Our Inability to Confront Global Warming

The following quote from an economist at the World Wildlife Federation, which has an excellent climate change team, crystallizes the difference between how the U.S. and China approach global warming and climate change:

“When you speak to the Chinese, climate change is not an ideological issue. It’s just a fact of life. While we debate climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy, the debate is past in China. For them it’s implementation. It’s a growth sector, and they want to capture this sector.”

What this means for the U.S, beyond our ability to capture a significant growth industry, is that global warming has indeed become an ideological issue.  Recent polls have found significant correlations between belief (or disbelief) in global warming and support or opposition for hot-button culture issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.  Think about that for a moment.  Global warming is falling into a basket of issues ruled by emotions,  thousands of years of cultural and religious debate, and human conceptions of right and wrong.  Global warming is a scientific phenomenon.  It is either real or it isn't.  Global warming does not belong in the same discussions as these other topics.

What does this tell us about the United States?  For me, this inability to reach a national consensus about global warming is a serious red flag for our society.  The most successful societies are those that can adapt to changing circumstances.  They must be nimble, open to the truth, and willing to face unpleasant realities.  Most of the world is doing that right now, but the U.S. is not.  I believe it is still an open question as to why, but I have a few thoughts.

First, we have a political system specifically designed to maintain the status quo.  Despite the great changes throughout our history, we have more often faced gridlock.  This was intentional.  One of the chief concerns of our founding fathers was to avoid tyranny and monarchy at all costs, and so they designed a system that not only shared power, but also is prone to slow, methodical deliberation.  China, or its ruling council, can essentially do what it wants, without a national dialogue that often takes decades.  Such a design can have horrific consequences, such as the tens of millions of deaths that occurred during the Great Leap Forward.  It can also allow massive societies to respond with swiftness to imminent threats such as global warming.

Second, this is a huge, massive, gargantuan problem, with an equally massive, complex, and long-term solution required.  For many people, who have bills to pay, children to support, etc, facing its consequences and considering solutions is not an easy task.  And this is important because public opinion is important in our political system.  For such large undertakings, a politician must have public support.  Further, this is a long-term problem, and many people are less interested in fixing problems that will primarily exist in the future, as opposed to tomorrow or next week.  Humans have a short-term approach to dealing with problems and with survival.

Third, the U.S. is a massive user of domestically available fossil fuels.  Even though we import oil, we get most of our natural gas and coal domestically, and much of our oil imports come from Canada.  Despite all of the talk to the contrary, we do not face the same level of energy security issues as other countries (Europe, for example).  These domestic resources also creates jobs and entire industries, and the prospect of having to transition away from such jobs (which will be painful), is daunting, and creates entirely understandable opposition groups that are quite interested in questioning the scientific certainty of global warming.

Many more reasons exist for the surprising amount of skepticism about global warming in the U.S, but I think perhaps the most disheartening is this:  The vested corporate interests that stand to lose from a transition from fossil fuels, and the misinformation they promote, trying with all their might to make global warming a partisan issue.  There is no doubt that making global warming a part of "culture wars" has been a direct goal.  Look at those issues historically; they never resolve.  Meanwhile the rest of the world, especially China, will have shifted away from fossil fuels and captured emerging technology markets.

Eventually though, the debate surrounding global warming in the U.S. will resolve. What we will be able to do about it when that time comes is another question entirely.

The Ethics of Violence and War

I have been speaking with a friend recently about violence and war.  When is it justified?  Is it ever justified?  Do hard and fast ethical rules exist, applicable to any situation at any time? Or can we sometimes justify violence by examining the specific circumstances of an event?

My friend, who is thoughtful, logical, religious, and politically liberal, believes in absolutes.  Right is right and wrong is wrong.  Violence, in his estimation, is always wrong.  He believes that natural truth exists beyond the rules that humanity constructs for itself.

