Ethics & Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect

Ethics & Climate Change

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT Edited by

Harold Coward and Thomas Hurka Faced with the prospect of global warming, the anticipated rapid rise in global air temperatures due to the release of gases into the atmosphere, we have two choices of how to respond: adaptation or avoidance. With adaptation we keep burning fossil fuels, let global temperatures rise and make whatever changes this requires: move people from environmentally damaged areas, build sea walls, etc. With avoidance we stop warming from occurring, either by reducing our use of fossil fuels or by using technology such as carbon dioxide recovery after combustion to block the warming effect. Yet each strategy has its drawbacks—adaptation may not be able to occur fast enough to accommodate the expected temperature increases, but avoidance would be prohibitively expensive. An ethically acceptable goal must involve some mixture of adaptation and avoidance. Written by a team of scientists, social scientists, humanists, legal and environmental scholars and corporate researchers, this book offers an ethical analysis of possible responses to the problem. Their analyses of the scientific and technological data and the ethical principles involved in determining whose interests should be considered point to a combination of adaptation and avoidance of greenhouse gas production. They offer assessments of personal, corporate, government and international responsibility and a series of recommendations to aid decision-makers in determining solutions and apportioning responsibility. Harold Coward is Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria and a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Global Change Program of the Royal Society of Canada. Thomas Hurka is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. From 1989-92 he wrote a weekly ethics column for The Globe and Mail.

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Ethics & Climate Change

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

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Ethics & Climate Change

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT Edited by

Harold Coward and Thomas Hurka

Essays by F. Kenneth Hare Thomas Hurka Harold Coward Harvey A. Buckmaster Peter Danielson Wayne Stewart and Peter Dickey Nigel Bankes G. Cornelis van Kooten Kerri R. Blair and William A. Ross

Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press for The Calgary Institute for the Humanities

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Ethics and climate change : the greenhouse effect Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-88920-233-8 1. Global warming - Decision making - Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Greenhouse effect, Atmospheric Decision making - Moral and ethical aspects. I. Coward, Harold G., 1936- . II. Hurka, Thomas, 1952- . III. Calgary Institute for the Humanities. QC981.8.G56E7 1993

179'.1

C93-094493-3

Copyright 1993 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5 Cover design by Jose Martucci, Design Communications

Printed in Canada

Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect has been produced from a manuscript supplied in camera-ready form by The Calgary Institute for the Humanities. All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 379 Adelaide Street West, Suite Ml, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1S5.

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures and Tables

ix

Preface

xi

Introduction Harold Coward

1

1. The Challenge F. Kenneth Hare

11

2. Ethical Principles Thomas Hurka

23

3. Religious Responsibility Harold Coward

39

4. The Arctic—A Canadian Case Study Harvey A. Buckmaster

61

5. Personal Responsibility Peter Danielson

81

6. Corporate Responsibility Wayne Stewart and Peter Dickey

99

7. International Responsibility Nigel Bankes

115

8. Effective Economic Mechanisms: Efficiency and Ethical Considerations G. Cornells van Kooten

133

9. Energy Efficiency at Home and Abroad Kerri R. Blair and William A. Ross

149

Conclusion Thomas Hurka

165

About the Authors

171

Bibliography

175

Index

187

vii

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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure

1.1 Global-mean Surface Air Temperature: Annual Departures from the 1951-1980 Mean

13

3.1 The Karmic Ladder of Existence

50

4.1 Circumpolar Projection Map of the Arctic and Subarctic ...

62

4.2 Variations in the Mean Annual Global Temperature

66

4.3 The Estimated Increase in the Mean Annual North American Temperatures

68

4.4 Change in Temperature from 1959-73 to 1974-88 in Canada

69

4.5 Projected Climate Warming in Canada

70

4.6 The Ecoprovinces of Canada

72

5.1 The Two-player Greenhouse Dilemma

83

5.2 The Adaptation Dilemma

84

8.1 Determining Optimal Greenhouse Gas Emissions

135

8.2 Marginal Damages and Abatement Costs from Greenhouse Warming

136

8.3 Efficient Reduction of Greenhouse Gases

137

Table

1.1 The Main Greenhouse Gases

18

6.1 Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1990

109

9.1 Brief Descriptions of Energy Efficiency Options for the United States

154

9.2 Global Temperature Change Due to Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1990-2030

161

ix

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PREFACE In 1990 an interdisciplinary team assembled at The Calgary Institute for the Humanities under the leadership of Harold Coward and Thomas Hurka to begin work on an ethical analysis of possible responses to the greenhouse effect. Although the problem of global warming has generated considerable scientific study and concern over how society should respond, this gathering seemed to be the first attempt to focus on an ethical analysis of the problem. As such, it has evoked considerable interest from around the world. The interdisciplinary team included scientists, social scientists, humanists, scholars from professional areas such as law and environmental studies, and researchers from the corporate sector. The methodology adopted ensured an interdisciplinary — as opposed to just a multidisciplinary — result. Rather than each team member producing a specialized contribution and leaving it to the editors to bind the disparate chapters together within the Introduction and Conclusion, members were required to digest the data from all involved disciplines before drafting their chapters. The draft chapters then underwent a thorough critique by all team members during an intensive five-day seminar in the Rocky Mountains west of Calgary. Throughout this writing, critiquing, and rewriting, care was taken to ensure that the ethical perspective remained the unifying element of the volume. This interdisciplinary process, although demanding, did significantly broaden perception and understanding of the problem. Members acquired new technical vocabularies and gained respect for the methodologies and contributions of other disciplines. In addition, the process forged ongoing personal relationships through the teamwork required by the scholarly task as well as the camaraderie of hiking through the mountains together. The results of the research are being published in two forms. This volume contains the full academic result. A companion volume, also published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, has been written by Lydia Dotto for public policy decision makers, corporate executives, non-governmental organizations, and the public. It summarizes the findings of the academic volume in a concise, easily readable form. The two volumes will be introduced to federal and provincial roundtables during 1993 to ensure that the results reach those responsible for framing a response to the challenge of global warming. Gerry Dyer, the Institute's administrator, did much to help bond the team together into a strong working unit. She also provided the considerable infrastructural support required for the success of the project—preparing grant applications, providing the required accounting, arranging for the two seminar sessions at Kananaskis, ensuring communication among team members, and preparing camera-ready copy for

xii Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect this volume. All team members feel indebted to Gerry for her role in making this project intellectually and personally rewarding. Thanks are also due to Terry Teskey for her careful copyediting of this volume to ensure that it reads with a common voice, and to Sandra Woolfrey of Wilfrid Laurier University Press and her able staff. Finally, the financial support received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Shell Canada, and the Canadian Petroleum Association made the project possible.

Harold Coward Former Director The Calgary Institute for the Humanities

INTRODUCTION Harold Coward The issue of global climate change is of both national and international significance; decisions about it must be made quickly (Hare 1988; Schneider 1989). But on what basis can decisions about individual and governmental responses be made? The special contribution of this book is its attempt to guide such decision making by providing an ethical analysis of possible responses to the challenge of global climate change. In chapter 1 Kenneth Hare reviews the scientific evidence on the greenhouse effect. He concludes that warming is in progress on a global scale and that increases in the greenhouse effect are probably the main cause. Human activity is seen to be responsible for this warming. The natural greenhouse effect is beneficial, making life on earth possible, but our tampering is setting the thermostat too high, endangering human, plant, and animal life. For example, by our use of oil and coal to fuel cars and produce electricity we are adding some three billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year. This is like adding new panes of glass to the greenhouse. And scientific modelling of the greenhouse effect offers a nearly unanimous verdict that the warming observed over the past decades will continue and probably get stronger. Nor is this change confined to the atmosphere; the oceans and rocks are also involved. We seem to be witnessing a human-induced upset of the entire atmosphereocean-chemical equilibrium, with major implications for life. The complexity of the challenge is that the problems raised are global. In this sense, the greenhouse effect is not unlike the ozone problem, which is also global in nature. Thus, the question of how we should act to protect the atmosphere and the ocean demands sound ethical reasoning. Following the scientific analysis of chapter 1, chapters 2-9 offer religious, economic, personal, corporate, international, and technological responses to the challenge of global warming. All of these discussions assume that our response to the greenhouse effect can involve either adaptation or avoidance. With adaptation we keep burning fossil fuels, let global temperatures rise, and make whatever changes this requires: move people from environmentally damaged areas, build sea walls, and so on. With avoidance we stop warming from occurring, either by reducing our use of fossil fuels or by using technology, such as carbon dioxide recovery after combustion or plankton cultivation in the oceans, to block the warming effect. It is unlikely that either pure strategy is ethically acceptable. According to current estimates, pure adaptation would involve a temperature rise of between 2 and 5° C in the next century, faster than any in the

2 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect last ten thousand years. This would surely be devastating for many human and non-human communities. But pure avoidance —reducing warming to zero—would be enormously expensive. An ethically acceptable goal must involve some mixture of adaptation and avoidance. To decide on this mixture we must weigh against each other the ethically relevant costs and benefits of warming on the one hand and the steps needed to avoid it on the other. This will require technical information: about the biological effects of warming in different regions, about the economic effects of different avoidance measures, about the prospects for new technologies. But it also raises ethical issues. In chapter 2 Thomas Hurka outlines a series of ethical principles ranging from the relatively uncontroversial and widely accepted to the more radical. This continuum of possible principles is proposed as a helpful way to analyze responses to the challenge of global climate change and is employed by the authors of later chapters. Hurka's approach proceeds by looking at the consequences of an act or policy: Good consequences count ethically in its favour, bad consequences against it. He begins by considering the consequences for "humans here and now," moves to a consideration of consequences for "humans at other times and places" (future generations and humans in other countries, such as in developing nations), and arrives at the most radical principle by extending concern to the environment "valued for itself." The first two principles confine ethical standing to humans and examine the impact of global climate change upon humans in ever-extending ranges of inclusiveness. This approach accords with that of the Brundtland Commission Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987), which conceives its goal in strictly human-centred terms. The final principle surveyed by Hurka rejects the view that human well-being is the ultimate goal and extends ethical standing to all parts of the environment. This principle breaks with traditional Western ethics, which has assumed that nature exists to serve human needs. Traditional Eastern and aboriginal ethics, by contrast, have often adopted this more radical principle, in varying degrees. However, without evoking the Eastern or aboriginal traditions, Hurka examines a range of views that value the environment for itself, from the less radical individualist environmentalism to more radical approaches that locate intrinsic value in wholes such as ecosystems, or indeed, the complete biosphere. In holistic views such as that adopted by Aldo Leopold (1970), global climate change must be examined for its consequences not just to individual organisms but to the interrelated wholes they compose. Depending on which of the above principles is adopted, the ethical analysis of consequences will incline one either towards adaptation or towards the avoidance pole of the continuum of possible responses to global warming.

Introduction 3 In addition to the above consequentialist analysis, Hurka also considers a rights-based approach. Rather than searching for the end with the best overall consequences, the rights approach makes central to ethical analysis the constraints that respect for the rights of others imposes upon policy and action. Once again, a range of rights is examined, from human rights to animal rights to ecosystemic or environmental rights. The rights approach has a further aspect: that compensation is owed when a rights-violation occurs. This consideration is relevant when asking who should bear the costs of policies intended to avoid further global climate change: the developed countries (who seem largely responsible for current environmental degradation) or the developing countries? Such rights-based ethical analysis is shown by Hurka to produce complex results — a finding confirmed in Nigel Bankes's study of international responsibility in chapter 7. As a provisional result of his study, Hurka concludes that even if only the least contentious consequentialist principles, related to present and future humans, were adopted, these would enjoin avoidance of further global warming. And even if we respect only basic human rights with the least contentious claim for compensation, avoidance rather than adaptation is advised. Chapter 3 by Harold Coward employs the above ethical principles in examining views of responsibility towards the environment found in the major world religions and the Taoist and aboriginal traditions. While studies of the major religions have had much to say on human nature, they have said little on their attitudes to nature, and especially the status of humans in relation to nature. The latter is a recent issue, which did not concern people in the past (especially in the West) and therefore did not generate much response from the leading thinkers. One looks through Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Maimonides, and others and finds little if anything of direct relevance. The term environment is not yet in the vocabulary, and nature is most often associated with natural law rather than the environment, let alone an atmospheric problem like global warming. This is a new challenge that theologians are just beginning to put to their sources of revelation for answers, to evoke Paul Tillich's "correlation" method of doing theology, according to which one "tries to correlate the questions implied in the situation with the answers implied in the message" (1950, 8.) Books and articles grounded in the various religions are just now starting to appear in response to the environmental questions being raised by global climate change. It is as if the theologians have been given a new set of glasses with which to reread their old texts for new answers. In some ways this development parallels the re-reading of the traditions through feminist glasses that is currently going on. Coward's chapter is one of the first attempts to gather together in one place the views of the Eastern and Western world

4 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect religions along with those of the Taoist and aboriginal traditions on human responsibility to nature. All the religions reviewed see the environment as having intrinsic value or ethical standing, with the Eastern and aboriginal traditions taking a strong position on this point. The Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are more human centred, but none gives humans complete dominion over nature. The various Western views of a transcendent creator God see humans as responsible for the stewardship of the beautiful and bountiful world God has created for their use. Thus, Western religions do teach that nature is to be respected and not abused to satisfy human needs. The Eastern and aboriginal traditions, however, adopt a more holistic view of the human relationship to the environment. The separation between humans and nature fostered in much Western religion is quite different from the unity and intimate interrelationship taught in the Eastern traditions. Eastern and aboriginal ideas are a clear corrective to the human domination of nature that, as White (1967) has made clear, various interpretations of Genesis have helped to foster. All the religions argue for as much avoidance as possible in our responses to global warming. The inclusion of a chapter on religious responsibility in relation to the environment is premised on the following considerations. First, while environmental ethics can be considered from a strictly secular perspective, the ethical reflections of the various religions form a major part of human experience and therefore should also be considered. Second, the religious perspective provides a basis for an appeal to the individual believers of the various religions. Third, since states like Iran and Pakistan see themselves as religious rather than secular, knowledge of, for example, Islam's account of human responsibility to nature may help in obtaining such states' co-operation in international efforts to deal with the greenhouse effect. The implications of global climate change for a unique region of the earth, the Arctic, are analyzed by Harvey Buckmaster in chapter 4. The stress on the Arctic ecosystem caused by global warming is predicted to be greater than in the rest of Canada. An anticipated warming of 8-10° C would result in the disappearance of the ice pack from the Arctic Ocean during the summer months, leading to more precipitation, cloudiness, and significant shoreline erosion. The tundra area will shrink to about one half its current size, while the temperate zone would experience a marked increase. Much of the current permafrost will disappear, resulting in more release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere and a further 0.5° C increase in global mean surface annual air temperature. All of these changes are seen as having a significant impact on global ocean circulation patterns, thus rendering change in the Arctic important for the whole of the earth. It is further suggested that ocean, ice,

Introduction

5

and atmosphere interactions in the Arctic will have a major impact upon weather patterns throughout the northern hemisphere. Having examined the physical changes that global climate change is predicted to bring to the Arctic, Buckmaster then applies Hurka's ethical principles to the circumstances of the Arctic peoples and wildlife. The resulting ethical analysis strongly favours policies aimed at avoidance rather than adaptation, policies in which Canada is urged to take the lead because of the special responsibility of Canadians for the Arctic. In chapter 5, "Individual Responsibility," Peter Danielson suggests that the social structure itself is a driving force in the production of global problems such as the greenhouse effect. Danielson questions our strong temptation to look to government to solve the problem of the greenhouse effect. In the case of the atmosphere, which is a "global commons," Danielson shows that an appeal to government for moral regulation would work only if we were to create a single world government. Otherwise, various governments see themselves as competing decision makers and, as is the case for individuals, will rationally choose to emit more greenhouse gases (see Danielson's discussion of the Greenhouse Dilemma.) Danielson's matrix analysis demonstrates that in a commons situation such as the global atmosphere, when individuals and governments (acting as individuals) choose independently in a competitive context, there is no assurance that a decision to avoid or restrain emissions will be reciprocated by others. Therefore, the moral and not merely selfish choice is to avoid sacrificing one's own welfare by choosing to emit more greenhouse gases. This analysis suggests that individual agents of all sorts (people, corporations, states) cannot rationally be expected to take altruistic decisions that would result in avoidance behaviour and a reduced emission of greenhouse gases. As an alternative approach, Danielson proposes "individualization" in the face of complex social problems such as the greenhouse effect. Assuming that Canadians are morally motivated to respond responsibly to the challenge of global climate change, Danielson offers the innovative suggestion of an "Atmosphere Trust." Through the market mechanism of an Atmosphere Trust, each individual would be able to determine his or her own share of the global warming problem and to undertake action, through voluntary trades in greenhouse gas abatements, so as to responsibly retire his or her share of the problem. In this way, the individual could act to bring about the goal of avoidance through a mechanism that avoids the complexities and uncertainties introduced by dependence on political and corporate solutions. Danielson's idea of an Atmosphere Trust offers a new and quite different ethical resolution. Rather than relying on government and corporate decision makers (whom Danielson shows to be unable to rationally act in an altruistic way towards the atmosphere as a global commons), it places responsibility squarely in the

