Eco-evil

I can think of an ethical issue that involves the very possibility of a good life for millions of babies and young people worldwide. It is also an issue that causes misery and death right now to thousands of young people worldwide. This issue is getting worse by the decade and many well educated, professional experts in their fields of knowledge have warned us that unless we stop what we are doing, we, as a species will suffer unimaginable misery and chaos.

However, instead of public discussion about this issue, right now in Australia we have a bunch of politicians, academics and media commentators who think that their ideological take on issues such as single parent families, homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, Christian (and other) religious education are more important. Don’t get me wrong, all these issues are of some consequence in a society that has no other major problems, however, they are trivial when compared and contrasted to … the ethical issue of global warming and climate change.

While all of the issues above affect minorities in our communities, global warming seriously affects every being on this planet. We can debate the right to life nuances of the ethics of abortion, yet untold millions of innocent and non-consenting lives will be cut short by climate chaos. These 'innocents' also have a 'right to life' and their life chances should be given priority ethical consideration. While historical and heritage issues are important in our education system, nothing could be more important than survival education about global warming and climate change and how, if allowed to continue, it will devastate the life-chances of all future generations of human and non-human beings. Education about how to avoid such climate chaos should be the top priority of all education systems. It is all a matter of perspective and it is time we got the perspective right.

The ethics are crystal clear, global warming and consequent climate chaos has the demonstrable potential to smash our culture, agriculture and the industrial-technological foundation of our current society.  It will render our species hugely less populous and culturally depauperate. It will also take global biodiversity into a period of mass extinction that has no precedence in history … as this time it will be ‘us’ that will be the certain cause. To not recognise this, given the advanced state of scientific consensus about knowledge on this issue, is to engage the capacity for evil. Evil is the deliberate (wicked) continuance of actions that we know will seriously adversely affect others, particularly the innocent, into the future.

To deliberately ignore that which is core to all life and perversely focus solely on issues that affect small minorities sits solidly within my definition of evil. The greatest irony now is that many of those who openly claim the moral high ground on these minority moral issues are the same people who deny the reality of global warming. It is time to reveal the wickedness of their position and do our best to refocus on that which really matters. 

What I am suggesting is that 'we' take over ownership of the moral high ground and demonstrate to the public that the position of global warming denialists and sceptics is Evil. From every perspective possible (including religion) their position is one where a huge ethical issue is ignored and a values diversion (e.g., religious education) is put front and centre. Since 'they' ignore facts, the only argument that can hurt them is one they claim to have a vested interest in. We need to hit them hard with a values argument that questions their priorities and foundations. The 'right to life' is one such values issue. There will be over 100 million babies born worldwide this year ... the biggest ethical issue for them will be a habitable world by the time they are mature. An ethically motivated person can worry about abortion and global warming but only one of these two issues involves the foundation of life for all human and other beings. It is a question of balance and priority.

The Emotions of Climate Change.

Forget the economics and the science ... it’s all about emotion. The science is absolutely clear ... we are responsible for global warming and climate change and the longer term consequences of failure to mitigate are too ghastly to think about. The economics are also in the realm of the bleeding obvious ... the cost of mitigation is nowhere near the cost of the damage that will be caused by destructive climate change that will smash agriculture worldwide and wreak more storm and tempest damage to our vital technology and infrastructure. 

So, what about the emotions? How can emotions explain the types of responses we see today? Given that the emotions are primary factors generating action or inaction in humans, (‘emotion’ is derived from the Latin ēmovēre to disturb, and movēre to move), it is most likely that they will be implicated in issues that invite action (or inaction) such as climate change.

Modern humans evolved within bioregional contexts only 200,000 years ago. In the last ten thousand years, the Earth’s climate has been relatively stable and cultures have sustained themselves around the predictability of the seasons and other solar system regularities such as the tides. Our perceptual and emotional development was tied to survival in often difficult environments where scarcity usually prevailed over abundance.

Survival in a time of scarcity was contingent on aggressively defending home territories from human rivals. Men, especially, in the context of a hunting and gathering economy, also required the emotional attributes required to hunt and kill animals that, in many instances, could kill or injure them. In addition, detailed knowledge of the home environment was vital and relationships to places and things of sustenance and the human cooperation needed to sustain family and clan must have been foundational to the emotions.

