Humanism and climate change
Science and compassion both exert themselves in concerns about climate change, making it a very humanist issue, argues David Flint
Humanists believe in reason and science as well as compassion. Most humanist moral and political thinking derives fairly directly from the third of these. In climate change, however, we have a political and moral issue that is critical for the whole human race but which derives very directly from science.
In the 40 years that I’ve been a humanist the movement has fought, and continues to fight, a series of struggles over abortion, divorce, sex, euthanasia and religious privilege (many of which are ongoing campaigns). In each case we have made an essentially moral argument based on the rights of individuals to make choices about their lives and the lack of authority, by church or state, to overrule those choices. We have used science to support these views – and have generally been lucky in finding that it does support them.
Climate change, I believe, is different. It’s a challenge to the world and a particular challenge to Humanism.
Firstly it’s the most important issue we’ve faced since the invention of the atom bomb, and arguably ever. Climate scientists are almost completely agreed that unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions fast temperatures, and later sea levels, will rise uncontrollably. This will reduce the Earth’s carrying capacity, drive many species into extinction and reduce the human population substantially.
Secondly, our understanding of climate change comes mainly from science. Literally thousands of scientists have contributed to the work of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); itself probably the largest scientific endeavour ever conducted. Science has been less successful in predicting the human consequences of climate change largely, I think, for fear of being thought to exaggerate. My own attempt to understand the consequences is seriously depressing.
Thirdly, climate science shows that the problem is due primarily to industrialisation; itself closely associated with science and the Western societies that gave rise to individualism and modern humanism. Science and humanism thus originate in the very processes responsible for the problem. Climate change is a political challenge to Western societies because it threatens those societies and the liberties that they support. It’s also a particular challenge to humanists because we need to show that societies based on our values, reason, science and liberty, can exist without destroying the environment that supports us.
Fourthly, it requires long-term international action on a scale unmatched since World War 2. As in that war this will require most people in many countries to forgo products, like cars, and experiences, such as foreign holidays, to which they feel entitled. In the poorest countries people are already dying from the effects of climate change. The required actions conflict with some national goals, such as China’s industrial development, and make the UN’s Millennium Development Goals harder to achieve.
As I write this world leaders are travelling to Copenhagen to negotiate a solution to the problem. The diplomats, scientists and pressure groups have been there for a week – some for much longer. But this is itself a problem. Diplomats are used to negotiation and expect to end every negotiation with a compromise. But you cannot negotiate with the laws of nature. A compromise that fails to cut emissions fast enough will be a failure, delaying but not preventing the climate catastrophe.
That’s why some humanists, including myself, spent Saturday 5 December marching through London to create a ring around Parliament in The Wave, the UK’s largest ever climate change demonstration. In London there were over 50,000 people, with another 13,000 in Glasgow.
This was not only a very big event it was also very diverse. Organisations present ranged from the establishment – the Co-Op, Women’s Institute, WWF and RSPB – through Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and Greenpeace to the Socialist Workers Party. The organisations affiliated to Stop Climate Chaos, the organising committee, claim over eleven million members. That’s far more than have joined ALL the UK’s political parties and, I’d guess, far more than are shareholders in the most environmentally damaging businesses.
Climate change is a humanist concern because it threatens the survival of human civilisation and calls for us to respect the science, exercise compassion and collaborate, globally, in a great humanitarian cause.
David Flint is a BHA member and Chair of Humanists4Science
Humanism and climate change,
I am sorry to see that you are linking humanism to climate change alarmism.
I would point out that the alarmist case may not be as secure as your article suggests. A number of scientists dissent from the orthodoxy (you can find some names in the well-known CCNet postings edited by Dr Benny Peiser). The fact that the terrestrial climate varies with the state of activity on the Sun has been known since the time of Sir William Herschel. The influence of clouds is crucial, and extremely difficult to simulate. Above all, computer models are being used to make predictions for 50 years and more ahead, when so far as I know none of these models have yet made verified predictions on such long timescales. In other words, the science is still at an early stage.