6 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect hands of individual citizens and, what is more, offers market mechanisms by which they could fulfill their moral responsibility to decrease the production of greenhouse gases. Danielson's original and imaginative proposal deserves careful study. Having looked at the responsibility of individuals, the volume then, in chapter 6, turns to the question of corporate responsibility. Written by industry researcher Wayne Stewart, with assistance from Peter Dickey, this chapter challenges the commonly held notion that "the business of business is business." The traditional goal of creating wealth and jobs and thereby raising the general standard of living has today been enlarged to include service to the community and protection of the environment. Drawing from their experience within large private petroleum companies, the authors examine the responsibility of corporations to protect the atmosphere from greenhouse gas emissions. This new environmental responsibility is causing corporations to develop a new model for doing business. Whereas the old model focused on economic considerations only, sought the required government approvals, and adopted an adversarial approach to those who objected, the new model begins from the Brundtland Commission's (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987) notion of "sustainable development," which is increasingly being embraced by CEOs. Sustainable development requires corporations to ensure that in meeting the needs of the present, they do not sacrifice the interests of future generations. This concept, the authors argue, has the capacity to bring corporations, governments, environmental groups, and individuals together to deal with challenges like the greenhouse effect. The federal and provincial round tables are cited as an example of the new approach. Another is the inclusion within the decision-making process of those who on the old model would have been adversaries (e.g., environmental groups.) In this way an expanded notion of the stakeholder is developing; governments, NGOs employees, and individual citizens are all coming to be included in the corporate decision-making process. Yet another aspect of the new model is the move to assign the societal costs of environmental problems to their sources —the polluter pays principle. Corporations can no longer escape environmental responsibility by simply shedding the problems they have created. Full cost accounting as well as this restriction against shedding environmental problems are providing a strong stimulus for corporations to accept ethical responsibility in mitigating the negative consequences of global climate change. Seven specific recommendations are proposed to effect this new corporate responsibility. In chapter 7 Nigel Bankes addresses the difficult question of international responsibility. In section 1, the rules of customary international law are reviewed for their application to states in relation to the challenge of global climate change. Here Bankes suggests that, as a matter of justice,

Introduction

7

the costs of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions should be internalized and that, since the developed countries are most responsible for creating the problem, they should bear most of the costs associated with avoidance. The author goes on to argue that the atmosphere should be seen as a limited shared resource that is no longer open to all, but instead is allocated on the basis of an agreed-upon equitable criterion. Bankes concludes that states are legally obligated to form multilateral instruments to deal with the problem of global climate change—thus procedural customary law reflects Hurka's "humans everywhere" ethical stance. Section 2, the bulk of the chapter, offers a detailed evaluation and critique of the Convention on Climate Change signed at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. After providing a thumbnail sketch of the Convention, Bankes critically examines its stand on (1) the risks of uncertainty, (2) the position of developing countries, and (3) the allocation problem (the atmosphere as a shared scarce resource). The author's analysis, and especially his detailed study of how to achieve justice in solving the allocation problem, is a major contribution to the post-Rio discussion of international responsibility. Bankes urges, as a first step, that firm commitments be established by which the costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions will be internalized. Although the Rio Convention did not achieve this goal, it did succeed in getting the developed world to accept the primacy of its responsibility for the problem of global warming. A second step has to do with the way the atmosphere is viewed internationally. To date, the atmosphere has been assumed to be an unlimited and open-access resource. Although the Rio Convention recognizes that the atmosphere is both limited and shared, it developed no principles by which the atmosphere could be shared between the developed and developing countries. This remains the most difficult and sensitive international problem in developing an effective international response to global climate change, and it is to the solution of this problem that Bankes directs his main critical discussion in evaluating the Rio Convention. Any ethical analysis of possible responses to the greenhouse effect would be woefully wanting if economic considerations were not included. It is to exactly such matters that the volume turns in chapter 8 — Cornelis van Kooten's study of effective economic mechanisms for dealing with global climate change. The chapter begins by considering the opportunity costs involved in averting global climate change. (For example, money spent on reducing greenhouse gas emissions has the opportunity cost of reduced investment in non-greenhouse-related R&D and capital, debt reduction, and lower consumption.) Such costs could prove harmful to some economies, especially those of developing countries. Van Kooten's careful and convincing economic analysis makes clear that the opportunity cost of any action or policy aimed at reducing global warming must be carefully assessed. Such costs are not always evident

8 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect and are frequently not considered. Although the authors of this volume do not accept that ethical conclusions can be based on a cost/benefit, economic value assessment of the kind economists produce, we do contend that economic values occupy a central place in consideration of responses to the challenge of global climate change. As this chapter makes clear, any move to full cost accounting must include opportunity costs in its calculation. A major dissonance between this and the previous chapter is that van Kooten proceeds on the assumption that, since states have not yet recognized property rights to the atmosphere, the atmosphere can therefore be considered an open-access resource. Van Kooten is clearly correct on this legal point; however, exactly the opposite premise is urged by Bankes — that the atmosphere must become (through the Rio Convention) a limited shared resource justly allocated among states. Van Kooten picks up Danielson's contention that so long as the atmosphere is seen to be an open-access, unlimited resource no one person, country, or corporation has an incentive to reduce emissions, because the benefits of so doing are shared by others, who then may see themselves as free to pollute more. Only when the atmosphere is truly globally owned and allocated through mechanisms such as those discussed by Bankes at the end of chapter 9 will market transactions relating to the atmosphere take place (e.g., trading in carbon permits). Only then will the world market distribute environmental resources such as the atmosphere efficiently (Wilman 1992, 90). In considering the points made by Bankes's discussion of global ownership and just-allocation mechanisms, it is essential to read van Kooten's economic analysis in parallel, and vice versa. Van Kooten then considers economic policy instruments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Government standards (e.g., for automobile exhaust) or prohibitions (e.g., on tree cutting) are seen to be problematic in their effects and costly to police. Economic incentives, on the other hand, encourage emission reductions at least cost to society by providing incentives for innovation. Subsidies and taxes can be used in this way but are not problem free. Emission permits along with offsets and private markets are also discussed. In the last third of his chapter, van Kooten engages in a careful analysis of many of the policy issues discussed by Bankes in the previous chapter, but this time from an economic rather than a legal perspective. Van Kooten concludes by considering the economic implications of ethical responsibilities to future generations. This issue is far more complicated than one would have thought. The author's discussion reveals the many different variables involved in any attempt to make global ethical decisions with the principle of fairness to future generations in mind. One characteristic that seems common to all countries is that they have mortgaged the future in order to pay for the consumption of the present.

Introduction

9

Van Kooten's conclusion is that economic policies can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but such policies carry a price tag that will make the current generation poorer. And poorer people pass on less wealth to future generations. Therefore, it may be in the interests of future generations for us to pursue a balance between adaptation and avoidance policies. The final chapter, by Kerri Blair and Bill Ross, titled "Energy Efficiency at Home and Abroad," examines ways to avoid rather than adapt to global warming through the more efficient use of energy. The authors assume that human and non-human suffering will result if global warming results in significant climate change, and that therefore all action that can be taken to avoid global warming is ethically required. The chapter proposes that if, as a first step, energy is used more efficiently in both the developed and developing countries, all three of Hurka's ethical principles will have been recognized; namely, concern for people here in Canada, everywhere on earth, future generations, and the non-human elements of the environment. The chapter relies heavily on the evidence and argument of Lovins and Lovins (1991). For current generations everywhere, it is argued, the quality of life can be improved and greenhouse gas emissions reduced by making more efficient use of energy in all its forms. This argument directly challenges some of van Kooten's findings in the previous chapter. It contends that by increasing energy efficiency, one will be able to provide the same goods and services at less cost and using less energy. Actions of this sort would be in the interests of people, would use less fossil fuel, and would produce less greenhouse gas, thus helping to avoid further global climate change. This result is to be achieved through a combination of technological advances in both energy generation and energy use, along with new approaches to customer service by the major utilities. A simple example is a projected 50 per cent reduction in lighting energy consumption in all U.S. residences by replacing incandescent lighting with compact fluorescent bulbs. Residents would save money, and the utilities would realize higher profits. Similar savings through fuel switching and new technology can also be realized in heating, cooking and cooling in both residential and commercial uses. Other very significant efficiency savings are claimed for the generation of electrical energy as well as for the performance of cars, trucks, and aircraft. All of the above energy efficiencies could be even more important in avoiding greenhouse gas when used in developing countries. If the developed countries help developing countries to leap over inefficient technologies, the ethical goal of avoidance will be achieved globally in a costefficient fashion. The failure to include full cost accounting in the pricing of energy is identified by the authors as a major obstacle to the use of energy-efficient opportunities. Similarly, if taxes, interest rates, or other policy variables

10 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect restrict the availability of energy-efficient equipment, then markets may not naturally adopt energy-efficient products. With regard to ethical responsibilities to both future generations and the non-human environment, the authors maintain that energy efficiency is one of the best strategies to follow. It is a policy which can be seen by all agents — individuals, corporations, and governments — as being both in their self-interest and as fulfilling the moral responsibility to avoid further global climate change. One final word: As this interdisciplinary research team worked on the ethical analysis of possible responses to the greenhouse effect, it became very clear that a major factor in increased greenhouse gas emissions is population growth. Thus, even if energy is used more efficiently in both developed and developing countries, the resulting reduction in greenhouse gas emissions may be completely overtaken by the added greenhouse gas emissions resulting from global population increase. The question of how to ethically respond to the threat to the atmosphere posed by population pressure was not dealt with in this volume, because it was judged to be a very difficult problem requiring its own study. Such a study is being undertaken by an international interdisciplinary team assembling under the direction of Harold Coward at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, beginning in the summer of 1993.

Chapter 1 THE CHALLENGE F. Kenneth Hare A slow warming of the earth's surface seems to be in progress. Many people think that this warming, which will be discussed in section 2, has been caused by human actions that augment the greenhouse effect, that is, the warming influence of certain atmospheric gases. So extensive is this belief, and the fear it has created, that global climate change dominated the agenda of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro. The Conference reached a reluctant consensus that the world must move to contain the changes. The reluctance stemmed from the costs of so acting more than doubt as to the reality of the effect. Among students of climate, however, questions are still being raised. All agree that the natural greenhouse effect keeps the planet habitable. Naturally present gases — carbon dioxide, water vapour, methane, ozone, and nitrous oxide — raise the global mean annual surface air temperature to about 15° C. They do this (and were so doing before humans appeared) by freely admitting solar radiation while resisting the return flow of heat to space. Without these gases, and the clouds that cover half the earth's surface, temperatures would be 33° C colder than they are today: the earth would be largely uninhabitable. The natural greenhouse effect —so called because the gases act in some ways like the glass in a greenhouse — is thus essential for life on earth. But there is still some disagreement about the augmented greenhouse effect arising from human economic activity—burning coal, oil, and natural gas; destroying forests; and oxidizing soil litter and humus. These processes are increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and human ingenuity is adding synthetics that act in the same way. No one questions that the resulting increase in the greenhouse effect should raise global temperatures still further, but most professional observers do not believe that the warming of the past century can be blamed solely on greenhouse warming. Other causes may have been at work. It will be some years — probably a few decades—before expert judgement will be unanimous. Perhaps a slim majority, this writer included, is already willing to say that the augmented greenhouse effect is the probable cause. The sceptics, however, include some of the most respected figures in the field. The thrust towards political action has outrun scientific consensus.

12 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect Most climatologists will nevertheless welcome prompt action, on slightly different grounds: • The potential consequences of the warming are enormous, for nature and for humankind; it is better to be safe than sorry. • Scientific modelling of the greenhouse effect, based on sound theory, offers a nearly unanimous verdict that the warming will continue and probably get stronger. • The effect now being demonstrated arises from a human-induced upset of the entire atmosphere-ocean-chemical equilibrium, with major implications for life. • The problem is global; it raises large questions of equity between north and south, rich and poor, and competing trading blocs. In common with many colleagues, I endorse the principle of acting in the presence of uncertainty, when the potential consequences justify such action. If the changes in progress threaten calamity, as they may do, then we must act so as to avoid the changes, adapt to them if they are unavoidable, and ensure that the burden is shared equitably. These considerations are ethical as well as prudent; self-interest and the common good will coincide, if we act wisely. Many people see global climate change as a threat; we prefer the word challenge. This volume is a justification for the more optimistic term. The challenge is obviously many sided. The research community must seek to broaden understanding of the change itself and of its potential impact on nature and society. The technical world must look for means of avoiding further warming if this is within our reach, and if not, of adaptation. Beyond all such questions lie those at the core of our study: what are the ethical implications of global warming? The problem is the result of human misjudgement; how should we act to correct our mistakes? 1. Global Temperature Records Since 1950 the world has had access to detailed weather observations from a variety of sources: a dense network of surface stations over land and of ships at sea, supplemented by balloon-borne sensors that reach thirty kilometres or more above the sea; a sparser network of rocket observations up to sixty kilometres; and increasingly sophisticated coverage of the entire earth by satellite. We are currently taking the pulse of the atmosphere more often than a patient can expect in a hospital's intensive care unit. This was far from being the case in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when observations were sparse and only a few elements were measured. We look back on an inadequately monitored past. To construct a consistent global record, several research centres have mounted efforts to make the data comparable and representative.

The Challenge 13 Leaders have been the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia at Norwich, England; the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York; and the State Hydrological Institute in St. Petersburg, C.LS. Details of the findings are given in Boden, Sepanski, and Stoss (1991). In addition, an international review was conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Houghton, Jenkins, and Ephraums 1990). From these sources we have annual estimates of temperature and, to a lesser extent, precipitation (rain and snow) spanning nearly one and a half centuries. We can also gather information about the climates of the past, in growing detail, from the geological record. The estimates on which we base our conclusions are the best figures that can be calculated given the inadequacy of the original data. Their weaknesses include poor areal coverage in polar, marine, and tropical regions, especially before 1900; incomplete elimination of urban warming effects; errors of original observation; badly calibrated thermometers; and difficulty in combining marine and continental records. The ensemble nevertheless shows that a general warming has occurred since 1854, probably of a global magnitude of about 0.6° C. The change has, however, been spasmodic. Both hemispheres have been affected, in similar ways. The warming is actually less than the normal rise of temperature in one hour in mid-morning at land stations, or the fall of temperature in early evening. So far, we have experienced only a slight global change.

Fig. 1.1. Global-mean surface air temperature: annual departures from the 1951-1980 mean. The heavy line is a mathematically smoothed curve to indicate general trend. (Courtesy P. D. Jones at University of East Anglia) In more detail (see fig. 1.1), the upward trend of global temperature began just before 1910 and has since gone forward in three phases: a warming of about 0.4° C between 1910 and 1940 (average annual rise

14 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect 0.013° C/year); a standstill from 1940 until 1975; and a rise of about 0.2° C after 1975, still in progress in 1991 (average annual rise 0.014° C). These three phases affected both hemispheres, though differences appeared between land and sea areas. Strong differences occurred between years. There was also a suggestion of variability on five-year or decadal scales. Some of this may have been associated with the el Nino effect (Jones 1989), a major disturbance of climate, concentrated on the Pacific Ocean, that recurs every few years. The observed surface warming was only about half what might have been expected, considering the rate of increase of the greenhouse gases over the past century. The models used to reach this conclusion also predicted that a cooling would affect the stratosphere (the layer from about ten to fifty kilometres above the sea) (see sec. 4.) An analysis of upper air temperature measurements after 1965 (Angell 1988, 1991) showed that the entire stratosphere was undergoing such a cooling, which was most marked from 1975 to 1985, during which period the earth's surface was warming strongly. Qualitatively, this supports the view that the greenhouse effect was the underlying cause of the changes. The warming at the earth's surface has been geographically uneven. Over much of the United States, for example, it has been quite small, with some areas showing cooling (Karl, Baldwin, and Burgin 1988.) Over Greenland and northeastern Canada, surface air temperatures jumped suddenly in the 1920s and thereafter cooled, right to the present day. The summers of 1991 and 1992 were extremely cold through much of this area, including St. John's, Newfoundland, indicating that the coolness is still present in this sector. These anomalies illustrate an important general principle: that for extensive regions of the Earth, the warming of the past eighty years has deviated strongly from the global average. This fact raises major difficulties for political action: in the many countries in which future temperatures will differ strongly from the global norm, global warming will seem like a fiction to local politicians. Among the reasons for the U.S.'s reluctance to support the climate convention at Rio de Janeiro was the smallness of the effect over U.S. territories. Canada, by contrast, has been strongly affected, especially in a belt from the Yukon to northern Manitoba. 2. Precipitation Changes Rain is hard to measure, as is snow. Commonly used gauges are prone to error. Systematic measurement at sea is obviously impossible, and there is hence no reliable file of marine data, though indirect calculations have been performed. We cannot therefore say how global precipitation has varied, except in qualitative language. Only regional overland estimates can be given.

