2.6.4: How should we respond to the problem of climate change?

Return to the scenario in which you burn your neighbor’s house down. In that scenario, you clearly harm to your neighbor. Even if you don’t physically harm her, you destroy her property. You force her to find a new place to live. Climate change has similar effects. Between increasing the severity of droughts and floods and by causing sea levels to rise, climate change is killing and will continue to kill humans and nonhuman animals. Others are being forced to abandon their homes and find new places to live. For many humans, this will be much more difficult than simply finding a new home to buy. It will require abandoning one’s homeland and moving somewhere completely foreign. For nonhuman animals, it will be even more difficult. Some species, like polar bears, for example, may find it impossible to adapt and will go extinct.

Now, when you burn down your neighbor’s house, you endanger your neighbor and force her to find a new place to live. This is clearly wrong. But when you contribute to climate change, do you endanger anyone? Do you force anyone to find a new place to live? It’s not clear that you do. Notice that the harms of climate change are cumulative harms. Your contribution to the problem is relatively insignificant. This leads some to argue that when you contribute to climate change, you do not do anything morally wrong.

While it may be true that your contribution to climate change is relatively insignificant, it is worth noting that how much you contribute to climate change varies significantly depending on where and how you live. Those living in Australia, Canada, and the United States, for example, emit much more carbon dioxide per capita than those living in India, Indonesia, and Brazil. This, on its own, may be a reason to think that you are doing something morally wrong since you are contributing more than your fair share to climate change. Regardless, I want to argue that even if your contribution to the problem of climate change is relatively insignificant, it is still wrong.

To see this, let’s return to the hypothetical scenario we’ve been discussing, the scenario in which you burn your neighbor’s house down. This time, however, let’s assume that you don’t actually burn your neighbor’s house down. Instead, you create a trail of dry brush from a nearby forest to your neighbor’s house. This, on its own, doesn’t harm your neighbor in the least. It does, however, make it more likely that your neighbor’s house will burn down. This is especially bad if there are frequent forest fires. But even if there aren’t frequent forest fires, it’s still morally wrong for you to endanger your neighbor and her home for no good reason. It’s irresponsible.

When we contribute to climate change, we do something analogous. We don’t necessarily force anyone to find a new place to live, but we do increase the likelihood that people across the globe will have to find new places to live. This is morally wrong, especially when our reasons for contributing to climate change aren’t good ones. If, for example, you start your car engine before getting into your car so that it has time to warm up, you’re doing something morally wrong. Why? Because you’re increasing the likelihood that human and nonhuman animals across the globe will have to find new places to live, and you’re doing it for no good reason. Sure, it’s nice to warm up your car before getting into it, but that isn’t a sufficiently good reason to justify your endangering both human and nonhuman animals.

Some reasons, however, are sufficiently good to justify your endangering both human and nonhuman animals. When it is very cold outside, for example, it is morally permissible to heat your home so that your pipes don’t freeze. Or when your salary does not permit you to live close to your workplace, and you can’t carpool or use public transportation to get there, it is morally permissible for you to drive to work. It’s true that in driving you’ll emit some carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It’s also true that this makes it slightly more likely that sentient beings will have to find new places to live, but you’re not acting irresponsibly. Similarly, when you light a candle in your home, it increases the likelihood that your neighbor’s house will burn down, but it doesn’t follow from this that it’s always wrong to light a candle in your home.

Is this the full story? Not quite, and here’s why. Imagine that you’ve got a sufficiently good reason to light a candle. You realize that this increases the likelihood not only that your house will burn down but also that your neighbor’s house will burn down. Now, imagine that there is some small thing you could do to reduce the likelihood of your neighbor’s house burning down. You could install a smoke alarm, for instance. It seems like you are morally obligated do this.

Note that you are not morally obligated to do this for your own sake. There is nothing necessarily wrong with burning yourself or destroying your house. I certainly don’t recommend doing either of those things, but they are not necessarily morally wrong. The reason, then, that you are morally obligated to install a smoke alarm is not to protect yourself but to protect your neighbor. If your candle were to start a fire, your smoke alarm would alert you to the danger, and you could call on the fire department to put out the fire before it destroys your neighbor’s house. Failing to install a smoke alarm would be irresponsible. This becomes increasingly true as the number of people living close to you increases. If you are surrounded by homes, or if you live in an apartment and are surrounded by neighboring families with children and pets, lighting a candle without having a smoke alarm is especially irresponsible.

When we contribute to climate change, we’re doing something analogous. We’re increasing the likelihood that humans and nonhuman animals will die or be forced to find new places to live. Fortunately, there’s something we can do to reduce the likelihood of this. We can offset our GHG emissions (hereafter, simply emissions). When we purchase carbon offsets, we fund projects that reduce emissions by funding the development of wind farms, enabling landfills to capture emissions, and/or preventing deforestation. When we offset enough of our emissions, we go carbon neutral, which is to say that our net emissions (i.e., our emissions minus our offsets) equals zero. By offsetting our emissions, we make it the case that no human or nonhuman animal is more likely to die or lose her home on our account. When we offset our emissions, we act responsibly. This is what morality requires.

Finally, imagine that you’re living in an apartment and are surrounded by neighboring families. You light candles from time to time, but you have installed a smoke alarm and a sprinkler system. You do not significantly increase the likelihood that others will lose their homes. The same, however, cannot be said of your neighbors. They light candles all the time but don’t have smoke alarms or sprinkler systems. They are endangering all the people and nonhuman animals living in the apartment complex, but they don’t see the problem. You would move to a new apartment complex, but let’s assume that you’re stuck in this one. It seems to me that, in a case like this, a responsible person would not simply cross his fingers and hope for the best. He would try to convince his neighbors to stop lighting candles all the time. He would encourage the manager of the apartment complex to add smoke alarms and sprinkler systems to every unit. He would petition the local government to require these things in apartment buildings and vote for candidates who support these policies. He would advocate for change.

We are in an analogous position. Those around us are continually contributing to climate change, and in doing so, they are increasing the likelihood that human and nonhuman animals around the world will die or lose their homes. But they do not see the problem. They do not see that their actions are unnecessarily risky. We might like to move to a new planet, but we are stuck on this one. We have nowhere else to go. It seems to me that, in a case like this, a responsible person would not simply cross his or her fingers and hope for the best. She would try to convince others to reduce their emissions and to offset whatever emissions remained. She would encourage her local and national representatives to pass legislation that would reduce emissions, and she would vote for candidates who support these laws. She would advocate for change.