers of scientists have spoken out in recent years on the dangers of such an approach. Climate policymaking and the public narrative are significantly informed by the important work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, IPCC reports also tend toward reticence and caution, erring on the side of “least drama”, and downplaying the more extreme and more damaging outcomes. Whilst this has been understandable historically, given the pressure exerted upon the IPCC by political and vested interests, it is now becoming dangerously misleading with the acceleration of climate impacts globally. What were lower-probability, higher-impact events are now becoming more likely. This is a particular concern with potential climatic tipping points — passing critical thresholds which result in step changes in the climate system — such as the polar ice sheets (and hence sea levels), and permafrost and other carbon stores, where the impacts of global warming are non-linear and difficult to model with current scientific knowledge. However the extreme risks to humanity which the tipping points represent, justify strong precautionary management. Under-reporting on these issues is irresponsible, contributing to the failure of imagination that is occurring today in our understanding of, and response to, climate change. If climate policymaking is to be soundly based, a reframing of scientific research within an existential risk-management framework is now urgently required. This must be taken up not just in the work of the IPCC, but also in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations if we are to address the real climate challenge. Current processes will not deliver either the speed or the scale of change required.
The difficult, the dangerous, and the catastrophic: Managing the spectrum of climate risks
Earth's Future, 2014
The notion of a threshold of dangerous climate change has been central to national and international efforts to address climate risks. However, the focus on a single target has now become an obstacle because it reinforces three key problems: it frames climate change as a distant abstract threat, it impedes integration of mitigation and adaptation, and it fails to recognize the diversity of values and risk perceptions of people around the globe. We present an alternative framework that considers both biophysical science and social values in characterizing the broad spectrum of climate risks. The framework also presents the options for managing these risks within four quadrants defined by the inherent limits to mitigation and adaptation. This quadrant-based approach to managing the spectrum of climate risks restructures the climate change problem from avoiding a distant catastrophe to minimizing collective suffering.
Anthropogenic climate change: Scientific uncertainties and moral dilemmas
Physica D-nonlinear Phenomena, 2008
This paper considers the role of scientific expertise and moral reasoning in the decision making process involved in climate-change issues. It points to an unresolved moral dilemma that lies at the heart of this decision making, namely how to balance duties towards future generations against duties towards our contemporaries. At present, the prevailing moral and political discourses shy away from addressing this dilemma and evade responsibility by falsely drawing normative conclusions from the predictions of climate models alone.We argue that such moral dilemmas are best addressed in the framework of Expected Utility Theory. A crucial issue is to adequately incorporate into this framework the uncertainties associated with the predicted consequences of climate change on the well-being of future generations. The uncertainties that need to be considered include those usually associated with climate modeling and prediction, but also moral and general epistemic ones. This paper suggests a way to correctly incorporate all the relevant uncertainties into the decision making process.
A normative account of dangerous climate change
The central objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) " is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.. . " 1 Unless global energy policy is to pursue the evidently impossible, namely the avoidance of all climate change, we must distinguish climate change that is dangerous from that which is not. Climate scientists concerned that international policy be intelligently guided have sought to assess the dangers of climate change, most often by discussing the risks associated with different warming scenarios. In this paper I argue that such efforts are important for a proper account of dangerous climate change but ultimately insufficient. In the next section I defend a provisional understanding of dangerous as too risky and I argue that the judgment that an action or policy is too risky involves more than an empirical estimation of the risks involved. It rests on normative considerations. In the third section I distinguish the present account from relativism to which the account in Section 2 bears a superficial resemblance. The fourth section argues that the identification of climate change as dangerous involves both procedural and substantive considerations. In Section 5 I consider and reject alternative normative accounts of dangerous climate change. The sixth section amends the provisional understanding of dangerous to incorporate uncertainty and discusses the necessary role of precautionary thinking in the identification of climate change as dangerous. I conclude in Section 7 with very brief remarks on the practical upshot of this account of dangerous climate change. 1 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992. Available on line at
Gambling on Unknown Unknowns: Risk Ethics for a Climate Change Technofix
The Anthropocene Review
In this article, we critically engage with the risk ethics of attempting to mitigate climate change via a technofix, namely Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) utilising Synthetic Biology. Now that the IPCC has (belatedly) acknowledged climate overshoot as being inevitable, our dependency on NETs to avert runaway climate change has become critical. Given the scale of unknown unknowns at play when utilising any such technofix, we present gambling as the most apt analogy to communicate the unprecedented realms of risk and uncertainty occasioned by any such action. Hence, we critique traditional normative ethics in order to illustrate how a germane climate ethics must face the largely uncertain and unpredictable risk that any climate change technofix would inevitably represent instead of advocating for outdated risk-averse positions. We conclude by showing that this approach is fundamental to developing impactful future ethics research on climate mitigation, and is required to mark a much-needed new direction for risk ethics in the Anthropocene.
Climate Uncertainty, Real Possibilities and the Precautionary Principle
Erkenntnis, 2021
A challenge faced by defenders of the precautionary principle is to clarify when the evidence that a harmful event might occur suffices to regard this prospect as a real possibility. Plausible versions of the principle must articulate some epistemic threshold, or de minimis requirement, which specifies when precautionary measures are justified. Critics have argued that formulating such a threshold is problematic in the context of the precautionary principle. First, this is because the precautionary principle appears to be ambiguous about the distinction between risk and uncertainty: should the principle merely be invoked when evidential probabilities are absent, or also when probabilities have low epistemic credentials? Secondly, defenders of the precautionary principle face an aggregation puzzle: in judging whether or not the de minimis requirement has been met, how should first-order evidential probabilities and their second-order epistemic standing be aggregated? This article argues that the ambiguity can be resolved, and the epistemological puzzle can be solved. Focusing on decisions in the context of climate uncertainty, I advance a version of the precautionary principle that serves as a plausible decision rule, to be adopted in situations where its main alternative-cost-benefit analysis-does not deliver.
The Ethical Adventures of climate Change:
There seems to be many ethical dilemmas, in regards to finding a sustainable solution to climate change. It has been suggested, the crux, of most of these climate change ethical dilemmas, is how we live now within our world. As a result, this essay argues that there needs to be a global, conciseness process that tackles Climate Change, from an ethical consensual, co-evolutionary, systems orientated, sustainable development ethical perspective. So that then there is a better understanding, how we can live and cope with the crisis of climate change at present and in the future.