Saturday, August 14, 2004
Philosophica Naturae posted by Richard Seymour
Paul Craddick , a very intelligent and informed libertarian whom I blog-rolled recently, offers some thoughts on the nature and environmentalism. If you pursue the link above, Chris Young makes an excellent intervention on the topic.I have to admit that I have been negligent in following these matters, assuming the debate over climate change to be more or less settled. I knew that human generated carbon dioxide emissions accounted for a minority of all such emissions. I also knew that this still left us with a huge crisis lumbering not far over the horizon. After all, it is clear that the human share of the problem is big enough to be decisive. And, even if this were not the case, it would still be up to human beings to make use of the less polluting technology available to us and to try to manage the crisis as best we can. Ceasing those activities that contribute to the crisis have to be part of the answer. But Paul, citing an obscure Professor whose motives I suspect, nevertheless throws up some fresh thinking on the matter. Example:
[C]onfronted with the reality of climate change and a human role therein, the central question for deliberation - What is to be done? - is an ethical-political one, not primarily a scientific one (not "primarily" because, while sober scientific judgment undoubtably must inform deliberation, the answer eludes science's competence). In other words, to suppose that science simply "tells" us how to address this issue is a blatant category mistake .
Right on the money, and absolutely pertinent.
However, courting controversy, he quotes this Professor Stott:
"In a system as complex and chaotic as climate, [limitation of emissions - ed.] may even trigger unexpected consequences. It is vital to remember that, for a coupled, non-linear system, not doing something (i.e., not emitting gases) is as unpredictable as doing something (i.e., emitting gases). Even if we closed down every factory in the world, crushed every car and aeroplane, turned off all energy production, and threw 4 billion people worldwide out of work, climate would still change, and often dramatically."
Again, these aren't irrelevant considerations, although the last sentence is presumptuous (is Professor Stott so sure that reinvesting in new forms of technology and environmentally sound energy production would not create a few jobs?). However, acknowledging that climate is inherently dynamic, and that making changes in complex systems can have dramatic, unanticipated consequences is insufficient. We don't have any evidence that ceasing gas emissions would be harmful to our environment, although there is plenty of direct evidence that it is harmful to continue emitting gases. Secondly, although climate is dynamic, that doesn't rule out the possibility that ultimately it is a vast, self-regulating system along the lines of James Lovelock's Gaia. If such a thing were true, it would force the conclusion that human beings ought, for their own safety, to make as little impact on the climate system through their own activity as possible. I don't know that it is, but attempts to manage the crisis ought to be encouraged; and if they are not viable within the present global economy, then we'll just have to buy ourselves a new one before we perish.