With internal place-based emotions mainly tied to cooperation within home territories and families and external place-based relationships mainly based on defence and aggression, at least two clearly opposed sets of emotions have become part of our biological and cultural evolution. Many authors (see, for example, Parrot 2001) have built complex typologies of the emotions, however, in this short essay I wish only to highlight the contrast between emotions affiliated with cooperation (love, care, joy) and conflict (anger, hostility, fear).

In the last two hundred years (especially) humans in Capitalist, industrialised and technologically complex societies have created a social and cultural environment based not on scarcity but abundance. In such circumstances, the emotional typology produced in the previous 200,000 years becomes confused. The ‘external’ emotions connected to competition are harnessed to maximise corporate growth and dominance in a global market place while the ‘internal’ more cooperative emotions are increasingly tied to making the corporate body more efficient and productive.

Particular place-based emotions have been transcended by more global connections and increased alienation from the natural systems that once sustained us. In addition to artificial habitats supported by technologies that deliver virtual experiences (of people and place) we have built a globally connected economy that has removed the threat posed by outsiders and ‘others’ to only a few (but occasionally effective) terrorists and cultures that refuse to be part of the global ‘corporate family’. Now, it is mainly those who pose a threat from the inside to the institutions that deliver the abundance that all enjoy,who are perceived to be ‘outsiders’ and a threat to the integrity of the whole system.

In the C20, it was ‘the Left’ that held the place of 'outsider' and opponent of market-based modern societies where the ‘Cold War’ for right libertarians was (and still is) all about victory of free markets, individual freedom and Western institutions (democracy) over communist/socialist forms of social organisation based on collectivism and authoritarianism.

In the C21, in the new ‘Green War’, the enemy has now become those who suggest that there are limits to material growth in any aspect of human life. Given that the ultimate basis of Capitalism is infinite growth, such advocacy of limits is seen as threatening the very basis of the material abundance that has come to characterise a modern society.

The emotional choreography of hunting and gathering societies is revealed when those who argue for unlimited freedom and unlimited growth use ‘outsider’ emotions to defend their position. Their emotional landscape is based on hostility to the ‘other’, and aggression towards opposing views and people that espouse them. These people are fighting a ‘Green War’ because ‘greens’ represent that which is most anathema to them ... the restriction of individual freedom in the interests of any collective good. Even rationality and science, if used to support forms of limitation, including limits to greenhouses gases in the atmosphere, become enemies of the so-called free and open society.

It is then quite explicable to see the expression of emotions in the hostility and ad hominen attacks on climate scientists and environmentalists made by climate change denialists, anti- limits-to-growthers and green sceptics. Their total world view is being challenged by climate and environmental science and in order to preserve their own coherence, they must oppose every piece of evidence that suggests the need to change and respect limits. If this now means opposing the very scientific traditions on which their own abundant world was erected, then so be it.

By contrast, the climate scientists and environmentalists who see the need for restraint and self limitation are able to use the insider emotional choreography of the hunters and gatherers to establish and reinforce their own position. They can clearly see that humans have re-entered a world of scarcity and that there is a need to give expression to relictual communal emotions of care, responsibility and collective good that enable sustainability within the imposed limits. That they have to confront those who oppose them and who do so via the opposing emotions of hostility and aggression only makes for the drama of the emotions to be played out in the most difficult of circumstances.

What is strange is that we have not paid sufficient attention to the emotions of climate change and environmentalism. As with the emotions of denial of the harm of cigarette smoking, centred on personal freedom, addiction and lifestyle, the similar emotions of climate change denial are powerful enough for people to oppose science, be blind to evidence and be thoughtless about how others now (intragenerational ethics) and others in the future (intergenerational ethics) can sustain themselves.

It must also be noted that the drama of the emotions is also substantially being played out within the context of a privately owned media that has a vested interest in profit-making by selling the trappings of an infinite growth model of an economy. Be it in the service of new motor vehicle images or big glossy advertisements for new mining employees, the commercial media must employ journalists who are able to give expression to the emotions of infinite growth insiders and oppose them to the emotions of limits to growth outsiders. That they do so to protect the interests of those who profit from infinite growth models of economic activity should come as no surprise to anyone. In doing their job they also ensure that they themselves continue to have one.