The Challenge 15 Folland, Karl, and Vinnikov (1990) offer long-term precipitation estimates for four land regions, two of which show striking trends. Over the former Soviet Union, carefully recalibrated data show a rapid increase in precipitation between 1890 and the late 1920s, followed by a slower and irregular increase to 1990. Precipitation is now 5-10 per cent higher than early in the century. Another striking record is from the African Sahel, where research has documented an intense desiccation following a phase of abundant rain in the 1950s and culminating in the fearsome droughts of the 1970s and 1980s (Hare 1983; Lamb 1985; Nicholson 1983). The subsequent recovery, beginning in 1988, has still not proved lasting. Droughts are rarely as intense or as persistent as this extraordinary series, which came during decades when rainfall over all Africa was showing extreme departures from normal. The most recent of these, affecting Somalia and much of southern Africa, has had appalling consequences in human suffering. Streamflow and lake-level records, which reflect the balance between gains (rain or snow) and evaporative losses, offer other evidence of altered climate. Here, again, no global synthesis can be offered, although there are many examples of apparent regional trends. We thus conclude that the global water balance —crucial in such questions as water supply, irrigation, navigation, waste disposal, and hydraulic power —has been too poorly monitored to allow proper assessment. There is nonetheless much evidence of regional problems, and these often pose the ethical dilemmas that this volume discusses. 3. Evidence of Direct Climatic Impact There is scattered evidence of other changes that have followed from the surface warming of recent decades. On the matter of sea level, the record is inconclusive (Warrick and Oerlemans 1990.) It is likely that global mean sea level has risen during the past century, and most estimates of the rise lie between one and two millimetres a year (i.e., ten to twenty centimetres over the past century), with little evidence of recent acceleration. The rise may have come from melting of glaciers and from thermal expansion of the average ocean water column. These estimates are very uncertain, as are predictions that the rise of sea level will accelerate. Particularly uncertain is the role of the continental ice sheets, especially that of Antarctica. The media make much of this possible source of catastrophic sea-level rise; the professionals discount it, preferring the view that gradual processes will continue. The response of forest, grassland, and arid ecosystems to the observed climatic variation remains obscure. Discussions by Melillo et al. (1990) deal primarily with the prediction of future response to predicted climatic change, and touch only lightly on visible change in present-day systems. The thrust of monitoring and research has been to clarify the

16 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect drastic effect of human intervention, which has been so large as to obscure the more subtle effects of climatic variation. Nevertheless, one must ask: have the ecosystems of today been detectably disturbed by the temperature and precipitation changes of the past century? There are some partial answers. Acid deposition, for example, has had negative impacts on lake and river ecosystems in Europe and North America (e.g., Calvert et al. 1983; Gibson et al. 1986; Schindler et al. 1981), with some indication of stress in forests. But there has been no thorough analysis of the impact of the contemporary warming, or of the Sahelian desiccation of Africa south of the Sahara (Hare 1983). In both cases, the search for direct climatic impact has been swamped by the evidence that human destructiveness is the major cause of the problems. The same is true of the tropical rainforest. We thus cannot speak with any assurance about the impact of the observed global warming of the past century. This warming has been too small to have produced large migrations of plant and animal species (with the exception of ocean fish populations). In each domain — notably the fisheries — it is difficult to disentangle climatic impact from the pervasive actions of humankind. Not until larger climatic changes have been experienced is this likely to be done. 4. Predicting Future Change The world has endured the warming of the past century with little public recognition of the consequences, which have been absorbed into the market forces that propel the world economy. In some regions, such as the African Sahel, the impact of climatic fluctuations has been obvious, but elsewhere the effects of actual (as distinct from projected} change have rarely been evaluated. The temper of the times has preferred to portray the ecological and economic stress as the work of human incompetence or ill will, as in Ethiopia and Somalia. There is nevertheless widespread fear of a harsher future. In public debate there is uncertainty because it is hard to distinguish between soundly based predictions and exaggerated claims. The very terms soundly based and exaggerated imply a process of value judgement. Science is, among other things, a system of criticism and evaluation. True, that system provides a ready means of rejecting outlandish claims, but it also allows a wide range of uncertainty within legitimate research: highly qualified specialists have produced a range of predictions concerning political visibility of the global climate change. The usual method that science applies to the study of complex physical systems is numerical modelling. Physical modelling of climate is obviously possible only on a minor scale, and so theoretically based studies of the mechanisms of climate depend on computer-based calculations. Simple calculations can be done on a personal computer, but full-scale mod-

The Challenge 17 elling requires the modern generation of supercomputers. Because of the high cost, and the rigorous training needed, such work can be done only at a few centres around the world. A tradition of international exchange, with a free flow of information and scientists, has made this a productive exercise whose results underlie the political visibility of global warming. The models used at these centres calculate the climatic impact of future greenhouse gas concentrations. Because the various gases differ greatly in concentration and in ability to absorb radiation, the analysis is usually performed for the equivalent of doubled carbon dioxide. The latter calculation is referred to as the climatic sensitivity of the model. Table 1.1 lists the main gases concerned and shows their relative contributions. Most calculations have been for the steady state, that is, the model is run until it comes into equilibrium with an instantaneously doubled greenhouse gas concentration. More refined models (e.g., Manabe et al. 1991; Washington and Meehl 1989) simulate the real process, in which the concentration increases uniformly with time (at about 1 per cent per annum). These non-equilibrium models attempt to simulate the action of the oceans, which are cold below a shallow surface layer, and which also transport large quantities of heat about the earth. The oceans act so as to slow down the predicted warming. The growing number of model predictions — of hypothetical climates rather than the real future —has created a need for critical syntheses. The most recent of these syntheses have been conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Bretherton, Bryan, and Woods 1990; Cubasch and Cess 1990; Gates, Rowntree, and Zeng 1990; Mitchell et al. 1990). Cubasch and Cess have tabulated the properties and outputs of twenty-two equilibrium global models published since 1980 for doubled carbon dioxide conditions. Three of these, including the much-admired Canadian Climate Centre model, have the high spatial resolution that will be needed for any kind of political response. Four models — all published in 1989 or 1990 —couple ocean and atmosphere together. Only two (Stouffer, Manabe, and Bryan 1989; Washington and Meehl 1989) introduce greenhouse warming on a gradual basis. The conclusion of the Panel was that any planned action will depend on highly generalized predictions based on the equilibrium models but significantly modified by a new generation of experiments that adequately include the ocean. On this basis, the Panel concluded, inter alia (Houghton, Jenkins, and Ephraums 1990), that • equilibrium model predictions imply, for an instantaneously doubled greenhouse gas concentration, a global surface warming in the range 1.5°-4.5° C, with the best guess at 2.5° C;

18 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect Table 1.1. The Main Greenhouse Gases, other than Water Vapour and Ozone,3 1980-1990.

Gas

% Contribution to Global Warming, 1980-1990

% Annual Increase

Carbon dioxide5

55

0.5

Chlorofluorocarbons

24

4.0

Methane

15

0.9

Nitrous oxide

6

0.3

Source: Data from Houghton 1990. a

Water vapour and clouds play a key r61e in the earth's radiative balance, but their abundance is not known to be changing. Ozone's r61e is too complex to be analyzed in these simple terms. It absorbs solar radiation, as well as the earth's own emissions. bBecause of its relatively high concentration, carbon dioxide easily dominates the warming and is likely to do so for the next century, but the other gases are much stronger absorbers of radiation per molecule, and hence play a significant role. The synthetic Chlorofluorocarbons are especially good absorbers and are still accumulating rapidly.

(Source: Data from Houghton 1990.) • the same models predict a general cooling of the stratosphere (i.e., the layer from roughly ten to fifty kilometres above sea level); • models that couple ocean and atmosphere together, and that allow for a gradual build-up of carbon dioxide equivalent (at about 1 per cent per annum), predict a warming of about 60 per cent of the equilibrium model value; • business-as-usual economic scenarios (i.e., no control over emissions), using simpler models with "best judgement" estimates, predict a warming from 1990 to 2030 of 0.7° to 1.5° C, with a best guess of 1.1° C; and

The Challenge

19

• as an overall summary, combining the probable economic and climatic outcomes, the results predict a rise by 2070 of 1.6° to 3.5° C, with a best guess of 2.4° C. Two uncertainties affect these predictions, leading to the wide ranges cited. One is the insecurity of the economic scenarios used. Just how fast will the greenhouse gas concentrations increase? How effective will proposed control measures be? The second is the continued weakness of the models. Reasons include the difficulty of an adequate treatment of cloudiness, which affects both gains and losses of heat, and the limited power of existing computers. If these warmings take place, there will be inevitable effects on global precipitation, evaporation, and streamflow. The Panel offers only equivocal suggestions in these areas. A warmer ocean implies increased evaporation and hence greater global precipitation. Equilibrium model results predict, for a doubled equivalent greenhouse gas concentration, an increase between 3 per cent and 15 per cent in mean annual precipitation and evaporation, the smallest figure coming from the Canadian Climate Centre model, which has much spatial detail. This range of uncertainty is too great to be useful as a basis for planning adaptation strategies. As regards regional differences of precipitation, little confidence can be attached to predictions. The Panel's reporters (Mitchell et al. 1990) speak of a year-round increase of precipitation in high latitudes and an increase in winter in mid-latitudes. They also discuss a probable increase in strength of the Asian summer monsoon and a warmer, drier interior for North America, with a similar change in southern Europe. But on a five-star rating of their own conclusions, they give only two stars to most of the hypothetical outcomes. They also find that deforestation, such as the clearance of the Amazonian forests, has only local effects on the inferred changes. The ocean-atmosphere experiments with a gradual buildup of greenhouse gases give results that resemble the equilibrium estimates but are uniformly smaller. The expected changes in sea level are also smaller than earlier estimates. For business-as-usual economic scenarios, Warrick and Oerlemans (1990) predict a best estimate for the year 2030 of a rise of eighteen centimetres from present levels, and for the year 2070 a rise of forty-four centimetres, in both cases with very wide ranges of uncertainty. A rise of one metre in the next century, although widely discussed, is not supported by the calculations. The effect of the projected climatic change on forests and grasslands remains obscure. Clearly the rise of temperature implies a poleward shift of the present climates, and there have been many studies that estimate how individual plant species responded to natural rises of temperature in earlier climatic changes. But the Panel's reporters make it abundantly clear (Melillo et al. 1990) that no simple response can be deduced from

20 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect such evidence. Significant stress will be felt by all ecosystems, marine and terrestrial alike, that experience rapid climatic change. A warming of as much as 0.3° C per decade—widely predicted by the models—would certainly cause such stress, even if details cannot be specified. I agree with the Panel's overall qualitative judgement, in which "may" is as frequent as "will": Rapid changes in climate will change the composition of ecosystems; some species will benefit while others will be unable to migrate or adapt fast enough and may become extinct. Enhanced levels of carbon dioxide may increase productivity and efficiency of water use of vegetation. The effect of warming on biological processes, although poorly understood, may increase the atmospheric concentrations of natural greenhouse gases (Houghton, Jenkins, and Ephraums 1990, vii).

Despite this pessimistic conclusion, there have been determined attempts in Canada to be more quantitative. An excellent review by Hengeveld (1991) suggests, for example, striking changes in natural vegetation distribution for a doubled greenhouse gas concentration, with the present Boreal Forest being invaded by temperate hardwood species and (in western Canada) by grassland — accompanied by a rise in forest productivity and, less happily, by an augmented fire hazard. Major changes in agricultural productivity (though not of extent in the farmed area) are also foreseen. The story is nowhere near its end; the research community is still hard at work trying to do better. In particular, there have been challenges to the accepted view of the roles of clouds and airborne particles in the radiation budget of the models (see Arkin 1991 for an overview). Thus, Ramanathan and Collins (1991) have proposed that high cloud veils over "supergreenhouse" areas of the tropical oceans may act as thermostats, preventing ocean temperatures from rising above 32° C, thereby limiting overall greenhouse changes. Still more recently, Charlson et al. (1992) have found that sulphate particles of human-made origin may be offsetting the greenhouse warming; their calculations indicate that these particles, coming like carbon dioxide from fossil fuel and smelting combustion, exert a cooling effect roughly comparable to calculated greenhouse warming. If so, then the observed current warming will require re-evaluation. A very recent modelling exercise by Wigley and Raper (1992) uses new and improved scenarios of future greenhouse gas concentrations, and also considers the possible effects of the sulphate cooling just described, as well as the possible consequences of ozone depletion in the lower stratosphere. The authors conclude that these processes do indeed moderate the probable greenhouse warming, but they do not significantly alter the above conclusions. For the period 1990-2100 they find a probable sea-level rise of only forty-eight centimetres. The argument is not at an end, but recently each successive exercise has reduced rather than augmented the probable warming.

The Challenge 21 5. Conclusion We are thus in a remarkable situation. A bold scientific hypothesis has led to widespread apprehension about the effect of human activities on climate, which influences or controls most other global environmental components. Human welfare is seen to be threatened by the economic and political implications of the impending change. Enough has already happened to persuade many of the world's leaders that preventive action must be taken — if such action can be identified. What has emerged from the research literature is that warming is certainly in progress on the global scale, and that increases in the greenhouse effect are possibly — I would say probably —the main cause. But there is uncertainty as to the impact on human affairs or on the natural system that supports us. So far, the change of climate has been small —indeed, smaller than most theoretical models suggest should have been the case. The surface warming of the past two decades has been accompanied by marked cooling of the stratosphere, which fact offers qualitative support for the hypothesis of greenhouse warming at the surface. A major problem arising from the slowness of these changes is that they are not visible to casual observation. The ordinary citizen sees, instead, the remarkable month-to-month and year-to-year variability of climate. Cold, damp summers like that of 1992 east of the Rockies immediately weaken public belief in the longer term warming. Taking the long view, as climatologists do, is very difficult for the voter and hence for the politician. Nevertheless, the recent trend of temperature has been upward —and we are probably responsible. Model calculations based on theory, and on the hypothesis that greenhouse warming will intensify, offer a wide range of possible outcomes for the next half-century and beyond. None is necessarily catastrophic, but even the smallest credible prediction is larger than the natural changes experienced over the past ten thousand years. If the largest estimates are accepted, ecological and economic calamity may face the world. Even the smallest estimates imply substantial stresses for vegetation and animals and will call for significant changes in the human economy. The wise course is to be prudent and to act in our common defence. My personal concern about this issue is heightened by my belief, shared by many students of global change, that the greenhouse effect is only one aspect of a larger problem, which is the chemical balance of the atmosphere-ocean system. The greenhouse gases are linked, for example, to the ozone problem, in numerous ways. For example: • The ozone layer's chemistry, in the stratosphere, depends on temperatures at those levels, which in turn reflect the greenhouse gas concentrations. • Some of the synthetic gases that attack ozone, notably the chlorofluorocarbons, are also greenhouse gases, as is ozone itself.

22 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect • Nitrous oxide, an important greenhouse gas, breaks down when it reaches the stratosphere, and thereafter attacks ozone; it is a byproduct of bacterial activity in soils at the earth's surface. Obviously, the ozone problem and greenhouse warming are interlocked issues, and both involve ecosystem processes at the earth's surface. Also implicated is acidification owing to the release of sulphur and nitrogen oxide at the earth's surface —the acid rain problem. We have learned in the past two decades that the entire complex —the chemical balance — should be seen as a whole. Governments have already acted to regulate the ozone problem and the acid deposition issue. The greenhouse effect poses larger and more complex questions, but the earlier precedents will be helpful in the search for successful action. Finally, the ethical questions raised in this volume have arisen in the other areas of concern. Acid deposition, for example, led to the design (often slow and painful) of bilateral arrangements between Canada and the U.S. The ozone problem led to the Vienna Convention, to the Montreal Protocol, and to subsequent actions to update the latter (because the actual outcome, in terms of ozone depletion, has exceeded scientific predictions). Clearly, the question of how we should act to protect the atmosphere and ocean is generic to all such controversies. The need for sound judgement and good ethical decisions has never been more evident.

