By Paul Conlan
It might seem obvious that each of us has some moral obligation to do something in the face of the climate crisis. We might each, of course, have different responsibilities and obligations depending on whether we are in London, the Antarctic on a survey base, a remote island off the coast of Scotland or in Sudan[1]. Nevertheless, as the climate crisis is a challenge for us all , we all have some obligation. But we also might think that what we are obliged to do is not obvious. Perhaps we should eat less meat, or use public transport rather than drive, or stop flying, or stop burning fossil fuels to heat our homes. It might even be that we are not morally obliged to do anything at all! The climate crisis challenges us as moral agents, and in challenging us as moral agents, it challenges us as epistemic agents[2].
It is not obvious what we are morally obliged to do in the face of anthropogenic climate change for two related reasons: first `what ought we do?’ and second `how do I know what my moral obligations are?’. The first of these is a question about how our moral obligations direct our actions. Answering this question assumes we know what our moral obligations are, and we want to know how to discharge those obligations. The second is a question of what we know and how we know it; a question of our epistemic responsibilities and how those epistemic responsibilities lead to an understanding of the moral obligations that direct our actions. By meeting our epistemic responsibilities, we are in a position to answer the question of what our moral obligations amount to, and only then are we in a position to answer the first question.
The aim of this blog post is to reflect philosophically on these two questions and thus on our moral obligations in the face of climate change. In doing so, we will also respond to two objections which claim we have no obligation at all. That is, my goal as a philosopher is to replace the ‘seeming’ obviousness of our obligations with something more philosophically robust.
I’m not obliged to do anything: The Objection from Scale
So, am I morally obliged to do anything in the face of the climate crisis? An objector might point to the various claims about the top n companies producing a significant portion of all emissions. Surely any obligation on me, as an individual moral agent, is so small as to be insignificant in the face of such large corporate pollution. It doesn’t matter how much I personally change my lifestyle, or how much I personally do to mitigate the climate crisis. Nothing I do will make a measurable difference. It’s hopeless for me to even try. Let’s call this The Objection from Scale.
The claim that I am not morally obliged to do anything because nothing that I do will make a measurable difference, the objection from scale, is an example of a more general moral principle, that ‘ought implies can’. That is, in order for morality to guide my actions, anything morality obliges that I do must be something that I can do. That I ought to do it implies that I can do it. For example, I as a relatively fit adult ought to step into the pool to save the child in distress in the paddling pool, and that I ought to step in and save the child in distress implies that it is in my power to do so. However, I have no moral obligation to rescue the miner trapped in a collapsed mine, because regardless of how I might feel, I cannot intervene in a way that will help; it is outside my power to intervene. Of course, were I a renowned caving and mining expert this would be different, as we will see, the idea of ‘can’ and ’can’t’ is both slippery and contextual, and in the objection from scale, the ‘ought implies can’ principle is misused.
Reformulated, the principle is that ‘can’t implies not obligated to’[3], and everything turns on what we mean by the ‘can’t’. The inference is only sound in the case where one cannot do anything – when it is totally outside of one’s power to intervene. Making a very small difference individually is not making no difference at all. It is not outside our power to intervene. Small differences add up. The ‘can‘t‘ of ‘can‘t implies not obligated to‘ need not be individual. Instead, we could think and act collectively. Take the following analogy:
There is a large boat in the middle of a lake. On that boat is Bob, who is slowly dying. If unattended Bob will surely die. There is a cable running from the boat to the shore. The cable could be pulled in to bring the boat to shore, but the boat is far too heavy for you to pull in alone. Your pulling would not make a measurable difference to how far the boat would move. You, however, are one of many people on the shore, each of equal ability. If each of you pulls on the cable you can move the boat. Are you morally obliged to pull on the cable? It seems plausible to answer ‘yes, of course – because otherwise Bob will die’. Again, our objector might respond that you can’t move the boat on your own so you are not obliged to do anything, but if you really can’t move the boat on your own, then it follows that even with a large number of people helping you, the boat can’t be moved. That the difference you can make is small does not make it no difference. You can make a small difference, so if there is any obligation on you to do anything, the ‘ought implies can’ principle does not nullify that obligation. Or perhaps another similar case is that of charitable giving – if every affluent first-world resident gave a personally insignificant amount to charity (under the assumption that the charity they are giving to is effective), a significant change would result.[4]
All this short argument shows, however, is that the objector who points to the apparent difficulty of meeting our obligations has no case – the fact that large corporation carbon emission is significant majority of all emissions, and thus a significant contributor to climate change, does not dismiss each of our moral obligation to act in the face of anthropogenic climate change. What the above argument does not do is tell us anything about what we are obligated to do, it merely dismisses one objection to the idea that we are obligated at all.