 

If, after receipt of information about the real threats to life, we oppose untrammelled human development and are concerned about the fate of future generations, then our emotions are primed to urgently mitigate the causes of climate change. If we want to accept climate change but continue with business as usual, then we are emotionally disposed to support adaption to any change. If we are emotionally tied to a world view (ideology) that cannot co-exist with limitations to individual and corporate freedom, then we will oppose any action that will constrain economic growth including 'costly' adaptation to climate change.

Black Swan Event and Deadly Brain Virus

The Perth newspaper, The West Australian today. Two articles next each other.

One on Black Swans falling sick because of the drought and hotter weather and the other about a deadly virus, Murray Valley encephalitis, which is carried by mosquitoes, now found close to Perth (http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/9453199/mosquito-virus-spreads-across-wa/).

In the Black Swan story, the language is all about a "dry spell" with no mention of climate change or global warming and its impacts on SW WA. The swans are sick from botulism and other water borne diseases. Another possible cause is exhaustion as they come to the coast to escape the drought further inland. 

The "deadly brain virus" story says that the virus warning now extends to anywhere north and east of Perth". However, there is no mention of the changing climate and how it favours the spread of the mosquito and hence, the virus.

Like the dying trees, sick swans are an indicator of ecosystems in distress, while the spread of infectious diseases, particularly by mosquitoes, as climates get warmer has been predicted by the IPCC and other research on global warming.

Climate change is not only real, it is here in Perth and is having major impacts right now. Its a pity our one daily newpaper cannot see and make the connections.

Ethical Dieback

Ethical Dieback.

While gamers and sports fans might like slow motion action scenes where you can watch every move in minute detail, I doubt if anybody would like to watch the slow motion disaster that is unfolding before our very eyes in the Perth region. 

I live in the hills at Jarrahdale and well into April I am watching whole sections of the forest slowly die. It is not just Jarrah and Marri that are turning yellow and dying, the whole ecosystem is in deep distress, so much so that, tragically, it looks like a Northern Hemisphere autumn is taking place right here, right now.

If we could watch what is going on in fast forward we would see vast tracts of bushland dying of thirst in the grip of this permanent drought. If you take the time to look, you will notice that the native ecosystems on the coastal plain are also in the deep distress of various forms of ‘dieback’. What is happening is a 'tipping point' in the process of 'tipping' ... a rare but hugely important event.

The Perth Region, including the Hills, has had a 20% decline in rainfall over the last 30 years and a much larger, 60% decline in runoff into the streams and our dams. Gooralong Brook, once a year-round running stream, has disappeared and most of its deeper pools are now bone dry. The climate of the SW of WA has already changed for the worse and if it gets even warmer and dryer, the Perth region will be in perpetual ecosystem distress. 

This distress is not only about trees, frogs, jilgies and thirsty kangaroos; it is also a crisis of the human spirit and the mind. Our identity as people of the Perth region is at stake. All that is endemic to this special part of the world is at risk of slow death by desiccation. Our iconic trees such as Banksia and Jarrah are already dying and the wildflowers, the exquisite ground orchids and kangaroo paws, will not reappear in a dry, colourless Spring.

Even the bikies that roar their Harleys up the Jarrahdale Road, heading for the hills, are part of endemic Perth, for although they might find it hard to admit, they love the beautiful bush vistas and the stress release that green, open spaces invite. That you can enjoy the roos, the jarrah forest and a thirst-quenching beer at the Jarrahdale Tavern is a quintessentially West Australian freedom. But it is a freedom, like the water in Serpentine Dam, which is in danger of disappearing. 

 

We are a people in denial about the huge, negative changes to our climate and landscape that have taken place during my lifetime (I am a baby boomer). Since 1975, in SW WA, we have experienced most of the driest years on record. Last year (2010) was the driest year for the SW since 1900 and we are now breaking records for night and day time heat. The summer of 2010 -11 had the highest average minimum and maximum temperatures on record. Our dams are right now at less than a quarter of their total capacity and the chance of record rains that would return them to the spectacular overflows I witnessed as a child seems a very remote possibility. 