Chapter 2 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES Thomas Hurka As Hare notes in the preceding chapter, the challenge of global climate change raises ethical issues. What response to this challenge, whether by an individual, corporation, or government, would be ethically right? Resolving these issues is crucial to making responsible decisions about the climate. An ethical judgement about a climate policy is not just one judgement among many, to be weighed against economic, political, and other judgements in deciding how, all things considered, to act. It is itself an all-things-considered judgement, which takes account of economic and other factors. If a climate policy is ethically right, it is simply right; if it is ethically wrong, it is wrong, period. To resolve these ethical issues we need to combine empirical facts about the threat of global climate change, of the kind summarized in Hare's chapter, with general ethical principles that say what is right and wrong in all policy areas. Combining these general principles with the specific facts about climatic change will lead to specific policy recommendations. There is dispute, however, about what the correct ethical principles are, both between cultures and within Western culture; and this can lead to conflicting judgements about policies. Even if there were no uncertainty about the facts concerning climatic change —even if there were universal agreement about the consequences of different policies —the use of different principles could lead to different ethical conclusions. The situation is not, however, entirely bleak. Some proposed ethical principles are relatively uncontroversial and widely accepted: it is hard to deny them, and few writers on ethics do. Other principles are more radical. There is, in fact, a continuum of possible principles, from ones that are well grounded and widely held to ones that are more speculative and contentious. This fact can be exploited in discussing a particular issue such as climatic change. If one can show that a climate policy is justified using only uncontentious principles, one can justify it to most people, whatever their disagreements about more radical principles. In fact, this is a useful general response to ethical disagreement: on any issue, try to establish ethical conclusions using the least contentious principles possible, to maximize the chances of agreement. I will organize this survey of ethical principles so as to allow this kind of response. For each of the two main considerations relevant to the ethical evaluation of acts or policies, I will move from less controversial prin-

24 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect ciples to ones that are more radical. The authors of the chapters to come can then situate their discussions with respect to this continuum. Some may believe that acceptable recommendations about climate policy can be justified using only widely accepted principles; others may feel that this simple response fails, and that a correct response to the challenge of global climate change requires a fundamental change in our ways of moral thinking. 1. Consequences: Humans Here and Now An important class of ethical principles consider consequences. If an act or policy has good consequences, these principles say, this counts ethically in its favour; if it has bad or, especially, disastrous consequences, this counts ethically against it. A concern for consequences is especially relevant to the choice between the broad climate policies of adaptation and avoidance. As Coward has explained (see his "Introduction" in this volume), choosing adaptation means continuing our present practices such as burning fossil fuels, letting global temperatures rise, and then making whatever further changes this requires: building sea walls, moving populations from environmentally damaged areas, and so on. Avoidance means changing our practices to prevent any warming from occurring. Mixed policies combine elements of adaptation and avoidance: they include some measures to reduce the rate of climatic change and some to adapt to the warming that does occur. The first ethical issue concerning climate policy is what mix of adaptation and avoidance is ethically preferable: to what extent should we allow global climate change to occur, and to what extent should we prevent it? In trying to resolve this issue we will surely be concerned with the two policies' consequences. First, however, we require a more precise statement of what our ethical concern for consequences involves. One issue is the form of this ethical concern. A simple principle, popular among philosophers, says that each agent has the duty always to bring about the best consequences, or the most good, possible. This maximizing principle is central, for example, to the ethical theory of utilitarianism (Smart and Williams 1973). But there are other possible principles about consequences. Egalitarian principles care not only about the total good an act produces but also about its distribution: they may prefer a smaller quantity of good that is equally distributed to a larger total of which some have a disproportionate share (Rawls 1971). What have been called satis/icing principles (from the idea of "making satisfactory") are less demanding than maximizing. They give each agent the duty only to bring about consequences that are reasonably good, either because those consequences are above an absolute threshold of satisfactoriness or

Ethical Principles 25 because they represent a reasonable proportion of the most good the agent can produce (Hurka 1990; Slote 1985). Finally, any principle about consequences can be limited by a permission allowing agents to give some more weight to their own interests than to others'. They may still have a duty to sacrifice their interests for the sake of large benefits to others, but need not accept very great losses to secure just a small increase in the aggregate good (Scheffler 1982). Whatever their exact form, these various principles are relatively easy to apply when we know with certainty what the consequences of different acts will be. As Hare emphasizes, however, this is not our situation with respect to climate policy: there is great uncertainty about, for example, both the magnitude and the rate of the threatened rise in temperature. But it does not follow that principles about consequences cannot be applied. If an act or policy involves some risk of bad consequences this is a reason to avoid it, and this reason is weightier the worse the consequences are and the higher the risk. If the consequences are extremely bad, even a small risk of producing them is a reason to avoid the act and to accept some costs in doing so. This thinking is implicit in Hare's remark that, since "the potential consequences of the warming are enormous ... it is better to be safe than sorry" (see "The Challenge," in this volume, sec. 1). If the result of allowing climatic change would be disastrous, it is prudent to avoid this result even if we are not certain that it would come about. Once the form of a principle about consequences is settled we must specify its content, or the kind of consequences it cares about. If an act's consequences are good or bad, it is because they affect beings that matter ethically, or have ethical "standing" (Sumner 1981), in ethically significant ways. These matters too need to be spelled out. A relatively uncontentious ethical principle says that we have a duty to consider the effects of our actions on other humans living in our own country at the present time. (I assume that the view that each of us should care only about his or her own interests does not count as ethical.} Since humans in our country now have ethical standing, this principle says, it counts in favour of an act if it benefits them and against the act if it harms them. But what do benefits and harms consist in? On no plausible view can they consist ultimately in effects on people's wealth or income. Money is a means to the good life, but it is only a means, and we must know what deeper values it serves. There are two main theories about this. According to welfarism, humans are benefited by whatever gives them pleasure, fulfils their desires, or contributes to something describable as their "happiness." Petfectionism, by contrast, equates the human good with knowledge, achievement, love, virtue, and other states that it values apart from any connection to happiness. What matters is not how enjoyable someone's life is but how far it develops human potentials or realizes "spiritual values." But the debate between welfarism and

26 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect perfectionism, prominent though it has been in Western ethics, seems less important for an issue such as climate policy. It seems likely that, in this policy area, the acts that turn out to benefit and harm humans will be roughly the same on welfarist, perfectionist, and indeed all plausible theories of the human good. If we confine ourselves to the uncontentious principle that we should consider the effects of our actions on humans living in our own country now, what follows for the choice between adaptation and avoidance? This principle —call it the humans-here-and-now principle —does not count some of the largest harms threatened by global climatic change: that a rise in global temperatures may damage the environment, killing individual organisms and destroying ecosystems, does not matter in itself, since only effects on humans have intrinsic ethical significance. And many of the effects on humans do not get counted either. There is a substantial time-lag between the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the resulting increase in temperature. Partly because of this, the largest effects of global climate change are projected to occur several decades into the twenty-first century, when most of the humans living today will no longer be alive. And those who will be alive —future generations —do not have ethical standing on the humans-here-and-now principle, so effects on them are also irrelevant. At the same time, this principle does count many of the harms involved in choosing avoidance. If reducing the use of fossil fuels has economic costs, these will be felt initially by humans existing today, and the losses in welfare or perfection they may suffer are ethically significant. Given its restricted concern for consequences, the humans-here-and-now principle has a tendency to favour adaptation over avoidance — since it ignores many of the former's effects while counting the latter's, it has a bias towards letting climatic change occur. It is not that this principle allows no arguments for avoidance. If humans today want the environment to be preserved or future generations to flourish, then, according to some welfarist theories, they will be harmed by future events that prevent these desires from being fulfilled. And according to some perfectionist theories, if humans today are pursuing goals whose achievement requires the flourishing of future generations—if, for example, they are trying to preserve and pass on some human tradition —there is again an indirect here-and-now reason to prevent warming. But these here-and-now arguments cannot have great weight: even if humans today have some future-oriented desires and goals, they have many more directed mainly at the present. The more serious here-and-now arguments for avoidance appeal to consequences other than ones directly concerning climate. The use of chlorofluorocarbons, for example, not only contributes to greenhouse warming but also damages the ozone layer, creating health risks for humans in the very short term. Especially since chlorofluorocarbons are

Ethical Principles 27 easily replaceable, this last fact gives us a here-and-now ethical reason to eliminate them, a policy that happens, as a side-effect, to reduce global climate change. Other avoidance measures can be justified on economic grounds. Increasing the efficiency of heating and lighting systems or the fuel efficiency of automobiles and electrical generating plants can save money while, on the side, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. This, again, supplies a here-and-now reason for these measures. Some argue that a policy heavily weighted towards avoidance can be justified on this narrow economic ground. Thus, a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists argues that reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 70 per cent over the next forty years would save the U.S. economy $2.3 trillion (The Globe and Mail, March 12, 1992). If anything like this estimate is correct, then even the least contentious ethical principle supports radical changes in the practices that threaten to cause global climate change. But others disagree, arguing that while 10 or perhaps 20 per cent reductions in carbon dioxide emissions can be achieved at modest costs, reductions beyond this level would significantly reduce the good of humans today (Nordhaus 1990a). If the latter view is correct, the here-and-now principle still favours a policy mix weighted towards adaptation. To justify more avoidance we would need to adopt a more controversial ethical principle, such as one extending the concern for consequences, and ethical standing, to humans in future generations and/or humans in other nations. 2. Consequences: Humans at Other Times and Places A concern for humans in future generations reflects the ethical idea that the temporal location of a harm or benefit —the time when it occurs —has no bearing on its ethical significance. Goods and evils in the future will be just as real as ones today and ought to count as much in our ethical deliberations (Sidgwick 1907, 381). This idea is central to the concept of "sustainable development," which "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, 43). To care about sustainability is to care about future humans as well as about those now alive. Like the here-and-now principle, a concern for future generations can take different forms. A maximizing principle tells us to produce the greatest good possible for humans in all generations, with future interests counted equally against those in the present. Egalitarian principles tell us to aim at equality between generations. Thus, in one formulation, each generation is to leave its successors a total range of resources and opportunities that is at least as good as its own (Barry 1983). Finally, what we called satisficing principles require each generation to allow its successors

28 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect to be, not as well off as possible, nor even as well off as they, but at least reasonably well off. A parallel extension of concern to humans in other countries reflects the idea that the spatial location of a good or evil —the place where it occurs—does not matter ethically: benefits and harms far away are as real as ones close by and should figure as much in our deliberations (Singer 1972). If we maximize or satisfice with respect to the good, we should include effects on distant humans in our calculations of consequences; if we are egalitarians, we should accept a principle of equality between nations. These two extensions give rise to three further principles about consequences. A humans-here-at-all-times principle considers effects on future generations but only in our country; a humans-everywhere-now principle considers effects on humans in all countries but only now. Both are more controversial than the here-and-now principle but less controversial than a humans-everywhere-at-all-times principle, which grants ethical standing to all humans, in all countries and all generations. What is the effect of these principles on judgements about climate policy? Extending concern to future humans allows some additional arguments for adaptation. These concern the long-term economic effects (such as a less productive future economy) of costly avoidance measures today, and the losses to those humans (such as perhaps western Canadian farmers) who might benefit from higher global temperatures. But the overall effect of the extension seems likely to favour avoidance. The largest effects of global climate change on future generations will probably be negative, through rises in sea level, the destruction of traditional habitats and industries, and the loss of biodiversity. If this is so, the extension of standing to future humans pushes the ethically acceptable climate policy closer to avoidance. To here-and-now arguments about, for example, economic efficiency, it adds further arguments about the need of future generations for a healthy environment. What of extending concern to humans in other countries? This may strengthen some arguments for avoidance. To here-and-now claims about energy efficiency in our country we can add similar claims about energy efficiency in other, especially developing, countries (see Blair and Ross, "Energy Efficiency at Home and Abroad" in this volume). And future generations in these countries are likely to be among those most seriously harmed by global climatic change. They live on low-lying islands or coastal plains or depend on industries such as farming or fishing that can be destroyed by small changes in the environment, and their local economies lack the resources to pay for the expensive adaptation measures that climatic change would require. But humans-everywhere principles also magnify the ethical costs of avoidance. Humans in developing countries have a low quality of life, and

Ethical Principles 29 any ethical principle that counts their interests will recognize an ethical demand to improve that quality of life. This improvement seems likely to require further industrialization, which, even given the most efficient technologies, will probably involve increases in greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries. To forbid these countries this industrialization in order to protect future generations' interest in a healthy environment is to do those countries' citizens a serious harm, that of perpetuating an indefensibly low standard of living; but to allow their industrialization is to place very serious burdens on developed countries. If greenhouse gas emissions will increase in the developing world, the reductions required in wealthier countries to ensure an overall decline in emissions are very large indeed. Some sacrifices by developed countries do not raise serious ethical objections: when the well-being of (most of) their citizens is already so high, a small decrease is not ethically troubling. But what is contemplated in the face of increased emissions from developing countries is a large decrease, and that may be a substantial objection to wholesale avoidance. This is, for many, the central dilemma of climate policy, and indeed of environmental policy generally: how to weigh against each other the interests of developing countries in a higher quality of life, based on further industrialization, and the interests of future generations in an unravaged environment. The dilemma is especially pressing for egalitarians, who must try to balance the competing claims of equality among nations and equality among generations. And it is created by the parallel extensions of ethical concern to humans at future times and in other places. The dilemma is worsened, moreover, if we factor in future population growth. According to one estimate, the world's population will increase to 10.7 billion, twice its present size, by 2030 if the current rate of growth is maintained (Horiuchi 1992). This increase threatens to swamp even substantial measures of avoidance. Even if the per capita rate of greenhouse emissions in the world is reduced by one-third (and remember the pressure for per capita increases in developing countries), a doubling of the world's population would result in an overall increase in the quantity of gases emitted. The prospect of population growth raises extremely difficult ethical issues. A maximizing principle must be able, in ranking possible future states of the world, to weigh against each other the value (if any) of a larger human population and the value of a higher average quality of life. There is no obviously correct way of doing this. (For one proposal, see Hurka 1983.) Egalitarian and satisficing principles must likewise address this problem. But the following seems plausible: if the future human population will be larger, our duty to restrain our polluting activities now for the sake of future humans' welfare or perfection is even more stringent. If we cannot fulfil that more stringent duty, we have an ethical reason to prevent or at least limit population growth.

30 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect 3. Consequences: The Environment Valued for Itself Despite their extension beyond the here and now, the principles discussed in the last section confine ethical standing to humans. If changes in the environment matter ethically it is only indirectly, because of their effects for good or ill on human lives. This human-centred assumption is explicitly stated in the Foreword to the Brundtland Commission report, which speaks of "people, whose well-being is the ultimate goal of all environment and development policies" (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, xiv). A more radical environmental view rejects this assumption and extends ethical standing to parts of the environment. This environment-centred view directs us to care for the natural world around us, not just as a means to better human lives, but as an end in itself. This marks a radical break with much of traditional Western ethics, which has emphasized the lordship of humans over nature. It is a reforming view, and far from universally accepted, but it too comes in less and more radical forms. The less radical environment-centred principles are modelled on our ethical concern for humans. This latter concern is individualist, treating individual humans as the bearers of ethical value and any social or global good as merely an aggregate of the goods of individuals. Individualist environmental principles extend this approach to the environment, finding intrinsic value in the lives of individual non-human organisms. How far these principles extend standing depends on what the good in general consists in. Welfarists equate the human good with, for example, pleasure and the absence of pain, and will value the same states of feeling in nonhumans. This extends concern to mammals, who may also be capable of desires and satisfactions, and to organisms as far down the developmental scale as (perhaps) arthropods. But it does not include lower beings such as mollusks, insects, and plants, who lack the capacity for feeling. Perfectionists equate the human good with states such as knowledge and achievement, which they value apart from any connection to happiness. At the deepest level, many perfectionists equate the human good with the development of properties essential to or distinctive of human nature (Hurka 1993). Their environmental ethic will therefore extend standing to all beings with a nature that can be developed to varying degrees, that is, to all living things (Attfield 1991; Taylor 1986). The rationale given for individualist environmentalism is ethical consistency. If we value a state such as freedom from pain in humans, it is arbitrary and "speciesist" not to value it also in non-humans. We do not accept the racist view that the interests of whites count more than those of blacks even though there is no ethically relevant difference between them. In the same way, it is argued, we should not accept a view that gives ethical weight to a state in humans but no weight to a qualitatively similar state in non-humans.

Ethical Principles 31 Nonetheless, individualist environmentalism is criticized as insufficiently radical to capture the real intrinsic values in the environment, which reside not in individual organisms but in wholes such as species and ecosystems. It is argued, for example, that individualism cannot account for the importance of preserving biodiversity, or a large number of biological species. Biodiversity has value for humans, and there may therefore be indirect reasons to preserve it even on a human-centred view: humans can enjoy a varied environment, and the preservation of rare species may lead to benefits in the future, such as the discovery of new medicines. But some environmentalists claim that there is value beyond this — intrinsic value — in a rich and varied natural world, and that individualism cannot account for this value. If we have a choice between saving the last members of an endangered species and a slightly greater number of members of a populous species, individualism will tell us to prefer the latter. Because it counts only the interests of individuals, it cannot recognize the special environmental value in groups (Callicott 1989; Rolston 1989). Those who urge this objection espouse a more radical, holistic environmental ethic, which takes the bearers of intrinsic value to be wholes such as ecosystems or the entire biosphere, and which grants individuals ethical significance only as contributing to valued properties of these wholes. (Holistic principles can either be added to human-centred and individualist ones or, on the most radical view of all, can supplant them entirely.) The classic statement of this holistic view is that of Aldo Leopold: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" (1970, 262). Ethical standing belongs not (or not just) to individual organisms but to the interrelated wholes they compose. Adopting either environment-centred principle, the individualist or the holist, would push the ethically acceptable climate policy closer to avoidance. The new principle would not see any significant additional costs in avoidance, since the bad effects (if any) of this policy fall almost entirely on humans: it is they whose quality of life may decline as greenhouse emissions are reduced. And the principle does see additional costs in adaptation: the harms this policy causes to the environment matter not just because of their effects on humans but also in themselves, as affecting a natural world that has ethical standing in its own right. The chief worry here is the threatened rate of climatic change. There is nothing in itself environmentally objectionable about change: those who value diversity should prefer a world where, through history, forms of life succeed each other to one where species and ecosystems are eternally fixed. But the rate of warming projected for the next century given adaptation is faster than any in the last ten thousand years, and forms of life that could adapt to a slower warming may be destroyed by one this rapid. This will be bad both on an individualist environmental view—where individual

