Download Gardiner - University of Washington

A Perfect Moral Storm
Stephen M. Gardiner
University of Washington, Seattle
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.)
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
Today’s 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.
Climate Change as a “Perfect
Moral Storm”
Convergence of three severe problems for
ethical action:



The Global Storm
The Intergenerational Storm
The Theoretical Storm
The Global Storm

Spatial Dispersion of Causes and Effects

Spatial Fragmentation of Agency

Institutional Inadequacy
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.
Resolving the Tragedy of the
Commons

“Mutual coercion mutually agreed upon”

Broader context of interaction
Obstacles to Resolving the
Global Storm

Lack of Adequate Global System

Uncertainty about Effects at the Level of
Nation States

Deep Roots

Skewed Vulnerabilities
The Intergenerational Storm

Temporal Dispersion of Causes and
Effects

Temporal Fragmentation of Agency

Institutional Inadequacy
Temporal Dispersion

Lifetime of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Timeframe of Major Climate Processes (e.g.,
Oceans)
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 1733% 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)
Implications of Temporal
Dispersion
Climate change is:



Resilient
Backloaded
Substantially Deferred
Shape of the Temporal Storm
• Benefits Now (to us); Costs Later (to
them)
• Predictable Bias
• Iteration
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.
Some Points to Notice
PIP is worse than a traditional Tragedy of
the Commons:

Not everyone prefers to cooperate

Traditional solutions are undermined
The Theoretical Storm






scientific uncertainty
intergenerational equity
contingent preferences
contingent persons
nonhuman animals
nature
“Cost-benefit analysis … would simply be selfdeception. 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)
The Problem of Moral Corruption
“There’s 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.”
Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, February
21, 2005
Modes of Moral Corruption
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Distraction
Complacency
Unreasonable Doubt
Selective Attention
Delusion
Pandering
False Witness
Hypocrisy