We, in Perth, are in the front line of human induced global warming and its negative impacts and unless we confront that reality, our environment will either wither or simply pack up and move away from us. Sure, at huge expense, we can produce potable water from the sea and pump more ground water to keep Perth ‘green’, but these ‘solutions’ are a sign that we have got our relationship to the earth completely wrong. Go and have a good look at the (former) Lake Gnangara and think about the trade-off between ecosystem health and green lawns.

We are now living in a time of solastalgia, the homesickness you have when you are still at home. We have a lived experience of an environment that is changing all around us in ways that are distressing. Some people still think there is not a problem, that the problem is not serious, that we are not responsible for the problem, that we should do nothing ... but these responses are a sign of deep denial and ethical dieback.

Gooralong Creek with riparian vegetation dead and dying April 2011

Innocide and Earthlings

The Ongoing Apology to Young and Future Earthlings

From Glenn Albrecht, Earth Citizen, 17 Wanliss Street, Jarrahdale, Western Australia.

My fellow Earthlings,

We have reached a point where we must acknowledge the severe injustice that is being perpetrated on the lives of current and future beings. We must say to the recently conceived, newborns, infants, young children, youth, young adults and all future generations on Earth, that we are sorry your future is being put at risk by dangerous climate change. In addition, to those in low-lying countries and especially the poor who cannot possibly adapt to consequences of a warming world ... we say sorry.

The callous abuse and mistreatment of the Earth and its climate is a source of deep shame. In particular we need to offer you, the innocent and non-consenting parties to this desolation, a profound and deep-felt apology for failing to implement binding targets for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions that would deliver stabilisation of the earth’s climate.

We must apologise in advance for the massive hardship that will occur to every facet of life as the climate gets hotter; disease, heat stress, drought and fire frequency increase, ecosystems and agriculture collapse, sea level rises and powerful storms wipe out our communities.

To all human beings who will be disadvantaged and who will have their life potential cut short by climate chaos … we say sorry. To all non-human beings who will face extinction from enormous impacts to their habitats, we say sorry.

To avoid a warming and unpredictable climate you, the occupants of the future, need right now to be represented by well informed people with wisdom and ethical courage. Instead you have political and other leaders, who, in their denial or inaction on the reality of a warming world are putting you all at risk. To continue to abuse the earth and knowingly bring suffering to its future inhabitants is an ethical failure of the highest magnitude.

In a slow motion tragedy, the majority of global leaders are risking the future of the Earth for dubious benefits in the here and now. The so-called representatives of the developed countries of Earth must now be seen and judged for what they are … intellectually and ethically bankrupt. For their gross lack of integrity, for putting the poor, children and families last and for not listening to the advice from scientists about the serious risks of a warming world … we say sorry.

The time has come for elders and those in privileged positions to stand up to such selfishness and egocentricity. Fellow inhabitants of the Earth, we must care about the future. We must make a rapid transition to an ecologically sustainable economy, one that is in harmony with our environment and climate. With courage and action we can right a future wrong in the here and now.

Fire and the Psyche (written in 2002 in response to massive bushfires in the Sydney and Hunter areas)

Life for both human and non-humans can be put at risk in an instant by wildfire. Wildfire has the potential to kill and maim many hundreds of humans and destroy their property (Ash Wednesday, Black Friday). The destruction of the natural environment and its animals is also devastating, despite claims that the Australian bush is “fire tolerant”. With the fire season already upon us, it crucial that we re-assess our views and values about the relationship between humans and the land in Australia. I shall describe four positions that try to cover the spectrum of possible views.

Alienation and Arson

The first position is full alienation from our own country. As a colonising culture we come to this continent and bring with us our European conceptual baggage which includes a belief in the inferiority of all things indigenous (including the indigenous people) and the inherent superiority of all things European. Symptoms of alienation gone crazy include “mad palm”, “mad lawn” and “mad paver” diseases. We have created a culture determined to supplant the endemic with the exotic irrespective of the environmental costs. Where the endemic situation threatens the colonist, the response is always extermination of the native. The coloniser mentality is inclined to remove the threat and replace it with certainty and safety. Along with the forests go the Thylacines and Koalas, while exotic palms, pools, pussy cats, pooches and Porsches move in. Unfortunately, so too do the psychopath pyromaniacs who like nothing better than to light fires and watch the carnage. We see our native vegetation as a threat and perceive it as ‘fuel’ for fire. The full alienation results in perpetual burning, concrete and asphalt with no ‘natural’ threats or danger and nothing distinctively Australian left in the landscape.