32 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect animals will suffer or find their natural life-activities impossible — and on a holist view, where complex and fragile ecosystems, such as in the Canadian Arctic, will disappear. The strength of these additional arguments for avoidance depends on a further issue: how the good of non-human entities compares with that of humans. How much human sacrifice is ethically required to preserve, for example, an Arctic ecosystem? Welfarist individualism has an answer, at least in principle, to this question: the pleasure and pain of animals has equal importance to the similar pleasure and pain of humans. Humans are capable of deeper and more complex forms of satisfaction and suffering than animals, and their interests therefore sometimes count for more. But if the physical suffering of animals counts as much as the equivalent suffering of humans, arguments based on it must surely have considerable weight. Perfectionist individualism extends standing to more beings than does welfarism, and in that way allows a stronger environment-centred argument for avoidance. At the same time, however, it is more able than welfarism to draw distinctions among these beings. It can say that the capacities fundamental to human nature are higher, more complex, and therefore more valuable than those of non-humans. The flourishing of insects, fish, and mammals has some worth, but much less than the development of the mental and especially rational capacities of humans (Attfield 1991, chap. 9). Making these rankings more precise is extremely difficult, especially since there is no pre-existing scale of value to apply. The same difficulty applies even more to the holistic view, which must compare the goods of such utterly distinct entities as complex ecosystems and individual human beings. (I assume the view is adopted in addition to human-centred principles rather than, as on the most radical view, supplanting them.) But of all the environment-centred views we can say the following: it is hard to believe that a plausible weighting scheme will not grant at least some value to non-human entities. Given this, adopting an environment-centred principle will add at least some strength to the ethical case for avoidance; and if a weighting scheme gives great value to non-human entities, adopting the principle will add greatly to the case for avoidance. 4. Consequences: Further Applications Principles about consequences are relevant not only to the broad choice between adaptation and avoidance but also to other aspects of climate policy. In fact, some writers on ethics, known as consequentialists, hold that consequences are all that is relevant to any ethical evaluation, in any area: what is right is always, for example, what produces the most good possible. For maximizing consequentialists, once we have chosen a cli-

Ethical Principles 33 mate policy, the right mechanism for implementing it is the one that is most efficient, that is, that produces the greatest benefits at the least cost. Similarly, the right division of the policy's costs is the one that makes those costs smallest. Those people (or beings) should pay for the policy who are best able to pay, or who will be harmed least by paying, whatever their or others' responsibility for the problem the policy addresses. The implications of these further consequentialist ideas depend on economic and sociological facts about the efficiency of different policy mechanisms and the impacts on people of different divisions of their costs. However, consequentialism tends to imply that avoidance in particular ought often to be implemented in developing countries with its costs borne by developed countries. The rationale for the first part of this implication is efficiency. It is often more cost-effective to bring new industrial facilities in developing countries up to the highest technological standards of efficiency than to attempt expensive retrofits of existing plants in the developed world. The most efficient policy, therefore, will often operate in developing countries. The implication about the bearing of costs rests, given a maximizing principle, on the thesis of "diminishing marginal utility": that the contribution an extra unit of wealth or income makes to a person's quality of life, in welfarist or perfectionist terms, gets smaller the more wealth or income the person has. Where an extra thousand dollars can make a large difference to the happiness or human development of a person who is starving, it may not be noticed by one who has millions. Given diminishing marginal utility, the overall consequences of a climate policy will be better if its economic costs are borne by those who are wealthiest rather than by those who are poor. And this claim is strengthened if our consequentialist principle is egalitarian or satisficing. On an egalitarian view, we have an extra reason to equalize people's levels of well-being; on a satisficing view, losses by those whose lives are above a threshold of reasonable well-being have no ethical significance. The second implication also holds for a policy of adaptation. If global temperatures rise, adaptive measures should be implemented where they need to be—where environmental damage is greatest. But it is again best if the costs of these measures are borne by those who are wealthiest and thus best able to pay. This meets the general consequentialist standard that what is right is always what produces the best outcome overall. 5. Rights: Constraints Though some writers on ethics endorse consequentialism, many reject it. They agree that an act or policy's having good consequences is one consideration in favour of it, but they deny that this is the only relevant con-

34 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect sideration. Sometimes, they argue, "the end does not justify the means"; other times the act with the best overall consequences is wrong because it violates an independent ethical rule constraining the ways we may permissibly act in pursuit of valuable goals. Often these constraining rules are formulated in terms of rights: we have a duty not only to promote good consequences but also to respect rights. What is ethically right is no longer the act with the best consequences, but the one with the best consequences and that does not violate any rights. To say that a being has rights is to say more than that it has ethical standing. If a being has ethical standing, its interests are weighed equally against the similar interests of other beings in the calculation of good and bad consequences. But the result of this calculation may be that it is best overall if the being's interests are harmed: this may most further the interests of the group as a whole. This last implication is blocked by the granting of rights. If a being has rights, it has certain interests that it is wrong to damage even if the effect of doing so is best for all beings taken together. According to an absolutist rights view, the infringement of rights can never be justified by the appeal to consequences, "though the heavens fall." According to a non-absolutist view, avoiding a major disaster can justify infringement. On any rights view, however, an act whose overall consequences are only somewhat better than the alternatives is ethically wrong if it infringes a right. It is widely accepted that humans have rights, such as the right to life. For example, if the only way to save the lives of five patients who need organ transplants is to kill an innocent person and divide his organs among them, most people would say that the killing is wrong even though, by saving five lives at the expense of one, it has overall good consequences. And the right to life surely constrains ethically acceptable climate policies. It may be that, in the face of massive population growth, killing some excess humans would have overall good consequences, but such killing is ethically ruled out. The same is true of policies that allow torture of humans or violate their rights to democratic political participation or, more controversially, to make free choices about whether or not to procreate. There would be very strict constraints on climate policies if there were strong property rights, or rights to make choices about the objects one owns. Libertarians believe in such rights and argue that government interference with citizens' property (for example, compulsory taxation to finance a welfare system) is ethically equivalent to robbery (Nozick 1974). According to this view, a coercively backed avoidance policy, involving legally enforced emissions ceilings or a carbon tax, would be ethically unacceptable. The government could exhort its citizens to restrain their greenhouse emissions, and perhaps organize a plan enabling them to do so, but could not force anyone to participate in the plan. Any avoidance measures would have to be chosen voluntarily by individuals.

Ethical Principles 35 At the same time, however, as Danielson notes (see "Personal Responsibility" in this volume, sec. 2.2), a libertarian government would abandon the subsidies to road transport and fossil fuel extraction that make current emissions higher than they would be in a completely unregulated market. Some writers extend rights such as the right to life to at least some higher animals (Regan 1983), but this is more controversial. Imagine that a herd of elk has grown too large for its habitat, so food is in short supply and a population crash is threatened. If the individual elk had the right to life, it would be wrong to cull the herd to reduce its numbers to an ecologically sustainable level. Yet many of us, including many who are deeply committed to environmental values, think culling is right. Although it harms some individual elk, it is in the interests of the herd as a whole, and that seems primary. Even more controversial is the idea that ecosystems or environmental wholes have rights. This implies that it is wrong to interfere with an ecosystem even to give it more holistic value: more life or more biodiversity. Thus, it would be wrong, according to this view, to implant life on Mars because doing so would violate Mars's "integrity" as a dead planet (McKay 1990). This is very hard to believe. If environmental wholes count in ethics —and this is itself a radical view —they do so only in the evaluation of consequences. The rights that constrain our pursuit of good ends belong only to humans or, at the very best, to humans and some higher animals. 6. Rights: Compensation Rights have a further ethical function: to require that compensation be paid to those whose rights have been infringed. Sometimes compensation is owed when a rights-infringement was ethically wrong and therefore constituted a rights-violation: if a thief steals and damages your property, he must compensate you for the damage. At other times compensation is owed even though the rights-infringement was all-things-considered acceptable. Thus, it may be ethically acceptable for the government to expropriate your property provided that it pays you adequate compensation. Cases of this second kind place an additional constraint on the pursuit of good consequences: a policy that harms some individuals may be right but only if those individuals are compensated. This imposes a constraint because the policy-plus-compensation may have less good consequences than the policy-without-compensation, as it will do, for example, if the compensation is owed to the rich and the money would do more good if given to the poor. And even if the policy-plus-compensation has the best consequences, a principle about rights strengthens the ethical grounds for compensation: those who have been harmed should be paid

36 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect not just because this is good for them or for the world, but because it is owed them as a matter of right. Claims about compensation have been prominent in recent discussions of climate policy, especially concerning the division of the costs of avoidance. For example, developing countries have argued that because the developed countries bear the main responsibility for degrading the global environment, they should carry the main burden of repairing the environment. This is in effect a claim to be paid compensation by those who caused harms to the environment. In this unrestricted form, the claim is unsustainable. Someone owes compensation for harming another only if he or she knew or should have known at the time of acting that the harm would result, and in the early years of industrialization, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, no one could have known the effects of, for example, carbon dioxide emissions on global temperatures. More recently, however, the developed countries have known of the risks of global climate change yet have continued to emit greenhouse gases, and the same will be true in the future if there is a conscious choice of adaptation. Both recent and future emissions will involve knowledge of the harms they may cause. Is there, then, or will there be a claim to compensation for these harms? Even this claim requires further defence, since not every harm to another involves an infringement of his or her rights. If I outdo you in fair economic competition, reducing your income and lowering the value of your assets, I make you worse off but do not owe you any compensation. It must therefore be shown by ethical argument that, for example, the earth's atmosphere is not unowned but is the joint property of all humans, so that actions that increase its temperature damage something over which other humans have rights. If this can be shown, those who damage the atmosphere must compensate its other owners. This means that an ethically acceptable climate policy must include such compensation: to the extent that it harms some individuals, it must include compensation payments to those individuals. And this in turn means that the ethically acceptable policy is probably closer to pure avoidance. If the acceptable mix of adaptation and avoidance is not the one with (simply) the best consequences, but the one with the best consequences once compensation has been paid to those harmed by its adaptation component, there is pressure on the mix to slide towards avoidance. A different claim for compensation was made by the Saudi Arabian delegation on the eve of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992: that an avoidance policy must include compensation to oil producers for the sales they lose because of reductions in fuel consumption (The Globe and Mail, June 10, 1992). The same claim might be made on behalf of the Alberta oil industry. If avoidance will mean economic losses for the producers of fossil fuels, should there be compensation for these losses?

Ethical Principles 37 There would be no claim to compensation if the losses resulted from unilateral decisions by millions of individual consumers. That would be just a market development calling for no special rectification. The question is whether the ethical situation is different when the losses result from a governmental (or intergovernmental) policy that is coercively enforced: does a political program to cut oil consumption, through emissions limits or a carbon tax, give rise to a claim to compensation when unilateral consumers' decisions do not? The same question arises for another possible claim to compensation: from inhabitants of parts of the world, perhaps including the Canadian prairies, who would benefit from increased productivity if global climate change occurred but who will not benefit if it is avoided. They too have no claim if avoidance resulted from unilateral decisions by individual consumers, but what if there is a coercively backed governmental policy? This issue aside, is a claim to compensation weaker when others fail to benefit one, or to make one better off, than when they make one worse off? There are difficult issues about when compensation is owed, but most views assume they turn only on the rights of humans. Just as it is hard to believe that non-humans have rights that can constrain an acceptable climate policy, so it is hard to believe that they have rights that call for compensation within such a policy. If a mix of adaptation and avoidance harms some animals, that may be a bad consequence and something it would be desirable to prevent. But it does not call for compensation if, counting all interests equally, the mix has the best result possible. 7. Conclusion To evaluate climate policies ethically we need to combine empirical facts about the threat of global climate change with ethical principles. Two kinds of principle are relevant. The first kind concerns the consequences of acts or policies, and explains what consequences count ethically for and against them. The second kind specifies rights, which either rule out certain means to good consequences or require compensation for those knowingly harmed by others' actions. In each category there are less and more controversial principles. (We may not always follow even the least controversial principles when we act, but intellectually they are hard to deny.) Thus, it is relatively uncontroversial that benefits and harms to humans now living in one's country are relevant to evaluating a policy, and not much more controversial to consider effects on future and distant humans. (Extending standing to parts of the environment, by contrast, and especially to environmental wholes, is more radical.) Similarly, it is relatively uncontroversial that it would be wrong for a climate policy to kill humans, but more controver-

38 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect sial that it would be wrong to interfere with people's choices about procreation or about their property. It is less controversial that there should be compensation for those harmed by climatic change that was knowingly allowed to occur, and more controversial that there should be compensation for oil producers or for those who would have benefited from higher temperatures. A full resolution of the ethical issues about global climate change would require a complete selection among these ethical principles, but even without this we can reach some provisional conclusions. Even the least controversial principles about consequences concerning present and future humans give us substantial reasons to pursue avoidance, that is, to change our present practices so the largest changes in global temperatures are prevented. In implementing this policy we must respect basic human rights, but if we accept the least controversial claim about compensation we have a further reason for avoidance. If we knowingly do what causes global climate change, we will owe compensation to those harmed by the warming; if we want to avoid paying the compensation, we must prevent the warming from occurring.

Chapter 3 RELIGIOUS RESPONSIBILITY Harold Coward Why should the question of religious responsibility to the environment be included in a book on ethics and climate change? Three reasons may be advanced. First, just as philosophy and law and economics may offer guidance based upon a long history of human thought, so also religion has been and remains a major part of human civilization; therefore its wisdom should be considered. Second, since many in today's world are believers of one or another religion, an appeal for individual environmental responsibility could use as a part of its argument, at least, an appeal to the individual's religious beliefs. Third, some states are religious rather than secular (e.g., Pakistan and Iran); therefore, knowledge of religious responsibility can help in appealing to such states for international co-operation on environmental problems such as global climate change. This chapter will review each major world religion in turn for its view of human responsibility to the environment. A concluding discussion will locate the religions in relation to the ethical considerations laid out by Hurka in chapter 2. We will begin with the Western religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity before moving on to the Eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism and concluding with aboriginal religion. Although the responses of these religions to issues of population and contraception are related to concern for the environment, they are questions deserving of separate treatment. 1. Judaism The spring 1992 issue of The Melton Journal contains an article suggesting that the Jews' early loss of their land in medieval Europe (they were forbidden to work the land) caused them to become the first urbanized people. No longer rooted in the land, the Jews made their civilization portable and in the process lost their sensitivity to nature (Green 1992, 4). Rather than in nature, they found God in the study of books and the writing of commentaries. The emphasis having shifted to God, the Jewish people, and the Book (Torah), nature was lost from view (p. 5). Over the centuries Jewish theologians have responded by testing out a variety of positions on the relation between the divine and the natural, from a God who is creator but nevertheless quite separate from the world (Maimonides) to the world's being seen as simply an emanation of God

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40 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect (Kabbalists.) Green, however, argues for a balance between these extremes and suggests that such a balance can be found in the Scriptures. Although the Bible has a clear appreciation of nature, it is wary of any theology that would overly glorify nature. Early Semitic religion had deified aspects of nature (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, s.v. "nature"). Israelite religion rejects such nature worship and clearly establishes God as above and separate from nature. Yet nature is also seen as God's creation: "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it" (Ps. 24:1). Rather than as a subject for speculation, the Bible sees nature as "a testimony to the work of the Creator" (Isa. 40:26; Amos 5:8; Job 38-41) (Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v. "nature"). As the Psalmist puts it, "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1). Humans occupy the ambiguous position of both being a part of creation and exercising dominion over it. As Genesis (2:15) puts it, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." Humans are not only part of nature; God has given them the role of partners in creation. The tradition recognized the dangers this posed for the selfish exploitation of nature by humans: "The rabbis ...were not unaware of potential conflicts over 'ownership,' seeing the natural tendency of people to forget the greater unity that they share with creation and begin to act as lords themselves, exploiting the earth for short-term gain while sacrificing life in the process" (Shapiro 1989, 180). Consequently, blessings were required along with special offerings before humans could use the fruits of creation. Such blessings recall to mind God's ownership of creation and caution against the misuse of nature. In the Torah, God reminds humans of God's ultimate ownership of the land: "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants" (Lev. 25:23). Humans are aliens not in relation to nature, but in relation to God. The Bible views humans as part of nature —a part that has self-consciousness. The danger is that human self-consciousness sins by thinking only of itself and forgetting its humble place in God's larger scheme of creation. Selfish use of the land can lead to its infertility (Isa. 24:4-5), and safeguards are built in to protect the land. Exodus (23:10-12) requires the land to lie fallow every seventh year and Leviticus (25) every fiftieth year as well. Indeed, Leviticus seems to suggest a fifty-year cycle where all hierarchy is abolished and everything renews itself on the basis of harmony between God, humans, and all of nature. All begin again from a position of peace. Such a vision is particularly present in prophets such as Isaiah and Ezekiel. Sometimes Scripture suggests that for God the world is a failed experiment, but no matter how failed he cannot let go of it, and so hope is renewed (e.g., the flood and Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones.) Humans, whose sins

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have despoiled creation, are given a fresh chance as part of a renewed creation. Apart from such scriptural visions, Judaism seems often to have been dominated by a practical, self-interested approach to nature (Segal 1989, 4). A frequently cited passage, Deuteronomy 20:10, commands Israelite armies when attacking a Canaanite town not to destroy its fruit trees "by wielding an axe against them. Although you may take food from them you must not cut them down." Segal notes the rabbis elaborated this practical rule to "the prohibition of bal task-hit which extends the ban on wastefulness to include other foodstuffs, clothing, fuel and water, or any other useful resource" (p. 4). Today's rabbis presumably would have little difficulty including pollution of the atmosphere within this ban. Segal observes, "Jewish tradition seems quite aware of our dependence on our natural environment, and has set down concrete measures for ensuring its physical continuity as well as its quality. All this was done in the consciousness that God did indeed create in his world goodly creatures and fine trees to give pleasure to humans" (p. 8). Nor is the life-sustaining quality of the environment simply an obligation for the benefit of the current generation: God expects us to turn over the land to the next generation, to our progeny, with all its resources intact. The land is not ours to dispose of, but only to make use of with reverence and responsibility" (Schorsch 1992, 3). The same principle would be applied to the atmosphere. In the face of the pressures of proliferating population, what wisdom does Judaism offer to help sustain life on this globe? Many thinkers call upon the mystical thought of the Kabbalists in responding to this question. The answer offered is that humans must learn to limit themselves—their rate of reproduction, their use of natural resources, and their production of fouling wastes. The example to emulate is the Kabbalist vision of how God created the world. If God is omnipresent, reasoned the Kabbalists, the only way God could create would be by an act of tsimtsum — of voluntary withdrawal or limitation to make room for creation. Similarly, we as humans must withdraw or limit both our reproduction and our wants so as to make room for coexistence with our environment in this and future generations. The miracle of co-habitation with other living species, the beauty of collective I-Thou relationship with beings wholly different from ourselves, requires our self-limitation. If we were everywhere, our presence would herald the end of the teeming diversity of nature. Our fragile and unique habitat needs a reprieve from human assault (Schorsch 1992,6).

