In this series of blog posts I will discuss some of the assigned readings for the Sustainable Planning Seminar (Urban Planning/Geography/Landscape Architecture 446) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The readings for this week are:
- “Ethics and Global Climate Change” from Nature Education
- “Australia is Committing Climate Suicide” from the New York Times
- “The Moral Element of Climate Change” from Stanford News
- “The Benefits of Performative Environmentalism” from the Atlantic
- “The Density Divide” from Niskanen Center
- Biden’s Climate Plan from Politico
- “What 2020’s Bizarre Economy Taught Us About Climate Change” from the Atlantic
- “How Americans See Climate Change and the Environment in 7 Charts” from Pew Research
- “Now that climate change is irrefutable, denialists like Andrew Bolt insist it will be good for us” from The Guardian
Ethics of the Climate Crisis
The first article “Ethics and Global Climate Change” summarized the main ethical problems that accompany the climate crisis. It discusses the obvious moral dilemmas such as which entities have the greatest responsibility to reduce emissions and the damage to future generations. However, they also introduced the interesting perspective that new species may evolve due to climate change. This complicates the role of human societies in preserving current species.
The article on “Performative Environmentalism” gave a compelling argument in favor of “doing your part.” It re-certified the significance of collective action, or inaction, while acknowledging that the deepest changes will come from top-down policy and regulation.
This is a bit of a non-sequitur, but President Biden’s plan to address climate change is bold and has strong considerations for environmental justice.
Slow Changes
How are opinions about the climate crisis evolving in the United States? As experience would suggest, your politics is a strong indicator of how you view climate change. This is confirmed by the Pew Research article. In conjunction with the report on urbanization we can see that people are moving to cities, where left-wing politics typically dominates so too does fear of climate change. Interestingly, Annie Lowery, author of “Performative Environmentalism,” indicated that climate change skeptics tended to exhibit more environmentally-friendly behaviors. However, Robinson Meyer, author of “Bizarre Economy,” believes that the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how behavioral change is remarkably insufficient as a stand-alone climate action. Finally, it is exceedingly unlikely that humans will be able to “adapt” to climate change. At least, it won’t be comfortable.
Synthesis
These articles constitute a basic introduction to the philosophical issues embedded in the climate crisis. I am reminded of a book I reviewed last year, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. In it, the author establishes a “human standard of value” which prioritizes human well-being over the well-being and stewardship of the Earth. The articles for this week’s reading offer a more nuanced interpretation of “human standard” because the effects of climate change are felt differently throughout the world and throughout time. However, I don’t find the argument, that developing nations have a right to carbon emissions because the U.S. and other industrialized nations benefited from emissions in the past, particularly salient. Developing nations should learn from the mistakes of others and add energy generation from clean sources. Nuclear energy is especially appealing for this purpose and China is setting a good precedent by adding 40 GWe of nuclear energy.
The dialogue among these articles creates a landscape of nuance.