Design Against Nature

A second option is to design urban structures so as to make them immune from the unwanted features of the bush such as poisonous snakes, quolls, ticks, leeches, spiders and fire. We live close to the bush, but protect ourselves from those aspects of biodiversity and ecosystem processes that are inconsistent with our lifestyle choices and personal safety.
We can work harder to make our dwellings fire resistant or even fire proof. We design to live with fire and keep the bushland as well. However, despite saving human property and lives, the ‘fire bunker’ with its passive (materials) and active (sprinklers) systems does not address the fundamental issue of alienation from the bush. The more we think that we can defeat fire, the more bushland will be infiltrated by urbanisation. Along with the fire-proof urban front comes the armada of insults to the bush outlined above and out go the endemic ‘undesirables’. In defeating fire we defeat the bush.


Phased Transition to ‘the Bush’

A third position is to think about overcoming the alienation with a phased transition from city to bush. In this option, we concede that humans in urban systems have needs that are inconsistent with the presence of unmanaged ecosystems and wild creatures. At the core of city/suburbia is a ‘humans only’ zone where all undesirables (including fruit bats) are excluded. The only animals permitted to dwell within are those that are quasi-human such as dogs and cats that are companion animals for humans. The landscape around such a core is also artificial and celebrates its triumph over the endemic in the form of concrete, pavers, asphalt, manicured lawns, resort style palms and exotic trees.

On the fringes of such an artefact there are highly managed corridors of multiple use park-like reserves where conventional houses sit safely in mowed and maintained transition zones before the real bush. Some undesirables will occasionally slither down the corridor but a four-by-two or a professional pest exterminator easily deals with them. Property damage from fire is virtually non-existent as there is no dense bushland next to housing. The corridors lead to tracts of ‘wilderness’ where no human property or life is at direct risk from fire or pests. Bush fire control is then the responsibility of organisations such as NPWS and its goal is to stop the destruction of our national parks and their biodiversity. The majority of the people at the core of this system remain deeply alienated from endemic Australia, however, those at the periphery get glimpses of the real thing. Those in power sit in the very centre of the core and turn up the air conditioning when the heat is on.

Living Within Nature

A fourth option suggests that a non-alienated way of life might be possible for Australians if the city/urban environment is re-constructed so as to maximise the possibility of an endemic sense of place. Such reconstruction entails the systematic removal of exotics and their replacement with native vegetation and native fauna. From gardens to streetscapes to urban parks, the idea is to always promote the native and to expunge the exotic. Implications here include the complete banning of free-range companion animals. Rather than fence in the natives (the failed Earth Sanctuary idea) we fence in the pooches and pussies so that they constitute no threat to the natives.

For example, we can learn to live with free ranging Koalas, Possums and Bandicoots in our gardens and design our dwellings/gardens to fit with their needs. Such a mentality of ‘inclusion’ also requires a degree of coexistence with the undesirables (spiders, snakes and carnivores) as they too are integral parts of endemic ecosystems and their flora and fauna. Fire too is a normal part of the system and can be used, much as it was by Aboriginal people, to actively manage the environment. Creative use of fire to maintain habitat for native plants and animals and reduce the threat of wildfire for all living things could be considered to be an art as well as a science. However, the reality of fire in a dry landscape means that wildfire will still occur and that sometimes it will kill and maim living things.

Fire and the Psyche

We accept with resignation the death of about 2,000 and the serious injury of 30,000 people a year on our national road system. Yet the death of even one person by bush fire seems to strike at the heart of the Australian psyche. I wonder why such a contrast in our perception of death and injury should prevail. It is possible that our alienation from the land is so profound that we cannot accept that it might be opposing our presence at times.

A reassessment of where and how we are living might be a more appropriate response than calling Fat Elvis. Consideration of the ‘phased transition’ and ‘living within nature’ might help us come to appreciate the privilege of living within the beauty and danger of the Australian landscape. With climate change and more warming inevitable now, we are all going to have to live with fire.