Hasidism of the eighteenth century took up another aspect of Kabbalistic thought leading to a reverencing of nature in all its forms —the notion ofshekhinah. This concept suggests that sparks of God's presence can be found in everything that makes up the world — in people, in animals, in organic and inorganic matter. Nothing, it is suggested, exists

42 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect without a divine spark within, a spark that is waiting to be released from its imprisoning shell of darkness and profaneness so as to return to its divine essence. The special role of humans in this situation is to constantly turn to God, for this action releases the divine in the world, enabling it to reach its consummation in God. Thus, each person is God's co-worker, responsible for that segment of the world that he or she contacts. It is this thought that was behind Martin Buber's (1958) idea that we must enter into a living relationship (I-Thou) with all humans, animals, plants, and so on, that we encounter in life.1 If we think of our responsibility to the environment from the perspective of Judaism and in terms of the schema outlined by Hurka in chapter 2, it is evident that Jews see themselves as having duties to other humans presently living (anywhere in the world) and to future generations. Less clear is the degree to which humans have duties to animals, plants, the environment and its ecosystems. Scripture and commentaries seem to agree with the practical position that humans should respect those aspects of the environment necessary to sustain life. From this perspective nature is valued mainly because of its usefulness to humans. At the opposite extreme are the Kabbalists and Hasidic thinkers like Martin Buber whose mystical perspective endows all of creation with a divine spark that it is our duty as humans to liberate through engagement in IThou relationships. Whereas the Kabbalists would adopt a pure avoidance approach, other traditions within Judaism would likely argue for a blend of avoidance and adaptation. 2. Islam Islam's approach to nature is conditioned by the fact that Islam is life affirming and world affirming. The world was created by God as the place within which humans can function as faithful servants. The human role is to work to shape the world into the pattern that God reveals in the Qur'an. In contrast to some ascetic religious traditions, Islam does not see nature as corrupted or discontinuous with God's purpose: In itself, the world is not to be denied and combatted. On the contrary, it is innocent and good, created precisely to the end of being used and enjoyed by man. The evil is not in it, but in its abuse by man (Al Faruqi 1989,227).

Muslims are directed to use their God-given intelligence to understand themselves in relation to nature and to satisfy their basic, instinctual desires while remaining in harmony with nature. Working to make the earth more fruitful or to further highlight its beauty is judged as an act of worship and service to God. As such it must be entered into with selfless dedication. When one's actions are motivated by the correct intentions, bodily and aesthetic pleasures are viewed positively as a foretaste of the paradise to come. Therefore the Qur'an commands, "Eat, drink and enjoy yourselves, but do not abuse" (Al Faruqi 1989, 228).

Religious Responsibility 43 The Islamic approach guards against any temptation to deify nature or worship any of its elements (e.g., the sun). Indeed, Islam sees nature as joining with people in the worship of the one God, their creator. God's lordship is understood as making all of nature and all people inherently Muslim: "There is the concept of a natural, cosmic islam, in which stars and molecules, species and elements, plants and creatures, all 'worship' by their very conformity to the laws of their being" (Cragg 1977, 11). Nature not only worships God but, by its very existence, displays God's potentialities and attributes (Chittick 1983, 58). As Sayyid Ahmad Khan, an Islamic writer of the last century, saw it, the potentiality of nature is empirical evidence of the goodness of God (McDonough 1984, 35). Potentiality, as seen by Islam, is present in both nature and humanity. And this potentiality is to be realized not in some alternative afterworld or heavenly kingdom (as in some Christian theologies), but in this world. God's judgement and the paradise or hell that follows is merely a reward or punishment for how well humans have used their freedom to actualize the divine potentialities of this world in this life (and so deserve the rewards of paradise) or, conversely, have misused their freedom to abuse themselves and nature (thus meriting the punishments of hell). Nature is also seen by Islam as a revelation of God that in a sense parallels the revelation of the Qur'an. Islamic spirituality is based "not only upon the reading of the written Qur'an (al-Qur'an al-tadwlni) but also upon deciphering the text of the cosmic Qur'an (al-Qur'an altakwlnl) which is its complement" (Nasr 1987, 345). Indeed, some Sufis have talked about the events of nature as verses of "the book of nature" set before us to be read (p. 355.) Nature and the Qur'an are placed before humans as twin acts of God's self-revelation. But for Islam the relationship between the two "books" is not equal. It is only through the revelation of the Qur'an that humans can learn to "read" the revelation present in themselves and in nature. Those who abuse nature to serve their own selfish desires misunderstand themselves, nature, and the mutual relationship between humans and nature, because they have not heard and accepted the words of the Qur'an. As was the case with Judaism, it is perhaps within mystical thought that this human relationship with nature and God is most clearly seen. Nasr (1987, 346) draws our attention to the Sufi idea that nature is the manifestation of God's compassionate breath. The Sufi mystic Ibn 'Arab! defines the very substance of the cosmos as the Breath of the Compassionate (nafas al-Rahman.) Nature in its innocence manifests God's compassionate breath through its regularity and beauty. The human who surrenders to God discovers the compassionate breath within and sees its presence all around in the creatures and entities of the cosmos. Nature is thus a vehicle by which humans can be brought to see God's truth, beauty, and compassion. Both the mystic and the scientist, through their respective disciplines, are understood by Islam as capable of seeing the

44 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect divine truth inherent in nature. For Islam the goal of both mysticism and science is to unveil the divine reality within nature and to enable humans to experience the unity of themselves and nature in the Quranic revelation of God. What then is our human responsibility to nature, according to Islam? The Islamic view might be stated simply as "God possesses the cosmos, humans have it on trust!" First, although nature is seen as created by God for the benefit of humans, it is clear that it is not to be used by humans for selfish purposes. Second, nature in itself is innocent and is a manifestation of God. Thus, nature is both a source of grace to humans and, together with the Qur'an, a revelation of God's truth. Third, nature, as well as being innocent, is also fragile. Its balance can be easily upset, especially by human wickedness. Natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, fires, and earthquakes are interpreted by some Muslims as warnings from God that people are embarked upon a fundamentally wrong course of action, and the disasters that the greenhouse effect threatens could be similarly understood. When seen as a kind of "wake-up call" from God, the greenhouse effect poses a challenging dilemma to Muslims around the world, but particularly to those Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia whose economy has come to depend upon heavy use of oil.2 For such countries, and for the world at large, Islam's view of humanity as the "custodian of nature" (Khalifa} poses critical questions. Humans, as custodians of nature, are free to satisfy their needs only with an eye to the welfare of all of creation. In terms of Hurka's criteria from chapter 2, Islam maintains that we have duties to all humans, present and future, and to all animals, plants, organic, and inorganic aspects of nature —for nature is an innocent manifestation of God over which we as humans are given the responsibility of obedient custodians (as defined and revealed in the Qur'an). Humans are seen as having God-given rights to use nature in satisfying their proper needs, but humans do not have the right to use nature in a way that would upset the divine balance present in creation. Global warming would be judged by Islam to be a sign of just such abuse, and a warning that God, through nature, may be about to strike back. Thus, humans had better quickly change their disobedient ways. Obedience to the will of God, in the view of Islam, requires avoidance rather than adaptation. 3. Christianity Christianity views both humans and nature as created by God, with nature's purpose being, at least partly, to provide for the needs of people (Ps. 105). In this, Christianity is like Judaism and Islam. Again, as in Islam and Judaism, nature by its very existence praises God and manifests his awesome powers (e.g., Ps. 148). Unlike the Islamic view of nature as innocent in itself, Christian thought sees nature as having participated in

Religious Responsibility 45 the Fall along with humans (Bonhoeffer 1955, 144). Christian commentators such as Augustine have interpreted the Fall from a state of human innocence recounted in Genesis 3 as an act of wilful disobedience. Instead of our living according to God's will, the human desire to please itself makes "itself the principle of its own existence, and following its own will makes itself the evil tree that bears evil fruit in its deeds" (Babcock 1992, 136). Christian interpretation sees the Fall as a double act: a denial of humanity's original harmony with God and an assertion of human wilfulness. Calvin calls this "pride" and "ingratitude" —"Adam, by longing for more than was allocated to him, manifested contempt for the great liberality with which God had enriched him" (1962, 2:213). A peculiarity of the Christian view is that this human fall also drags down all of nature into a corrupt state. As Calvin puts it, "Through man's fault a curse has extended above and below, over all the regions of the world" (2:214). Paul speaks of humans and nature —the whole of creation — "groaning in travail together" towards the ultimate purpose for which God created it, namely, the revealing of the sons of God in which the whole creation will share (Rom. 8:19-25). Thus, there is a strong teleological thrust in the Christian understanding of nature. In the Christian view, a special contribution of Jesus Christ was his exposure of nature as having value, not in itself, but only in relation to God's purpose. After the Fall, nature is seen as awaiting the coming of Christ as the manifestation of God's grace, through which nature and humans can be properly understood in relation to God. As Bonhoeffer puts it, "Christ Himself entered in the natural life, and it is only through the incarnation of Christ that the natural life becomes the penultimate which is directed toward the ultimate" (1955, 145). Human misuse of God-given freedom brought on the Fall (for both humans and nature); God's grace in Jesus Christ restores to us the opportunity of living a righteous life in relation to nature and God (Rom. 8:1-4). Unlike Judaism, in which the revelation of the Torah provides all the help that is required, or Islam, in which the Qur'an gives the needed revelation, Christianity sees God's incarnation in Christ as essential to the re-establishment of right relationships after the Fall. For the Christian, it is the grace of Christ that enables one to see nature not from the selfish perspective of fallen humanity, but from the perspective of God. Only when this perspective is attained do humans function in the correct relationships between humanity-nature-God that bring forth the abundance of nature described in Genesis (1:26-31). It is in this context that the "human dominion over nature" mentioned in Genesis 1:28 is correctly understood from a Christian perspective. In a widely quoted article, the historian Lynn White (1976, 1205) has pointed to the biblical notion of humans as having "dominion over the earth" as a major factor in making possible the Industrial Revolution and its attendant devastation of the environment. Christian theologians (e.g.,

46 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect Shinn 1972, 139ff.) have responded by pointing out that White's thesis oversimplifies an extremely complex historical development. Nonetheless, no one denies that there is some truth to White's analysis. Quoting Genesis 1:28, in which humans are told to "fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing," White suggests that such Christian ideas led directly to a human-centred and domineering attitude towards nature. Christianity established a dualism between humankind and nature and also insisted, says White, that God wills humans to exploit nature for their proper ends (p. 1205). Consequently, concludes White, Christianity, as well as making possible the Industrial Revolution, also bears a burden of guilt for human alienation from nature and the environmental degradation, such as the greenhouse effect, that has resulted. White's solution is for us to follow Saint Francis in trying "to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man's limitless rule of creation" (p. 1207). Presumably White means us to include the plants and atmosphere in "the equality of all creatures." But is White's interpretation of Genesis a fair presentation of the Christian position? To answer this, one must do more than simply go back to the text of Genesis 1:28. One must also look at how Christian thinkers have interpreted it. Augustine, for example, held that the opposition between humans and nature obtains only in the fallen state. When restored to their true spiritual state by the grace of God in Christ, humans are co-workers with God in their pure intellectual knowledge and love for the whole of creation. Spiritual humans remain superior to nature, just as God is, but act towards it as God does —in true knowledge and love (Teske 1992, 72). Presumably, then, a Christian in a state of grace would not exercise "dominion over nature" in any way destructive of nature, as for example in producing the greenhouse effect. Although this may seem a satisfying theological solution to some, it still leaves Christianity with the dubious distinction of being the only world religion that views nature in itself as being in a fallen state. In Romans 8:21 Paul "solves" the problem by declaring that "creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." This will occur, says Paul, when God's love is revealed in us through the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:12 ff.); it is by surrender to the grace of God in Christ Jesus that humans can transcend their fallen state and act towards nature in a non-exploitative fashion. Only through such a "spiritual domination" of nature can it be saved from its unmerited corruption and the whole of creation be returned to God's original purpose (Rom. 8:18-28). Williams points out that for the prophets, nature transcended the limits of human understanding but was not simply fate or chaos:

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The prophets' most radical idea was that nature as the society of created things was itself subject to God's redemptive action. God would remake and reorder it to fulfill his divine purpose (1972,50).

Against all cyclical or fatalistic views, the prophets saw nature as manifesting God's judgement and purpose. If necessary, God could allow the present disobedient order to pass away and could begin the experiment of creation over again —as in Eziekiel's valley of dry bones or Noah's flood. In the New Testament the possibility of the earth being consumed by flames is envisaged (2 Peter 3:10). The prophets politicize the relationship of humans with nature, maintaining that "nature and man are bound together in a fateful history where the responsibility of man for his life and for his world meets the demands of a new order in which basic justice is required" (Williams 1972, 57). In line with the prophets, the New Testament teaches that one must love one's neighbour in need (e.g., act as did the Good Samaritan). Christians today realize that their neighbour's welfare is strongly affected by the way they treat the environment, including the atmosphere. In the prophetic portion of the Bible, the emphasis of Genesis on harmonious life as God's purpose for the created order is extended into the future, couched in terms of obligations to future generations. As Barbour puts it, "There is a solidarity in time, a covenant 'from generation to generation.' The idea of creation is a great unifying framework, encompassing all forms of life and all time from past to future" (1980, 311, 312). The prophets were quick to criticize human greed and sinfulness in its many forms, but they also held up a hope for the future, a harmony that would include all humankind and all nature. In the New Testament the idea of "the Kingdom of God" is seen as referring both to another world and to this world in its hoped-for state of harmony among persons and between humans and nature. For the Christian it is this goal of history that leads us to see the world differently and to behave in new ways (Barbour 1980, 313). In terms of the duties listed by Hurka in chapter 2, the Christian approach, as outlined above, entails duties to humans anywhere now and in the future. Although nature is created by God for human use, it is also seen by Christian theologians as having intrinsic value as a part of God's good and beautiful creation. Humans through their own wilful disobedience have corrupted not only themselves but nature too. Only by opening themselves to the grace of God in Christ can humans regain their original state of being spiritual beings with God and use their dominion over nature in ways that will re-establish it in the glory God intended for it. Humans are seen as having a duty to use nature in ways that respect that intrinsic value—by approaching their God-given domination of nature with love and humility. More than that, there is "the recurrent vision of a new earth, a Kingdom of justice and brotherhood as well as harmony with nature, which serves as a standard of judgement upon the present order"

48 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect (Barbour 1972,6-7). The particular duties enjoined by this Christian view of environmental responsibility may not differ from those demanded by other religions or by non-religious thinkers; what is different is the motivation behind the behaviour. A Christian is motivated by humility in response to his or her perception of God's love known in the life of Jesus Christ. In addition there is one's sense of gratitude for God's gift of life to us. The Christian response to global climate change, then, seems to lean strongly towards avoidance. 4. The Eastern Religions It is often suggested that Eastern religion, philosophy, and culture offer a less hostile and more relational or holistic conception of the relationship between humans and nature. It is true that the Eastern traditions propose an intimate interconnectedness between humans and nature. They challenge the dominant Western view of a strong qualitative difference between humans on the one hand and animals and plants on the other. The basic Eastern position, to which all Hindus, Buddhists, and Jainas ascribe, is that just as humans are beings composed of a combination of spiritual and non-spiritual elements, so also are animals. The Jainas push this position to its logical conclusion and see even plants, rocks, air, and water as endowed with a spiritual dimension. In their view, every animal, plant or element of matter is a being in a different combination of the components that make up each of us. Thus, there is no radical break between humans and the non-human realms of nature. Consequently, we should treat animals, plants, and so on with the same dignity and respect we accord other humans. Clearly, this approach has significant ethical implications: exploitation of one part of nature (plants, animals, trees) by another part of nature (humans) is unacceptable. If it is unacceptable to exploit your child, spouse, or neighbour because of their stature as "beings," then it is also unacceptable to exploit another being, who happens at that moment to be an animal (thus the Eastern practice of vegetarianism — to kill and eat an animal is to engage in cannibalism). Although this way of thinking seems strange to our Western minds, it is supported by a well-worked-out theory that follows with forceful logic once its basic assumptions are granted. These assumptions involve the notions of rebirth and the law of karma. The latter maintains that every time you perform an action or think a thought, a memory trace is laid down in the unconscious. A good action or thought leaves behind its trace, as does an evil action or thought.3 When you find yourself in a similar situation in the future, the memory trace rises up in consciousness as an impulse to perform an action or think a thought similar to the earlier one. Note that this is merely an impulse (a disposition or desire) and in itself does not force us to repeat the good or evil action or thought. We still have free choice. We may decide to go with the impulse and repeat