In the above example of Bob on the boat, the moral obligation is clear, it’s not hard for me to see what to do – pull the cable and in turn help save Bob. The question of what I should do in the face of anthropocentric climate change is not so simple. We are bombarded with information from a variety of sources, and it is not always clear who I should listen to or how I should make my decisions. Should I stop flying to holiday destinations? Should I get rid of my car and buy and electric vehicle? Should I retrofit my home with a heat pump and get rid of my gas central heating? Should I give up meat and dairy. Should I leave my job and become a full-time protester? How would I go about finding out what to do?
It’s too hard to know what to do: The Objection from Demandingness
This brings us to the second, epistemic, challenge. Each question about what I ought to do is not merely one simple question, but is a series of incredibly complex, interconnected questions. Take the question ‘should I get rid of my internal combustion engine car and replace it with an electric car?’. On the face of it, yes, I should. Each journey I make will be better for the environment. But that is only the surface of the question. How environmentally damaging is the production process of an electric car? How much carbon is produced in making the bodywork? What is the environmental footprint of the battery? How long will the car run before it needs replaced – what is the whole life footprint of the car? These are not simple questions, and each of the obligations suggested above is just as complex as this. So how are we meant to know what to do?
The puzzle of how I know what my obligations are is not a novel problem in philosophy (few problems are!). Many moral questions involve complex competing demands on moral agents. We can, however, appeal to some hopefully uncontroversial concerns as a starting point to help work things out. Firstly, it seems someone is not blameworthy or praiseworthy for something they could not have known. Indeed, we might think something even weaker – one is not blameworthy for something one has made a good faith effort to know the facts about. For example, Isaac Newton is not blameworthy for not knowing water is chemically composed of the atoms H2O, even though such a thing was in principle knowable in Newton’s time – nothing about the laws of nature stood in Newton’s (or anyone’s) way to prevent them from knowing water’s molecular structure is H2O, it’s simply a contingency that it wasn’t part of scientific knowledge at that time. The chemical structure of water hasn’t changed between now and then, rather our scientific techniques have gotten better. But even though he did not know water is H2O, Newton made a good faith effort to know the science of his time. That is, he did his epistemic best. Nobody in Newton’s time knew that water is H2O, even their very best scientists and inquirers. So, we can’t blame Newton for not knowing.
Conversely, we now live in an era of massively available information – I could, for example research the environmental impact of my electric car purchase, or my switch to a vegan diet or whether I should stop flying. For very many of the questions we might ask about what we ought to do about anthropogenic climate change, there is information out there to be had. We just need to make a good-faith effort to be familiar with the best information. But what is key here is the idea of the best information. We need to look to the work of the experts, not the flim-flam men, paid actors, con artists or confused amateurs. We need to not only make a good faith effort to identify the best information, but we need to do the same with the sources of the information, the experts we look to.
