Moral obligations

One of the difficult issues for small-time campaigners such as myself is how to deal with the moral issues involved with climate change. There are two big issues here: firstly what is moral or immoral in how we deal with climate change; secondly when and whether it is wise or productive to draw attention to the moral issues. This second issue is particularly tricky. The literature on the psychology of dealing with climate change suggests that we will not get very far by stressing to people a moral obligation to make the necessary sacrifices. Guilt is not a great motivator. Although I see enormous moral issues around climate change, the literature suggests that, to be an effective campaigner, I should keep thoughts about them to myself. However, I'm not going to.

Briefly, as suggested in my recent post about aviation, I think we have a moral obligation to seize what opportunities we reasonably can to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and so reduce the risk that global warming renders the lives of our great-grandchildren nasty, brutish and short. That raises some awkward questions, such as what is a moral obligation and how do we strike an equitable balance between our own interests and those of future generations.

I am ill-read on the subject of morality so my comments from now on will no doubt seem naive or banal to anyone who has studied moral philosophy. I don't believe in a concept of absolute right and wrong. On the other hand, if we can agree on a few axioms, then we can have a rational discussion on what is moral or immoral. A typical axiom might be that if we treat other people the way we would wish to be treated ourselves, we are acting morally. However, I prefer to fall back on the idea of "moral sentiment". Most of us have some sense of what we regard as moral or immoral and we can at least share with others what that sensibility suggests.

When I look at the way so many people carry on as though global warming was not an issue, I am tempted to condemn them as immoral. Some people attempt to rationalise their unconcern. There seem to be many non-scientists prepared to take sides in a scientific argument and claim that the mainstream science on climate change is wrong. The argument will sometimes rely on a conspiracy theory - such as that the message on global warming is merely an excuse to raise more tax. This approach ignores the risk, which must be virtually undeniable, that the mainstream science may be right. Therefore I see no scope for an intelligent, moral non-scientist to take this line, though a ignoramus, with insufficient intelligence to recognise the limits of his or her understanding, might do so and escape the charge of immorality on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Others are silent on the science but claim that there's no point in trying to do anything about it because any efforts we make will be swamped by growing emissions in China. Hence, the argument goes, we shouldn't feel obliged to make any sacrifices ourselves until the Chinese show some willingness to do so also.

Some attempt no rationalisation but quietly carry on as normal, while perhaps regarding as eccentric any serious attempts by other people to reduce their carbon footprint. Yet others appear almost to take pride in their immorality and laugh off their unconcern.

I have reached a number of tentative conclusions. Firstly, though most of us are endowed with some moral sentiments, those sentiments vary greatly from person to person and often have to compete with other sentiments - such as the urge for oneself or one's country to be a winner rather than a loser, or to be "cool" rather than a nerd or a prig (I'm probably both). Being moral isn't a short-cut to being popular - the amiable rogue is often a more attractive character than the obviously moral person. I'm reminded of Alan Clark, whose diaries I am enjoying reading at the moment. He writes for Boxing Day 1994: "We went to midnight carol service... it was pleasing. All the good tunes, and perfectly sensible message of reassurance about the resurrection .... and not one mention, from start to finish, of the Third World or the need to 'combat' racism or homelessness or poverty or any of that [expletive deleted]."

Secondly, what seems moral can be very much conditioned by what is normal - and I am reminded that the Latin word "mores" means "customs" rather than "ethics". In other words, if people behave as we expect most people to behave, we accept their behaviour as moral, or at least not immoral. The threat posed by global warming is unlike any other threat we have faced. For most adults living in countries like the UK, global warming is a threat to others - future generations and people living in vulnerable locations - not to themselves. The notion that we may need to make sacrifices for the benefit of future generations is novel - and so falls outside any ready-made framework of accepted morality.

Thirdly, there is in any case no general consciousness of a need to make sacrifices. The prevailing idea is almost the reverse - that by promoting economic growth, from which we ourselves will benefit, we will also be raising the living standards of future generations. There seems to be a general notion that economic progress, like time, is essentially one-way and unconstrained by any limits posed by our finite planet. Current concerns are about recovery from what is expected to be a temporary economic setback. Ideas of future belt-tightening are more about the need to reduce public sector debt than about the threat of global warming. There is virtually no message from the political sphere that people should be considering serious sacrifices because of global warming. Advice to the public is only about near-painless measures, such as switching to energy-saving light bulbs and not leaving televisions on standby. Government policy still seems geared to enabling rather than resisting the growth in aviation. With this general climate of discourse, combating global warming probably doesn't emerge for most people as a moral issue.