Religious Responsibility 49 the action (in which case a new reinforced memory trace will be laid down in the unconscious) or to negate the impulse (in which case, using the analogy of the seed, the sprouting impulse will receive neither warmth nor nourishment and will wither away, leaving no further trace in the unconscious). Thus, by the exercise of free choice at each moment in life we either nurture or uproot the memory traces in our unconscious. In theory, then, every impulse I experience in this life should be traceable back to actions or thoughts since birth. But karma theory does not assume a tabula rasa, or blank mind, at birth. Our unconscious contains memory traces not only of all actions and thoughts since birth, but also of those from the life before the current one, and the life before that, and so on, backward infinitely (as karma theory rejects any absolute beginning and assumes that life has always been going on.) Consequently, each of us is thought to have a huge store of memory traces in our unconscious, which is constantly bursting with ideas, impulses or desires to engage in this or that good or bad action or thought. These impulses can, however, be controlled by the exercise of our own free choice, and if a particular action or thought is repeated often enough it becomes a habit. The result of this theory is the ladder of existence depicted in fig. 3.1. You are a human being and hence have free choice. If you use your free choice to act on the good karmic impulses that arise within consciousness, and negate the evil impulses, then at the end of this life you will have increased the number of good karmas (memory traces) in your unconscious and reduced the number of evil karmas. This will automatically cause you to be reborn higher up the scale. If in your next and future lives you continue to act on the good and negate the evil, you will spiral up the ladder of existence until you are eventually reborn as a god. Gods are beings just like us who, according to mythology, have the honour of superintending one of the cosmic functions (for example, the sun god). But this is merely an honour that involves no free choice. Once the merit from all the good free choices made as a human is used up, you are reborn as a human being with free choice. Now let us follow out the other possibility, that in this life you use your free choice to reinforce the evil impulses and negate the good. At death you will have increased the number of evil impulses in your unconscious and reduced the number of good impulses. This will automatically cause you to be born a step lower on the ladder of existence. If the same pattern is repeated again in future lives, you will spiral downward until eventually you are reborn as an animal. Animals are beings like you and me but with a heavier composition of evil karmas. They have no free choice but simply endure the sufferings to which their animal instincts expose them. Through these sufferings the karmas built up from years of evil choices (made freely as a human being) are expiated. One is then reborn as a human with free choice and the ability to move up or down

50 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect

the ladder through karma and rebirth. In the Jaina view, plants and atoms of matter are treated as parallel to animals.

Fig. 3.1. The karmic ladder of existence.

This is indeed a "long view" on life. After countless lifetimes it might well lead one to voice the sentiment, "Stop the world, I want to get off!" or, in Eastern terms, "Is there not some way out of this beginningless and seemingly endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth?" The Hindu religion gives one answer, or path out, the Buddhist religion another, and the Jainas a third—all quite different.4 Before looking at the Hindu and Buddhist paths of release for their views of our human responsibility towards nature, let us first make some observations regarding environmental ethics based on the karma-rebirth theory. First, there is no radical separation between humans and other forms of beings (animals, plants, atoms of matter.) Instead, a radical equality is presupposed. Second, according to karma theory, I have created the karmic impulses (good or evil) that I am now experiencing, as well as my current position on the ladder of existence, by my own freely chosen acts in previous lives. And the free choices I am making in this life will affect where I end up in my next life. I alone, therefore, am responsible for the condition in which I now find myself and for the condition I create for the future. In this regard, karmic responsibility is seen as both individual and cosmic. The way I make my choices affects not only my future lives but also the future of all other beings—which in the karma-rebirth perspective includes all of nature. 5. Hinduism

In line with the theory of karma and rebirth, Hinduism sees all of nature as interconnected and capable of progressive transformation from matter to life to consciousness and finally to divine spirit: Each stage is cyclically interlocked with the other stages. The dead stone is linked to life in the vegetable kingdom, plants are linked to consciousness in

Religious Responsibility 51 the animal kingdom, animals are linked to the intelligence of homo sapiens, and man is connected to the Life Force within the cosmos (Crawford 1989,30).

As to the character of this "Life Force," Hindu scripture is quite explicit: The essential self or the vital essence in man is the same as that in the elephant, the same as that in these three worlds, indeed the same as that in the whole universe (Brihadaranyaka Upanisad 1.3.22, as cited by Crawford 1989, 33).

Crawford interprets the above Upanisadic verse as follows: The general idea behind this text is that the individual [self] atman is one with the universal Brahman. Brahman literally means "the growing or increasing force" (brih). This Brahman force is manifest in the divinities of heaven, and in human, animal and plant life on earth. All of these entities live an apparently independent existence, but they all emanate from Brahman and are finally reabsorbed into it. (33)

This emanation of the cosmos from the Divine is given detailed description in the Bhagavad Gita, where God's body is revealed as the whole universe. Many Hindus (especially those of the Vaisnavite sect) see trees, cows, and other material beings as manifestations of God in nature and therefore as fit symbols upon which to focus in worship. Nature, as God's body, is also seen by some as a guru or guide to God and therefore a fit subject for prayerful or scientific study (Klostermaier 1989, 319-21). In Hindu law books such as the Laws of Mann (1984) one's dharma, or duties, are specified as an integral part of the cosmic order of the universe (God's body). For example, the pollution of lakes and rivers is prohibited and severe punishments for offenders are detailed (4:56). Human intervention into nature is seen as lawful only when it does not disrupt the cosmic order (rta) as specified in the rights and duties of the Laws of Manu. The overall aim of the Hindu law codes was to safeguard "the mutual co-existence of all partners in the universe: it could not be the eternal law upon which man's own nature is founded if it led to a deterioration of the living conditions by being followed" (Klostermaier 1984, 354). Nature, as God's body, was carefully protected from human exploitation. Through its scriptures and law codes, Hinduism views the cosmos "as a series of interrelated systems that are in a state of dynamic equilibrium within which man must play his part as a responsible spectator and participant" (Crawford 1989, 30). This ideal of restraint leading to renunciation has functioned in India for centuries. As a result, Indian culture has a deeply rooted "conservationist ethic." Hindu ethics does not reject technology or material possessions, but sees them as having a restrained but proper place in the cosmic order of God's body. One could perhaps look to Mahatma Gandhi as an embodiment of the Hindu ideal of restraint. He attempted to guide India between the extremes of no growth at all and growth for material values only, and along a course of selective growth guided by spiritual goals. His Hindu Vaisnavia background—with strong Jaina influence — led him to

52 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect advocate social models that balanced economic and environmental needs. In terms of the range of duties listed in chapter 2, it is clear that Hinduism views us as having duties not only to humans, of whatever time and place, but also to animals, plants, and elements of the environment, all of which are taken to be God's body and therefore to have intrinsic value. Since the atmosphere is also seen as a valuable part of God's body, pollution of it in ways that lead to global climate change is not acceptable to Hindu ethics. Avoidance rather than adaptation is clearly the counsel of Hindu teachings. This counsel presents a serious challenge to India's modern cities, such as Bombay, where carbon dioxide pollution runs rampant. In spite of its fine ecological teachings, India, like the West, has ignored these teachings in its rush to modernization; it has not followed Gandhi's ideal of restraint. 6. Buddhism Like Hinduism, Buddhism adopts the karma-rebirth theory of nature and thus sees a continuity between human and animal life. Unlike the Jainas, Buddhists do not see plants and the inorganic elements of nature as composed of beings. However, some Buddhist schools, such as Hua-yen, do see all of the cosmos as one interrelated web of existence within which there is no hierarchy. In the Hua-yen universe, "There is no center, or, perhaps, if there is one, it is everywhere. Man certainly is not the center, nor is some god" (Cook 1989, 216). This quotation identifies another distinctive feature of the Buddhist view of nature —it has no God. From the Buddhist perspective, the universe has been going on without beginning, according to its own inner laws, and without the need of a creating, sustaining, or supervising God. The Buddhist universe is one of identity and interconnectedness: what affects one part of the cosmos affects all of its parts. Therefore the acts of humans, as part of the whole, are seen as intimately affecting the environment around them, of which they are a small but crucially interconnected part. Unlike the modern Western perspective, according to which people and, for some, God stand separate from and above nature, the Buddhist perspective recognizes only one level, nature, or the cosmos, of which humanity along with everything else is simply a part. Rather than thinking of the cosmos in terms of separate entities, Buddhism conceives of reality in terms of the relationships between entities. And rather than thinking of reality as distinct parcels of matter, Buddhists view it as the dynamic interrelationships that structure the whole. The Buddha "taught that to exist in any sense at all means to exist in dependence on the other, which is infinite in number. Nothing exists truly in and of itself, but requires everything to be what it is" (Cook 1989, 220). In this regard, Buddhist thought is often said to be close to that of

Religious Responsibility

53

modern physics and notions such as Einstein's theory of relativity, in which relationship is fundamental (p. 219). Things in nature, including humans, are said to be empty (tsunya) of any essence or self-existence (svabhava.} Their existence arises from their relations of interdependence with the rest of the cosmos. The ethical implication of this viewpoint is that every single thing in the universe is important and thus deserving of respect. All human interaction with nature occurs within this context. Humans, then, are seen to exist not separate from nature, but only within their interrelationship with the whole of nature. All of this should not be taken as suggestive of determinism. Indeed, Buddhism emphasizes human free choice and our responsibility to use that freedom wisely and with compassion. It is free will that enables humans to use nature in a non-destructive way: "It is not necessary for humanity to undergo passively the hazards of Nature or aggressively dominate Nature, but rather to meaningfully harness it" (de Silva 1991, 176). Humans must live in harmony with animals, plant life, and the environment. The Buddhist teaching of the contemplation of nature (as in a Zen garden) reminds one of the Hindu notion of nature as guru and leads towards a conservation ecology. One learns that nature does not exist for humanity nor humanity for nature. Rather, nature includes humanity: the harming of another human being or the causing of any kind of degradation against nature in all its forms is tantamount to harming oneself as well as nature. In this sense ecological degradation may be conceived of as a crime against humanity. The Buddha taught that "all experienced phenomena, including human life, have dependently arisen (pratityasamutpanna)" (Kalupahana 1989, 251). The basic idea here is that everything is constantly becoming. The next moment of our existence is dependent on the previous moment, which must disintegrate to allow the next moment to arise. In this formulation the Buddha is simultaneously pointing out that everything is in constant change and that the metaphysical notion of an unchanging human self or soul existing separate from nature is an illusion. Recognition of our conditioned existence enables us to excise what to the Buddha was the single biggest obstacle to living in harmony with nature, namely, ego-selfishness — insatiable greed. Our desire for more of everything arises, said the Buddha, from the mistaken belief that each of us is a separate soul, self, or ego that has some kind of permanence. It is this illusion of a continuing self, soul, or ego that provides a foothold for the "I" that constantly desires more. Once we come to see ourselves as merely a tiny part of the dependent, arising process of the universe, there is simply no place left for the existence of a soul or ego, and therefore no basis for the arising of desire. Without desire driving us to possess ever more for our illusory selves, we are free to choose to act in harmony and compassion with the changing processes of nature of which we are a part.

54 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect By getting rid of selfish desire, the Buddha believed, we would be able to stop inflicting pain on animals and other humans. We would also protect the forests, the soil, and the water. Were the Buddha alive today, he would certainly add the atmosphere to his list. The Buddha operationalized this valuing of all forms of nature by laying down a set of rules (the Vinaya-pitaka) to be followed by all his monks and nuns. A less rigorous list was developed for laypeople. Both lists emphasize the overcoming of desire, the taking of a middle road between pleasure and asceticism, and the practice of compassion towards all of the cosmos. However, Buddhism does distinguish between the degree of compassion due humans and animals (the relevant rule being complete non-violence) and that due plants and the physical environment. The latter were not thought to have equivalent value: While the Buddha attached great importance to the planting of trees, the construction of parks, reforestation, preservation of water, etc., he does not espouse a "biotic egalitarianism," in which plants and animals are considered ethically on an equal footing with humans (de Silva 1991,181-82).

But the Buddha certainly did not condone an aggressive attitude towards the environment. Plants give us food and add an aesthetic dimension to life that can bring us closer to a realization of the whole. After all, it was when seated between the roots of a tree that the Buddha reached enlightenment. Buddhism is of particular interest in our study of the ways that the various religions regard our human responsibility to nature. Rejecting all concepts of God and any notion of scriptural revelation, Buddhism proceeds by empirical perception and rational analysis to establish duties that, in Hurka's terms (see chap. 2), extend to include humans and animals of whatever time and place. Plants and the rest of the environment are respected as a critical part of the cosmos, but valued somewhat less than humans and animals. All, however, are seen as interdependent parts of the cosmos and thus as essential to the harmony of the whole. As regards global climate change, the counsel of the Buddha would lean strongly to the avoidance side of the scale. 7. Taoism Indian thought provided the cradle for Hinduism and Buddhism. As evidenced above, Indian thought (although quite different in its basic presuppositions, such as karma and rebirth) shares with the West an approach to nature that often emphasizes laws or principles by which nature is to be ordered and understood. When we shift from the West and India to China, we encounter a radically different approach to nature. The Chinese give primacy to the concrete particular in its aesthetic context rather than to an a priori metaphysical theory. For example, whereas in Plato one proceeds by moving from the concrete particular to the ab-

Religious Responsibility 55 stract universal (i.e., the "real" forms or ideas), in Chinese Taoism there is no preassigned pattern. Rather, "the organization and order of existence emerges out of the spontaneous rearrangement of the participants" (Ames 1989,117). The Chinese adopted a "this-worldly" focus on the details of daily life as a basis for understanding nature and the cosmos. They emphasized the uniqueness of a particular person or event and at the same time stressed the interrelatedness of that particular to its cosmic context. This Chinese sensibility, suggests Ames, leads to an approach to nature characterized by "polarity" rather than the "dualism" of the West, in which humanity and nature or nature and God are seen as radically separate concepts. Polarity, by contrast, views such concepts as interrelated in such a way that each requires the other for understanding. For example, in the Taoist concepts yin and yang, "yin does not transcend yang, nor vice versa; rather, yw entails yang and yang entails yin" (Ames 1989, 119). Darkness does not transcend light, nor vice versa; rather, each entails the other. In conceptual polarity each pole can be understood only in relation to the other. In dualist thinking, by contrast, the two concepts involved are seen in opposition (e.g., male versus female), thus leading to discrete, essentialistic interpretations of the world. Thus, from the dualist perspective it is relatively easy for humans to approach nature as a separate category of existence composed of things to be used as required. The polar character of Chinese thinking and experience resists such a reification of nature and conditions one into an intimate relational perception. All of this is well represented in Taoism: nothing can be understood in isolation from its context. In fact, nothing exists by itself; all things exist only in interdependence and interpenetration. This viewpoint is captured in the Taoist concepts of te and tao. Te denotes the particular in its environment. It is both an individuating and an integrating concept. One writer offers the analogy of the stewpot: "Just as any one ingredient [te] in the stewpot must be blended with all of the others in order to express most fully its own flavor, so harmonization with other environing particulars is a necessary precondition for the fullest self-discourse of any given particular" (Ames 1989, 126). For one to fully express or individuate oneself, it is necessary to harmonize and integrate oneself with other humans, nature, and the whole cosmos. With such integration, one's particular humanness (te) will be realized. Contrary to what we might expect, Taoism does not see integration with the whole as in conflict with individual freedom and creativity. Te as one's particular nature is understood by Taoism to have an inherent drive to self-expression and self-individuation. But such dynamic manifestation of the te, when integrated into the complexity of the larger whole, is called the tao. The distinction between te and tao, therefore, is one of degree rather than kind. The te, when fully individuated and integrated, is but a particular aspect of the tao: "When te is cultivated and accumulated such

56 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect that the particular is fully expressive of the whole, the distinction between tao and te collapses" (Ames 1989, 128). The result is harmony, regularity, and rhythm, and the action involved is described by Taoists as wu-wei (translated as "non-action," meaning no self-willed action independent of the tao). It is also called tzu-jan (spontaneity or uncontrived action). Like Hindu and Buddhist texts, Taoist texts "see the dissolution of discriminating ego-self as a precondition for integrative natural action and the concomitant extension of te" (Ames 1989, 129). Taoists aim for the overcoming of one's ego and the swelling of te to embrace other humans and one's natural environment. The person of te facilitates and interprets the meaning or expression already inherent within nature. Tao refers to the ethos or natural environment within which the particular te exists. However, tao must not be thought of as the passive whole; it is fundamentally active, as is the te. Ames points out that the tao has often been misunderstood in the West as the pre-assigned laws of nature or as an unconditioned absolute existing beyond the empirical world. Instead, it should be understood "as the regularity and cadence achieved by nature ... the character or disposition of an integrated natural environment that conduces most fully to the expression of the integrity of its constituent particulars" (Ames 1989, 134-35). The particular and its environment are inseparable polarities. Rather than characterizing the tao in terms of scientific law or a priori rational order, we should think of it as the aesthetic order of nature — similar to the way we might judge a sculpture or painting in terms of the "rightness" of its creative expression (p. 135). The application of this Taoist vision of the cosmos to the issue of human responsibility to nature seems straightforward. Humans must learn to see themselves as not separate from nature, nor should they see nature as a means of achieving their own ends. Actualization of our human potential and the cultivation of nature's potential are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, in thinking of our duties in response to the greenhouse effect, we can never abstract ourselves from the whole environment within which we live and move and have our being. Rather than starting from an abstract universal ethic, we are to begin from our own particular experience, applying ourselves "to the aesthetic task of cultivating an environmental ethos in our own place and time, and recommending this project to others by our participation in their environments" (Ames 1989, 142). From the Taoist perspective, such activity is at once a fulfillment of our personal responsibility and an aesthetic enjoyment. How does all of this fit into Hurka's schema of chapter 2? It takes one immediately to the broadest range of inclusiveness — humans everywhere and at all times, animals, plants, the atmosphere, and everything in nature. The Taoist vision resists any categorization that does not simultaneously involve all of the cosmos. From this perspective, one cannot

Religious Responsibility 57 think about duties to other humans or to animals or the atmosphere without placing those considerations in the living context of which they are a part—namely, the whole dynamic cosmos, the tao. As for the question of avoidance or adaptation, Taoism would eschew this polar categorization of action and instead counsel wu-wei, or non-ego-centred behaviour, in harmony with the tao. 8. Aboriginal Religion The North American aboriginal perspective is in many ways very close to the Taoist viewpoint. In contrast to the theoretical yin-yang formulation, however, the aboriginal tradition views the cosmos as a community of "peoples." Humans, animals, plants, rocks, trees, and wind are seen as different species of peoples: Our animate-inanimate dichotomy, or our categories of animal, vegetable, and mineral, for example, have no meaning for the Indian who sees that all that exists is animate, each form in its own special way, so that even rocks have a life of their own and are believed even to be able to talk under certain conditions (Brown, 1973,193).