Against Marohasy on Climate Change

We need to take a good hard look at the type of ‘facts’ Jennifer Marohasy (JM) presents before signing on to her view of the world. Also, take a good hard look at the above photo supporting the article. It shows a river with many dead trees (river red gums?) on its edges. The caption says “Catastrophe Averted: Salinity levels in the Murray have halved, but you won’t hear that from global warming zealots”. Is Marohasy and her paymaster (The Australian) actually suggesting that the landscape in the photograph shows a system in recovery? It looks more like a catastrophe to me.

See: http://multifaith-newcastle.googlegroups.com/web/Fuzzy%20but%20Cold.pdf?gda=M4z3uEwAAABOQTftyhqJubHCkUbQuhxW5kuQK5Hu7aflLRwsWWPzpuyPDPBtASCBtxegF3TlLelmqPZxlyfqqX6aflnmKKQG_Vpvmo5s1aABVJRO3P3wLQ

For an updated PDF of the material presented below

Also, see my new ethicsclimate Blog (follow link)

For the climes they are a-changin'

Come gather 'round people
wherever you roam
And admit that the carbon
Around you has grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your clime to you
is worth savin'
Then you better start thinkin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the climes they are a-changin'.


Come scientists and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And speak right now
For the sceptics still spin
And there's no tellin' what
Lies they're namin'
For the liars now
They will never win
For the climes they are a-changin'.


Come politicians, businessfolk
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For those that get hurt
Will be they who are poor
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon drown your coastlines
And blow away your walls
For the climes they are a-changin'.


Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
Do criticize more
Because you can understand
Your sons and your daughters
Will not have a chance
The old world is
Rapidly warmin'.
Help healthearth
You can lend your hand
For the climes they are a-changin'.


The line it is drawn
The carbon is cast
The slow ice melt now
Will later be fast
As the death drought grows
The dry winds will blast
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first to change now
Will be without carbon sin
For the climes they are a-changin'.


With apologies to Bob Dylan. Perhaps these are the lyrics he would have written if 'the times' was written today?

Ethics and Climate Change

The Ethics of Climate Chaos

Glenn Albrecht PhD

---------------------------------------

The scientific evidence for climate change is now overwhelming. Almost every day we hear news of yet another study that documents the actual changes to our formerly predictable weather patterns and biophysical processes. We all now see and read about the economic, health, psychological and ecological impacts of the increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes such as Katrina and Larry. There are places on earth where climate change is happening so rapidly that people have new words to describe the shock of change in what was once a reasonably reliable and predictable context. The Inuit of the Arctic have applied a word, uggianaqtuq’ (pronounced OOG-gi-a-nak-took) which has connotations of a “friend acting strangely” or unpredictable behaviour to the way climate change is impacting on their culture[i]. Our world is indeed beginning to act in strange ways but what is even stranger is that in the face of such change, we are not acting quickly enough to counter the prospect of catastrophic risk to all future activity in our economies and our cultures. We can expect new epidemics of illness, physical and mental, in the face of such devastating change. I have created the concept of solastalgia to capture the 'uggianaqtug' in the English language.

You might have thought that the ethics of actually changing the global climate would have been on the top of the agenda in all of the recent talkfests on long-term energy policy. After all, what is at stake with the issue of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming is the future environmental security of all beings on the planet and in particular, the ability of humans to cope with massive but largely unpredictable changes to every aspect of their lives.

In a world operating under complex and unstable conditions, adaptation to the impending changes will be largely impossible because all current forms of planning are based on data and predictions linked to the past. However, in the brave new world, there will be many surprise events in the emergence of complex non-linear complex systems acting under new factors driving their evolution. Such system unpredictability will render useless many of the institutions and methodologies created to manage risk in our economic systems. The institution of insurance, for example, will be one of the first to fail as actuarial analysis fails to cope with evolving non-linear systems in the form of an array hugely damaging unnatural events. In a world characterised by chaos, all that was friendly and familiar will become strange to us and the Inuit will be seen as prescient.

