Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed -- and What It Means for Our Future

1049 Pages·2014·2.94 MB·English

by  Dale Jamieson

Reason in a Dark Time
REASON IN A DARK TIME
WHY THE STRUGGLE AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
FAILED—AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR OUR FUTURE
Dale Jamieson
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For Mickey Glantz
and Rikki Kimberly and her mother
The very essence of civilized culture is that we. . . deliberately institute, in
advance of the happening of various contingencies and emergencies of life,
devices for detecting their approach and registering their nature, for warding off
what is unfavorable, or at least for protecting ourselves from its full impact. . . .
—John Dewey (1910:16) One more word about giving instruction as to what the
world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to
give it. . . . When philosophy paints its gloomy picture then a form of life has
grown old. It cannot be rejuvenated by the gloomy picture, but only understood.
Only when the dusk starts to fall does the owl of Minerva spread its wings and
fly.
—G.W.F. Hegel (1952:12–13)
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. The Nature of the Problem
2.1. The Development of Climate Science
2.2. Climate Change as a Public Issue
2.3. The Age of Climate Diplomacy
2.4. Concluding Remarks
3. Obstacles to Action
3.1. Scientific Ignorance
3.2. Politicizing Science
3.3. Facts and Values
3.4. The Science/Policy Interface
3.5. Organized Denial
3.6. Partisanship
3.7. Political Institutions
3.8. The Hardest Problem
3.9. Concluding Remarks
4. The Limits of Economics
4.1. Economics and Climate Change
4.2. The Stern Review and Its Critics
4.3. Discounting
4.4. Further Problems
4.5. State of the Discussion
4.6. Concluding Remarks
5. The Frontiers of Ethics
5.1. The Domain of Concern
5.2. Responsibility and Harm
5.3. Fault Liability
5.4. Human Rights and Domination
5.5. Differences That Matter
5.6. Revising Morality
5.7. Concluding Remarks
6. Living with Climate Change
6.1. Life in the Anthropocene
6.2. It Doesn’t Matter What I Do
6.3. It’s Not the Meat, It’s the Motion
6.4. Ethics for the Anthropocene
6.5. Respect for Nature
6.6. Global Justice
6.7. Concluding Remarks
7. Politics, Policy, and the Road Ahead
7.1. The Rectification of Names
7.2. Adaptation: The Neglected Option?
7.3. Why We Need More Than Adaptation
7.4. The Category Formerly Known as Geoengineering
7.5. The Way Forward
7.6. Concluding Remarks
References
Index
Preface
The dusk has started to fall with respect to climate change and so the owl of
Minerva can spread her wings. We can now begin the process of understanding
why the global attempt to prevent serious anthropogenic climate change failed
and begin to chart a course for living in a world that has been remade by human
action.
We are stuck with climate change. This book is about what it is, why we are
stuck with it, and what we can learn from our failures to get out of the ditch.
Without intending to do so, we have committed ourselves and our descendants to
a world that is qualitatively different from the one that gave rise to humanity and
all of its creations. Now we hope to limit the pace and extent of the change, but
despite international treaties we cannot seem to do so, even with the advice of
the world’s best scientists. This book is a contribution to helping us think
through why this is so and what it means.
Sometimes people hear this as pessimism. I say it is realism. If we are lucky,
climate change will not be worse than other things that humanity has survived.
During the last century about 231 million people died in war and many more
from famine and other disasters.1 Yet the arts and culture thrived. In some places
material prosperity bloomed as never before, and billions of people lived in
freedom and dignity. Perhaps it will be this way with climate change. On the
other hand, if we are not going to be so lucky, it would be good to start making
preparations now.
I am a philosopher by disciplinary training but some of my colleagues will
have a hard time recognizing this as a philosophy book. I can only say that when
it comes to thinking about the real world (an exercise in what philosophers call
“non-ideal theory”), the facts matter. So does history. It is important to situate
the subject under investigation in the world of our shared experiences. This
would not have seemed as strange to my philosophical heroes (Hume and Mill)
as it does to many philosophers today. Still, readers might want to know (for
reasons of attraction or avoidance) that Chapters 5 and 6 are the most
traditionally philosophical chapters in the book.
Not only am I a philosopher but my roots are firmly in the “analytic” tradition.