Given that general climate, it's difficult to condemn as immoral the mass of people who are quietly carrying on as normal and doing virtually nothing to reduce their carbon footprint. I do, however, tend to condemn the politicians and journalists who are creating that climate.

Fourthly, there is a rational case for not making sacrifices. Conventional economic theory from the time of Adam Smith has emphasised that by acting in our own best interests, we are generally doing the right thing for others. Except in time of major war (not Iraq or Afghanistan), we are not normally called on to make big voluntary sacrifices for the general good. We generally expect people to act in their own best interests. If people are generally conditioned by conventional economic theory, we shouldn't naturally expect other people to make sacrifices to combat global warming. The Indians and Chinese often confirm to us our expectation that they will not, in the short term, sacrifice economic growth in the interests of combating global warming, while hopes of serious engagement by the US Congress seem to be fading. Hence there is a rational expectation that sacrifices by people in the UK will be rendered futile by failures to make sacrifices elsewhere in the world. Can we condemn as immoral a failure by some people to make sacrifices that can reasonably be expected to be futile?

I have three answers to this fourth concern. My first answer is that the expectation could well be proved wrong. Just as there is no certainty about how devastating global warming is likely to be, there is no certainty that sacrifices we make will be futile. Furthermore, by not making the sacrifices ourselves, we will be helping to ensure that sacrifices will not be made by others. It is potentially a self-fulfilling expectation.

My second answer is that if a number of medium-sized developed countries like the UK make major cuts in their emissions, this alone will reduce the probability of catastrophic global warming and will not be a futile sacrifice. Individually, countries like the UK look almost insignificant in their contribution to global warming, but collectively they are significant. Hence, if there is a reasonable probability that China, India and the USA will at some future point start cutting their emissions, then it makes sense, in the interests of reducing the risk of catastrophe, for blocs such as the European Union to forge ahead and cut their emissions unilaterally.

My third answer is about "fair shares". To get to the point at which we are not adding to the threat of runaway global warming, we need to reduce emissions worldwide to something in the order of one tonne of CO2 per person. In the UK, even by conventional measures, we were on something like 9.4 tonnes per person in 2006 whereas the Chinese were on 4.6 tonnes. It seems natural that the Chinese would look to us to make sacrifices first. This is even before we recognise that the problem of global warming arises mainly because of the accumulation of past emissions, from which it is mainly we, rather than the Chinese, who have benefited economically.

To sum up so far, in my view an intelligent, well-informed person in a developed country has a moral obligation to make some effort to reduce his or her carbon footprint. That leaves a big question: how much effort is required to cross the line between immorality and morality? The answer is that there's no line. The more effort we make, the more moral we can claim to be and that's all we can say.

Personally I have got through the last few years (since 2006) without flying. However, it was exceptionally easy for me to give up flying. I don't have close relatives living on other continents and my flat is half an hour's tube or bus travel from the main Eurostar terminal at St Pancras. I enjoy rail travel and giving up flying was a small sacrifice for me. It would be a bigger sacrifice for most other people. Hence I'm circumspect about condemning other people for the occasional flight but when I hear of people flying off from the UK for a weekend shopping trip to New York or for a week's holiday in Thailand my blood pressure does tend to rise.

Getting rid of my car (ten years ago) wasn't an enormous sacrifice either. I'm a few minutes' walk from two Tube stations and lots of useful bus services and about fifteen minutes' walk from two main-line stations. My car used to stand outside my flat for three weeks at a time without being used and it was something of a relief when I got rid of it.

In my flat, my energy consumption is about a third of the national average per person - but I have neighbours above and below me helping to keep me warm.

Generally speaking, I agree that preaching about the morality or otherwise of different people's carbon footprints isn't going to be productive. But the moral dimension of the global warming issue is hugely significant all the same.