A Perfect Moral Storm

1
A Perfect Moral Storm

• Stephen M. Gardiner
• University of Washington, Seattle

2
Why Ethics?

• Natural, technical, and social sciences can
  provide essential information and evidence needed
  for decisions on what constitutes dangerous
  anthropogenic interference with the climate
  system. At the same time, such decisions are
  value judgments
• (IPCC 2001a, p. 2 emphasis added.)

3
Value Judgments in Practice

• Q1 Setting a Global Ceiling
• ? Needs and Aspirations of Current People
• ? Obligations to Future People
• ? Obligations to Animals, Plants and Nature
• Q2 Distributing Emissions Under a Global Ceiling
• Historical Responsibility
• Global Poverty and Inequality
• ? Different Roles of Energy Consumption in Human
  Lives

4
Todays Thesis

• The peculiar features of the climate change
  problem pose substantial obstacles to our ability
  to make the hard choices necessary to address it.
  Climate change is a perfect moral storm.
• One consequence of this is that, even if the
  difficult ethical questions could be answered, we
  might still find it difficult to act. For the
  perfect moral storm makes us extremely vulnerable
  to moral corruption.

5
Climate Change as a Perfect Moral Storm

• Convergence of three severe problems for ethical
  action
• The Global Storm
• The Intergenerational Storm
• The Theoretical Storm

6
The Global Storm

• Spatial Dispersion of Causes and Effects
• Spatial Fragmentation of Agency
• Institutional Inadequacy

7
The Shape of the Global Storm

• Tragedy of the Commons
• (PD1) It is collectively rational to cooperate
  and restrict overall pollution each agent
  prefers the outcome produced by everyone
  restricting their individual pollution over the
  outcome produced by no one doing so.
• (PD2) It is individually rational not to restrict
  one's own pollution when each agent has the
  power to decide whether or not she will limit her
  own pollution, each (rationally) prefers not to
  do so, whatever the others do.

8
Resolving the Tragedy of the Commons

• Mutual coercion mutually agreed upon
• Broader context of interaction

9
Obstacles to Resolving the Global Storm

• Lack of Adequate Global System
• Uncertainty about Effects at the Level of Nation
  States
• Deep Roots
• Skewed Vulnerabilities

10
The Intergenerational Storm

• Temporal Dispersion of Causes and Effects
• Temporal Fragmentation of Agency
• Institutional Inadequacy

11
Temporal Dispersion

• Lifetime of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
• Timeframe of Major Climate Processes (e.g.,
  Oceans)

12
Lifetime of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

• Typical Estimate 5-200 years (IPCC)
• The Long Tail
• The carbon cycle of the biosphere will take a
  long time to completely neutralize and sequester
  anthropogenic CO2. For the best-guess cases
  we expect that 17-33 of the fossil fuel carbon
  will still reside in the atmosphere 1kyr from
  now, decreasing to 10-15 at 10kyr, and 7 at 100
  kyr. The mean lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 is
  about 30-35 kyr. (Archer)

13
Implications of Temporal Dispersion

• Climate change is
• Resilient
• Backloaded
• Substantially Deferred

14
Shape of the Temporal Storm

• Benefits Now (to us) Costs Later (to them)
• Predictable Bias
• Iteration

15
The Pure Intergenerational Problem

• (PIP1) It is collectively rational for most
  generations to cooperate (almost) every
  generation prefers the outcome produced by
  everyone restricting pollution over the outcome
  produced by everyone overpolluting.
• (PIP2) It is individually rational for all
  generations not to cooperate when each
  generation has the power to decide whether or not
  it will overpollute, each generation (rationally)
  prefers to overpollute, whatever the others do.

16
Some Points to Notice

• PIP is worse than a traditional Tragedy of the
  Commons
• Not everyone prefers to cooperate
• Traditional solutions are undermined

17
The Theoretical Storm

• scientific uncertainty
• intergenerational equity
• contingent preferences
• contingent persons
• nonhuman animals
• nature

18

• Cost-benefit analysis would simply be
  self-deception. And in any case, it could not be
  a successful exercise, because the issue is too
  poorly understood, and too little accommodated in
  the current economic theory.
• (John Broome, Counting the Cost of Global Warming)

19
Theres a quiet clamor for hypocrisy and
deception and pragmatic politicians respond with
schemes that seem to promise something for
nothing. Please, spare us the truth.
The Problem of Moral Corruption

• Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, February 21, 2005

20
Modes of Moral Corruption

• Distraction
• Complacency
• Unreasonable Doubt
• Selective Attention
• Delusion
• Pandering
• False Witness
• Hypocrisy