Being familiar with the best research regarding anthropogenic climate change in a wide variety of areas is by itself really difficult. It takes a lot of work to keep on top of the best research in one area, let alone any area that might entail a moral obligation. If keeping on top of the best research is required for each of us to meet our moral obligations, then it seems that our moral obligations are simply too demanding. This is the objection from demandingness[5]. We might think that our best moral theories should not demand too much of agents, lest they be impossible to follow. Of course, it does not follow that the demands of morality need to be easy, but they should not be too difficult for an agent to meet.
So, does this objection entail that because of the challenge of keeping up with the best research we don’t have any moral obligations with regards to the climate crisis?
I don’t think so.
It’s true that keeping up with the best research in all areas is too demanding for any one agent. It’s a good thing then that we have specialists – experts in various fields who can explain what the research is, and the implications of that research. We should listen to them and aim to follow their advice. Our moral obligation is to listen to the authoritative testimony of our best scholars and climate experts. Those experts are the ones we trust.
However, how we choose to trust the experts we deem to be right is itself a deep challenge, as I suggested above. Separating the genuine experts from the flim-flam men, con-artists and charismatic gurus is its own epistemic challenge, deeply intertwined with the challenge of knowing what to do. Giving an answer to this challenge is beyond the scope of this blog post, but the main claim about good-faith engagement is certainly a first step. We must not listen uncritically, which means making an effort to understand the why of what is being said, and to think it through. We need, in that good faith engagement, to be willing to step outside our comfort zone, our “epistemic bubble”. We need to appreciate the evidence we are given as best we can and not exclude the evidence that makes us uncomfortable. Engaging in this epistemic good faith also prepares us for when we have expert disagreement. If two experts disagree on a point, how are we to know what to do? Well, we can look at the evidence in front of us and make an assessment ourselves based on the expert testimony. If we cannot come to a reasoned conclusion, then we suspend our judgement until we can. If I cannot come to a reasoned conclusion about whether I ought to buy an electric car given the whole life footprint, I should not buy one. But I should also make sure I am sensitive to the reasons I would give up my ICE car. It might even be that in such cases of extreme uncertainty in decision making, nothing isn’t the least I can do – it’s the most. If I don’t know what the impact of my purchases (say) will be, I should refrain from making them. Perhaps in cases of deep uncertainty, I should do less, buy less, own less and engage in radical degrowth?[6].
Weighing reasons like this is hard, but it’s not too hard. We don’t need to actively research journal articles, or interview researchers, or even only listen to those experts. What we do need to do is engage critically with our information sources. Why do I think that one newspaper is doing better at reporting on expert research than another, i.e. why should I listen to one over the other? Why do I find a particular Youtuber credible? Is it because they say what I want to hear, or is it because they at the very least seem diligent in presenting their sources and being clear about what they don’t know? I can engage in good faith and be critical of my own engagement with my sources. Still, when presented with complex moral demands, things will be hard to decide, but we can do our best. And it should be underlined that the ‘we’ here is not just individuals. It includes media organisations, governments and corporations. We need to engage in (epistemic) good faith to avoid epistemic bad faith and misinformation.
Keeping up with the best research like this also, however, puts a demand on our experts. They must as a matter of moral obligation make the conclusions of their work as available and digestible as possible to the vast majority of people. They must cultivate trust in the non-expert population, since after all, we’re ‘tired of experts.’…But that is a topic for another post.
[1] Indeed, our responsibilities might vary according to whether we are a billionaire tech entrepreneur or a worker in a factory. The point of this paper is not to explicitly identify what those responsibilities are, rather it is to think through the motivation for thinking that we all have some responsibility and obligation.
[2] By ‘epistemic agents’ we mean ‘those agents who have beliefs and knowledge’ – our epistemic responsibilities are our responsibilities as knowers.
[3] This is the contrapositive of the original statement, for logicians playing along at home.
[4] Singer’s Famine, Affluence and Morality makes the case that morality demands far more of us than this!
[5] We might think, for various reasons, that demandingness is no objection to a moral theory. If so, so much the worse for the objector!
[6] Thanks to Mette High for making this point clear to me.