Put another way, all of the entities that make up nature share in the same consciousness that humans enjoy and thus are seen as different species of peoples. The consciousness that is possessed by all aspects of nature is described by aboriginals in terms of manifesting divine spirit; all things are suffused, unified, and transcended by the unseen presence of the Great Spirit. The Sioux Indian John Fire Lame Deer gives this notion metaphysical expression: You can't explain it except by going back to the "circles within circles" idea, the spirit splitting itself up into stones, trees, tiny insects even, making them all wakan by his ever-presence. And in turn all these myriad of things which make up the universe flowing back to their source, united in one Grandfather Spirit (as quoted by Callicott 1989,186).

There is of course no one aboriginal religion or culture, but the many North American aboriginal traditions share a belief in the environment as composed of different peoples manifesting the one divine spirit (as expressed by Lame Deer). This idea leads directly to a genuine respect for the welfare of all forms of nature within the environment. Central to the notion of "person," for aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike, is the idea that persons must be treated with respect and not be intentionally harmed. By seeing all aspects of the environment as different species of persons, the aboriginal traditions manifest a strong and inclusive environmental ethic. Humans together with all the component parts of nature (including the atmosphere) are seen as members of an intimately related family: "Not only does everything have spirit, in the last analysis all things are related together as members of one universal family, born of one father, the sky, the Great Spirit, and one mother, the Earth

58 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect herself (Callicott 1989, 186). Although the words are those of Lakota sage Black Elk, the concept of the Great Spirit, as symbolized by the sky, and the Earth Mother producing the family of creatures composing nature is so common as to be very nearly universal in North American Indian thinking. The ethic it generates enjoins one to treat all of nature as one would treat the members of one's own family and to recognize that there is a spiritual aspect to all natural things. Human beings are part of a larger social and physical environment, belonging to both the human community and the community of all nature (Callicott 1989, 189). The ethical responsibilities and mutual obligations due to the members of one's own family or tribe are extended to include one's "natural relatives" that make up the environment. This cosmic kinship group enables the aboriginal, even when alone in nature, to feel as comfortable and secure as one would feel in the midst of a large family: "Even without human companionship one was never alone. The world teemed with life and wisdom, there was no complete solitude" (Luther Standing Bear, as quoted by Brown 1973, 194). This aboriginal perspective does not necessitate a romantic relationship with nature. Nor did the fact that animals are another species of persons lead the aboriginals to vegetarianism, as the theory of karma-rebirth did the Hindus and Buddhists, or, when plants were considered, to the extreme of self-starvation, as it did the Jainas. Instead, the aboriginal ethic required that one approach the animal or plant needed for survival with sincere respect and kinship feeling. This ethic allows for the eating of animals and plants in order to satisfy one's daily needs but proscribes the abuse of these other species of persons for personal overindulgence or selfish materialistic gain. This same ethic extends itself to our current focus upon the atmosphere. The air is, from the aboriginal perspective, a member of our cosmic kinship group. It makes possible our survival as humans and is necessary for the well-being of other members of our cosmic family —the animals, plants, and the oceans. Pollution of the air, caused by the consuming of more than is essential for life, is unacceptable in light of our responsibilities both to other humans and to the animals, plants, and oceans that will be adversely affected both now and in the future. In summary, like Taoist thought, the aboriginal traditions would insist on extending Hurka's categorization of ethical responsibilities to humans here and everywhere, and to all aspects of nature both now and for the future. Adaptation to changes induced by global climate change would be acceptable to the extent that warming was the result of ethical human behaviour necessary for survival; but to the extent that it was the result of human behaviour motivated by the selfish desire for more food and material possessions than are necessary for survival, aboriginal religion would require avoidance. The aboriginal approach is consistent with Aldo Leopold's ecological concept of a biotic community: "All ethics so

Religious Responsibility 59 far evolved rest upon the single premise that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts" (Callicott 1989, 215). To this the aboriginal would add that all of these interdependent parts are but manifestations of the one Great Spirit. 9. Conclusion All the religions reviewed see nature as having varying degrees of intrinsic value, with the Eastern and aboriginal religions taking a stronger stance on this issue. The Western religions are more anthropocentric, yet none of them give humans unchecked dominion over nature in satisfying their desires. Their various visions of a transcendent creator God place upon humans the responsibility of being co-stewards of the environment God has provided for their use. Recent commentators (Callicot and Ames 1989, 281) have suggested that the above differences among religions do not seem to make much difference when we examine how humans have in fact interacted with nature. In both the East and the West the environment has been ruthlessly exploited. In the view of such commentators it is our innate aggressiveness as Homo sapiens, inherited from prehuman savanna primates, that is at the root of the problem. This might lead one to the pessimistic conclusion that what religions teach about the environment or what Hurka's ethical principles counsel does not after all matter, for we as humans are simply driven by our biological inheritance. Neither the religions reviewed nor Hurka's ethics would accept such a deterministic position. There is simply too much evidence that humans can and do change their behaviour —sometimes in radical fashion. It is in this context that the question to be asked of the religions is not, What have their followers done in the past in relation to the environment? but, What do they teach today? Two questions must be considered: (1) Do the religious ideas of a tradition encourage environmental exploitation and destruction? (2) Do the religious ideas of a tradition offer correctives to exploitation and destruction? When these questions are asked, we can then begin to draw distinctions between religions. Although all the religions reviewed here teach that nature is to be respected and not abused for human self-satisfaction, it is true that the Eastern and aboriginal traditions are more congenial to ecology and a conservationist ethic. The unity of humans and nature found in their thought is quite different from the duality of the two fostered in much Western religious thought. The active domination of nature may not have been the intent of Jewish and Christian teachings, but one can nonetheless see how Genesis is open to such interpretations in ways that the Eastern views are not. White's (1967) contribution is useful in helping us to see how biblical views about the human domination of

60 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect nature, when decontextualized, encourage us to exploit. Eastern and aboriginal ideas are a clear corrective in this regard. T.S. Eliot (1952, 286) in his poem "The Hollow Men" says: Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow

If, as Callicott and Ames (1989) suggest, "the shadow" obstructing the actualization of our responsibilities to the environment is our innate human aggressiveness, then the worldviews of the religions reviewed in this chapter can only help. Each offers an assessment of our human condition in relation to the cosmos that to varying degrees would temper our aggressiveness towards nature. Although there are failures within all cultures and religions, there is also evidence that what we think can affect the way we act. The shadow can be flooded with light. All of the religions reviewed show, to varying degrees, an enlightened understanding of our human duties to the environment. To meet our current crisis, the ecological resources of these religions can usefully be engaged by both individual believers and religious cultures or nations. In some religions (e.g., Buddhism) ways can be found of joining religious insights with those of science and secular scholarship in the struggle to safeguard both human life and the environment. Perhaps together we can avoid the kind of shadow Eliot (p. 287) saw at the end of his poem: This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper

and instead actualize his other vision: For Thine is Life is

Notes 1 Buber was aware of the parallel notions present in Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist thought; see Wood (1984.) 2 It is of interest that a recent government-sponsored publication of Saudi Arabia remains silent on this question; see Al-Farsy (1990.) 3 The criteria for good or evil are determined as follows: For a Hindu, good and evil actions or thoughts are defined in the revealed scripture, the Veda. In Buddhism, where there is no God or revealed scripture, good and evil are defined in terms of the intention motivating your action or thought (e.g., the intention to harm one's neighbour/dog/field produces an evil karma or memory trace). For a philosophical study of karma, see Reichenbach (1990). 4 For a review of Hindu and Buddhist thought, see my Sacred Word, Sacred Text: Scripture in World Religions (1988) and Pluralism: Challenge to World Religions (1985).

Chapter 4 THE ARCTIC-A CANADIAN CASE STUDY Harvey A. Buckmaster This chapter provides an example of the implications global climate change holds for a significant and unique region of planet Earth, as well as an ethical analysis and assessment of these implications and the consequent decisions that must be made in the near future. It is particularly appropriate that the Arctic be chosen as illustration in a Canadian study, since the Arctic and subarctic regions constitute a signficant portion of our country. Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, C.I.S., and U.S. (Alaska) are northern countries because they have land masses and territorial waters that border on the Arctic Ocean or are north of the Arctic Circle (66.5N. lat.), as fig. 4.1 shows. I will summarize those features of the Arctic and subarctic regions that are relevant to a discussion of the impact of warming as predicted by the Canadian Climate Centre high-spatial-resolution, third-generation general circulation model, and were not discussed by Hare (see "The Challenge" in this volume). This discussion will focus on the complex interrelationship between the native population, the wildlife on which they subsist, the lower orders of flora and fauna, and the land- and sea-scape changes, as well as more global implications. Finally, I will attempt an ethical analysis that examines the implications of these projected changes and the rights of the indigenous peoples and other northern residents as well as those of the flora and fauna of the Arctic and subarctic regions. The special responsibility that Canada has, as one of the eight northern countries and as one of the developed countries contributing to global climate change, to provide global leadership in assessing the feasibility of various ameliorative scenarios will also be considered. 1. Climate Change in the Arctic — Environmental Factors The following is a summary of the environmental factors that are important in understanding the implications of global climate change for the Arctic. Comprehensive discussions can be found in Roots (1989), McCulloch (1990a), Houghton, Jenkins, and Ephraums (1990), and Hengeveld (1991). Planet Earth is a complex thermodynamic system that is forced to maintain both short- and long-term equilibrium whilst responding to the various characteristics of its relationship with the sun, its primary source of heat energy. I do not address factors that determine

62 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect

Fig. 4.1. Circumpolar projection map of the Arctic and subarctic. (Source: U. S. Central Intelligence Agency 1991.)

The Arctic 63 the cycle of ice ages because my primary concern is the climate of the oast ten thousand years (the Holocene epoch). 1.1 Heat Flux Patterns The tilt of the Earth's rotational axis with respect to its orbital plane means that the solar energy flux at its surface is much less at polar latitudes than at the tropics, and that no direct flux is received during a fraction of each year. Simultaneously, the heat flux from the region to space is radiated radially, as it is from every other part of the planet. Consequently, it is surprising that the annual Arctic radiation budget at the surface is in near balance, as Barry and Hare (1975) have shown, although a strong year-round cooling of the atmosphere by long-wave radiation occurs from the outer surfaces of clouds. This net loss must be compensated for by the transport of heat from lower latitudes via ocean currents and atmospheric circulation. These factors make the polar regions very dependent on heat transport from low latitudes and on the heat-trapping effect of clouds and greenhouse gases. 1.2 Snow and Ice Ten per cent of the Earth's surface has an average surface temperature below 0° C. In such regions, water on the surface of the land and ocean and in the air is in the solid state, as snow and ice. This increases the regional albedo, or energy reflectivity, and reduces the already decreased radiant energy that is absorbed by the land and ocean. It also means that most of the solar energy absorbed or radiated is involved in melting, freezing, or sublimation, so the temperature changes in these areas are small and involve large time lags. This phenomenon has important implications for hydrological, chemical, and biological processes. Low-level clouds in the Arctic consist of ice crystals rather than water droplets, which alters their ability to transmit and reflect energy of different wavelengths, to absorb and transport chemical pollutants and particulate matter, and to catalyze chemical reactions. These processes are not well understood, but it is known that their contributions can be very selective and effective. 1.3 Geography The energy distribution systems in the north and south polar regions are different: the former consists of a small central ocean surrounded by large continental land masses, whereas the latter consists of a small central continent surrounded by large oceans. Consequently, their responses to climate perturbation are different. Currents from the North Atlantic Ocean contribute most to the total Arctic heat flux, so the Arctic climate is very sensitive to small perturbations of their pattern and strength. Heat flow via the atmosphere from mid-latitudes is much more rapid, but it is

64 Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect also more irregular and much smaller in magnitude. The fact that the Arctic Ocean is covered with ice has important consequences for the regional climate. The increased albedo decreases the absorption of solar energy, and the snow-ice insulating blanket restricts the heat loss from the ocean as well as the exchange of water vapour between the atmosphere and the ocean. The heat loss from 1 per cent open water leads in sea ice can be 50 per cent of the total loss. The extent of the sea ice cover varies from 5 to ISxlO6 square kilometres and has a mean thickness of three metres. There appears to be little correlation between the extent of the summer ice pack and severe climatic conditions. 1.4 Biology The biological systems that have evolved in or adapted to high-latitude regions are, of necessity, characterized by low energy and their ability to cope with dramatic seasonal energy flow and physical changes. Their survival is achieved by energy conservation forms of life and behaviour patterns: shape and structure, prolonged life cycles that are not yearly, and nomadic behaviour are important examples. These systems are highly specialized and are at a disadvantage when climatic change leaves them exposed to new predators, which may be less specialized and more adaptable. The resultant ecosystems are immature and/or simple, since the biological communities are controlled primarily by physical factors rather than competition, as is the norm at lower latitudes, and many ecological niches remain unoccupied. This accounts for the dramatic local swings observed in the populations of many Arctic species in response to apparently minor natural or human perturbations. Arctic marine ecological conditions are, on average, more resilient than those on land, but they are also subject to more violent and sudden variations than those at lower latitudes. Fluctuations in the extent of open water leads in the sea ice and shore water leads, ice cover, and snow cover on the ice have a drastic effect on the atmospheric heat and gas exchange and on the degree of light penetration into the ocean water. This causes the primary marine productivity also to fluctuate widely, both within the region and annually, which induces fluctuations in the distribution and population of higher organisms. Consequently, rate of change is the critical factor that makes low-energy marine and terrestrial ecosystems more vulnerable to rapid climate change. Nevertheless, these systems are extremely resilient: a few survivors can repopulate regions rapidly because of the low level of competitors and predators. Alexander (1990) provides a more technical discussion of Arctic marine ecosystems. One further factor is the existence of "northern oases," which are centres for the recruitment and dispersal of Arctic biosystems. Polynyas, which are large areas of open water surrounded by solid sea ice where sea birds, mammals, and fish congregate, are one example of these oases. The reason for their existence is not well understood, but they involve the

The Arctic 65 delicate interaction of desirable local physical conditions. They are known to be of short duration in time and to be very sensitive to climatic and human perturbations. The latter arise because some of these oases are natural centres for human settlement and resource exploitation. Historically, the indigenous people of the Arctic have become adapted and specialized like the ecosystems in which they live, but the increased presence of a southern, technological population for reasons of resource exploitation, strategic transport, and communications has added to the stress on these oases. Both these populations are today less dependent on the ecosystems for food but equally stressed by the impact of climate fluctuations. 2. Climatic Change in Canada The Arctic and subarctic regions may be defined as the tundra region of land and those waters known as the Arctic Ocean north of the boreal forest. Most of these regions are north of the Arctic Circle, experiencing twenty-four hours of daylight during the summer and the same amount of darkness during the winter. In Canada, the tundra region north of the treeline extends as far south as Hudson Bay and James Bay. Hare (see "The Challenge" in this volume) has summarized the data leading to the mean global surface temperature increase predicted by various general circulation models, including the Canadian Climate Centre model, in response to a twofold increase in the equivalent carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere due primarily to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) global estimates, which are very conservative, as Hare has emphasized, are 2.5(+2.0/-1.0)° C for a 2 x CO2 atmosphere step function increase. Hare has also noted that the predicted mean global surface temperature increase is a proxy for a very complex distribution of regional temperatures that, in general, vary from negligible or small increases at tropical (