The ethical issues of climate chaos are quite clear and can been understood within the principles of sustainability developed over the last 20 years in the international community. A key ethical issue is equity or the distribution of benefits and burdens of climate change. The intragenerational ethics of climate change is highlighted by the fact that some human communities have already had their lives directly and negatively affected by rising sea levels and melting glaciers. In the Pacific, low lying, inhabited islands are being inundated by the sea, leading to the world’s first climate chaos refugees. As suggested above, in the Arctic, melting permafrost and glacier retreat have already made life difficult for the Inuit people as they can no longer rely on a foundation of solid ice for safe travel, secure buildings and for sources of traditional food such as seals. The people of Himalayan countries such as Bhutan have already experienced catastrophic floods from glacial lakes that form, then burst under the rising flow of glacial melt water. These floods destroy in-stream hydro-electric power generation and the lights go out in Bhutan.

In both the Arctic and the Antarctic, impacts on biodiversity have now been documented with sea ice melt causing Polar Bear habitat to shrink and more snow causing negative impacts on Caribou and Moose. Antarctica is also experiencing major changes with Krill, the foundation of the food chain, in severe decline with flow on effects to populations of fish, seals, penguins, and whales further up the food chain. The world over, there is mounting evidence that as warming occurs, biodiversity or the variety of life, is rapidly disappearing. The extinction of frog species has now been linked to warming and many other species including the Mountain Pygmy Possum of Australia are under similar threat. Biodiversity can be considered under the umbrella of interspecies equity in the here and now, so we already have major lapses in ethical obligations to species other than ourselves.

If we add the increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, wild fires and droughts on humans, domesticated animals and wildlife, then another layer of huge impacts has already been imposed on current generations. In Australia, the extreme hot temperatures will see increasing deaths from heat stress in humans and animals (e.g., cattle) and most recently in January 2006, poultry.

The potential impacts of climate chaos that we are imposing on future generations of humans are so great that one would have thought that leaders of countries such as the USA and Australia who profess ‘civilised’, Christian values would have them at the top of their agendas. But no, the prospect of escalating warming delivering epidemics of infectious diseases, catastrophic failure of agricultural systems, failure of fresh water supplies, massive coastal damage due to storm and tidal inundation and other unpredictable changes as a result of climate chaos has not yet bothered them.

Although the concept of intergenerational equity might seem abstract to some, to deliver into the hands of future children and grandchildren a world that will be in major and prolonged crisis is not a difficult ethical issue to contemplate. It is simply unacceptable to sit on our seats of power, board or conference tables and deliberately do nothing or too little to give children an experience of a beautiful, secure and predictable future world. After all, a major reason why we work so hard and burn so much energy is … to give our children a better world to live in.

The level of scientific knowledge we have about climate chaos issues has reached the point for urgent and extensive action. Right now, we have firm scientific evidence that global warming has been escalating since the industrial revolution, that it is linked to historically unprecedented increases in the levels of carbon dioxide and other human produced gases in the atmosphere, that the sea level is rising at twice the rate of the previous one hundred and fifty years and that it is the human industrial activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels that is responsible for all of the above. In response to all of the information documented about the possibility of irreversable climate chaos, the immediate need to drastically curtail or even cease the mining and burning of coal and oil should be on our agendas. At the very least, ramping-up our commitment to clean, renewable energy in all of its forms should be an international priority.

Even if evidence of the effects of climate chaos was not available to us, the application of another foundation of sustainability ethics, the precautionary principle, or the idea that we ought to minimise risk or possible harm to current and future generations before actual scientific proof of harm is before us, should be on top of political and policy agendas. Failure to consider and fully implement the precautionary principle through the Kyoto framework or any other multilateral government agreement marks the current generation of political leaders and climate sceptics as standing on ethically thinning ice. As the temperature and the sea level rises, the climate sceptics, along with the glaciers, are in retreat (rapidly!).

Politicians and many business leaders in Australia and the USA in particular have used national and international forums to make Faustian bargains with the future in an effort to achieve the impossible goal of infinite economic growth in a finite world. The tragedy of climate chaos represents a failure to seek long overdue reconciliation of human life within the limits of planet earth. It is to be hoped that the purveyors of the hubris of infinite growth will burn forever in an even hotter climate than the rest of us.

[i] IOL, Effects of climate change seen in the Arctic,
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw1144790291815B224
(accessed 11/09/2006) See also: http://nsidc.org/data/arcss122.html