Alright blog folks, this week we’re talking about the morality of climate change. This is my interpretation of the situation and my knowledge thus far. In this post I want to cover what the situation looks like with climate change, who might be responsible, and what moral principles are should guide our actions. We should all be concerned about this issue because it has the potential to dramatically affect the way we live and every other living organism on this earth. The great outdoors might not be so great in the near future.

Let’s talk about the morality of climate change. My main inspiration for this section is from Climate change and moral outrage by James Garvey. Climate change is a very complex issue, and the moral dimension isn’t very intuitive or clear to see. Our behaviors have consequences that are spread out across space and time. It’s not as simple as catching someone red-handed for theft. Instead, my behaviors in the U.S. might contribute to climate impacts across the globe. Additionally, our behaviors have a delayed effect on their impact on the climate. We are just now feeling the impacts of the last century of greenhouse gas emissions. And in the near future, the following generations will be left with the consequences of our carbon dioxide production. So, it’s not very easy to point the blame.

Now you might ask yourself, what’s the big deal with climate change? So what if the earth get’s a little hotter, we can adapt. Again, it’s not that simple. Here is an excerpt from the article mentioned above, “Burning fossil fuels thickens the blanket of greenhouse gasses around our world, and the world warms up as a result. The warmer our planet becomes, the more suffering we are in for — suffering caused by failed crops, hotter days and nights, rising sea levels, dwindling water supplies, altered patterns of disease, conflict over shifting resources, and more dramatic weather. This connection between fossil fuels and suffering has a lot to do with the fact that our planet’s carbon sinks cannot absorb all of our emissions. The sinks are therefore a limited and valuable resource. (Garvey, 97)” Given this, there is obviously something harmful going on. If we can agree that humans are affecting the climate through carbon dioxide production, and that the effects mentioned above are undesirable things, then who is to take responsibility for these consequences? Well, there are some possibilities.

There is a familiar saying, “if one breaks something, they should fix it in proportion to their responsibility for breaking it.” Peter Singer applied this same reasoning to greenhouse gas emissions and use of carbon sinks. As it turns out the West (primarily developed countries) is responsible for the majority of emissions and uses up a disproportionate amount of the planet’s carbon sinks. The U.S. is the worst at this. I don’t want to bore you with a bunch of statistics, but the article has plenty if you want to see them. So, if this is all true, doesn’t the U.S. have the greatest obligation to fix this problem? As of now, the U.S. and largely the West have done very little to combat this problem. If we think of the impacts that climate change has, like the ones listed in the previous paragraph, we know that people will suffer. We also know that burning fossil fuels contributes to the warming of the earth, and thus climate change. The west has the greatest contribution to these emissions. Therefore, people are suffering at the hands of the West’s contribution to climate change, and it is the West’s moral obligation to fix this.

In this next section I want to talk about the individual rather than the nation. If you are reading this, you are most likely viewing from a tablet or computer with access to the internet. This is an example of one of the many luxuries of living in a developed country. A good majority of these luxuries are beyond our basic needs. All these luxuries we enjoy come with costs that aren’t just monetary. Additionally, people living in the developed world have the greatest ability to actually make a change for good. This leads to another principle: “the greater the ability to do what is right, the greater the obligation to do what is right.” Most people will agree with this statement and it is undoubtably true that people living in the developed world have a greater ability and more resources to take action against climate change. It also just so happens that we have room to reduce our carbon footprint as individuals.

In conclusion, the topic of climate change is very messy and complicated. It’s even more messy when we bring morality into the picture. I think we all just need to acknowledge that we aren’t separate from this problem. We are all living on this earth together, and we need to hold ourselves accountable for our contributions to this problem. As a lover of the outdoors and nature, I don’t want to see it suffer at the hands of humans (especially on unneeded luxuries). Let’s preserve Earth’s beauty together.