I disagree.  I do not believe that there is fundamental law of the universe that says killing is wrong.   Humans live in groups and depend on each other, and as a result it just makes sense, for the well-being of our society, to shun violence.  Conceptions of right and wrong are convenient for maintaining order, stability, and preserving life.  That does not demean these ideas.  That does not make them any less important. 

Ethical codes such as the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them unto you) exist precisely because their broad acceptance is required in order for human civilization to exist.  These values have been created by humans; they have not been handed down from on high.

Many people find this argument terrifying and damaging.  They label it relativism, or the idea that nothing is truly absolute or absolutely true.  As my friend writes:

“One of my professors at [law school] lamented the fact that, in the post-deconstructionist world, we are left with rationales to tear down others' arguments but we have nothing to construct in their place.  Essentially, we deconstruct "natural truths" but then we are left with nothing.”

He disagrees, and so do I, but for different reasons.  I’ll focus on my reasoning: just because the Golden Rule doesn’t come from God doesn’t make it any less true, if by truth we are discussing the most peaceful, free, and prosperous ways to organize humans into societies. 

Aside from the occasional hermit, we live in societies and cannot escape our connections and dependence on others, as John Donne noted several hundred years ago.  Because of this connection then, something similar to the Golden Rule becomes a sort of truth, just not an absolute, universal truth.  In fact, I think it becomes more powerful than an absolute truth, because it is something that we as humans have recognized, nurtured, and passed along throughout our history.  I find that much more compelling than simply accepting an edict from a supernatural being.

We can test the idea of absolutes when it comes to violence by our real-world experiences. I believe that certain actions are wrong in some contexts, while the same action may be considered right, or at least just in other contexts.  The simplest example is an unprovoked violent action versus the same violent action done in self-defense.  We can understand and even justify violence in self-defense, and we do all the time.  Most legal systems have generous exceptions for such situations. 

Yes, humanity has a proud tradition of non-violence, exhibited best by Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  But I would argue that their use of non-violence was a tactic employed to achieve certain ends, as opposed to a fundamental belief system.

My recent conversations on this topic focus on more complex situations, such as the war in Afghanistan, the killing of Bin Laden, or the NATO actions in Libya.  I have generally defended these actions, while my friend has opposed them.  Don’t misunderstand, I find myself opposed to the vast majority of wars.  Iraq, for example is wholly unjust and unjustified. 

But I think that violence and war is justified when the alternative is greater violence, injustice, and human suffering.  I actually supported the war in Afghanistan less because of 9/11 and more because the Taliban and Al Qaeda promote a society that horribly represses women, dissent, and any sort of freedom.  And the violence in Libya, while the rationale seems disjointed, is justified in to stop Qaddafi from engaging in mass killings of those who oppose him.  Granted, we will never know what would have happened in the absence of that intervention, but I would rather have that uncertainty over the certainty of what happened in Rwanda in the 1990’s. 

To me, using violence against someone who uses violence and repression for their own ends is wholly justified.  That person or group, whether it is Hitler, Bin Laden, the Taliban, or any of the colonial powers over recent centuries, has chosen to break the implicit social contract that all humans living in groups enter into. 

And this social contract goes back far beyond the Mayflower and the French Revolution, back to the earliest days of human civilizations.  It goes back to when humans, or the ancestors of humans, realized that living in groups, helping one another, and depending on one another was mutually beneficial for everyone involved.  Doing so, however, involved a degree of trust.  Trust that others would not seek to harm you, your freedom, or your property. 

So there are some serious, rambling, college sophomore-type thoughts for you.  To be clear, I abhor violence, and I think it should be avoided and used only as last resort.  But it sometimes is justified.  As for the related argument about the existence of natural laws, I find it quite freeing to reject. 

Humans have great power to shape the world around them, and we must take responsibility for shaping the morality of that world as well.  By rejecting natural laws, or laws from on high, we take ownership over them, and we are no longer able to commit horrible acts in someone else’s name.  We still may commit horrible acts, but we will be forced to take responsibility for them.