But the key point I want to make is that it does not matter in practice whether the alarmist predictions will turn out to be justified, or not. Another firm prediction that can be made is that human global energy demand will grow over the next century, as global population continues to increase and developing countries, led by China and India, continue to catch up economically with the developed world. The point at which development starts to be hampered by the rising costs of oil, gas and coal as reserves dwindle is harder to predict, but must eventually come at some point, maybe during the current century.
In other words, whether or not carbon dioxide emissions are a problem, we still need new sources of long-term sustainable, low-pollution industrial energy. The only meaningful question that should be debated is whether these should be developed in a major government programme (like the development of civil nuclear fission power after the Second World War), or in a crash programme (like the Manhatten atomic bomb project or the Apollo Moon-landing project).
The identity of new sources of energy is no secret: I have in mind artificial nuclear fusion, and space solar power. Both of these have been in gestation for many years, but have suffered from lack of interest. For example, a scientist from the JET project in Culham recently gave a talk in Oxford about artificial nuclear fusion development, in which he said that the new ITER project was being funded like a scientific research programme, when what was needed was an industrial development programme on a much higher level of priority. Meanwhile, government space agencies are shunning involvement in developing access to space in low-cost reusable spaceplanes, which is a key enabling technology for the development of space resources such as space solar power.
The big problem with climate alarmism is that it has turned into a moral crusade, as you mention above, against things like cars and foreign holidays. In other words, the possibility of disastrous climate change, suggested by approximate computer simulations of a poorly understood climate system, is being used to advance a political agenda which is opposed to growth and progress, rather than being used to spur progress in developing new long-term sustainable, low-pollution industrial energy sources.
You are therefore, perhaps unwittingly, aligning humanism with an anti-growth, anti-progress movement, which I would suggest is not the business of humanism at all. On the contrary, if anything, I propose that humanism needs to carry forward the Enlightenment-age promotion of human growth and progress — including economic and population growth.
Given the fact that almost all the natural resources of the universe are extraterrestrial, and that they are not yet at the service of any living organisms, I also propose that humanity has the future prospect of long-term growth using those resources.
The campaign to prevent developing countries from achieving Western levels of material wealth, based on the fear of increasing the concentration of a trace gas in the atmosphere, and to force developed countries to give up some of their existing material wealth, is unrealistic and retrograde. Progress can only be achieved by focusing attention on new, low-pollution, long-term sustainable sources of industrial energy that can power the growth of human civilisation for millennia to come.
Stephen Ashworth
Oxford, UK
Why space solar power when there’s more than enough solar power falling on this planet’s deserts which could be harvested and for which the technology (albeit needing some developments in the areas of storage and transmission) already exists? But even with this, there must surely be limits to economic and population growth on a finite planet.
It seems to me that, contra Stephen Ashworth, we should be alarmed though in no way despairing. The gravity of a risk is a compound of its likelihood and its severity – even if one thinks a climate crisis improbable its effects would be, have already begun to be, immense. For sheer practicality it doesn’t matter if the problem is due to ourselves or (much less plausibly) nature – the Sun or whatever – the possible actions in response are much the same. Achieving fusion or ‘space solar’ is difficult, fairly far ahead, and worst of all, thoroughly unpredicable.
Marilyn Mason is surely right about limits (anyway, what’s the point of us all). Solar power can indeed be important, but mirror systems need to slim down efficiently and photovoltaic may have an inherent difficulty (even with 20% efficiency there is 80% absorbed energy going to heat – as if albedo were diminished).
I agree strongly with David Flint that this is a crucial issue for humanism, a chance for us to lead with reason (our irrationality has little value here) and compassion (or at least enlightened self-interest, since our dilemma is that of prisoners in the same boat).
Copenhagen, overambitious and ill-planned, sadly turned into a bag of political cats. It is not difficult to propose a rational basis from which negotiation could usefully begin. Target emission decreases, or allowed smaller increases (meeting SA’s point), could be proportionate to how far national levels are above, or below, the global average per person. Psychologically, a small quickly achieved aim would build confidence for incremental progress.
Although cutting back is vital (and indeed morally appropriate) I believe we need to gain time since an energy turn-around and atmospheric greenhouse gas reduction must take decades: meanwhile feedback accelerates. The only workable immediate proposal I know of is by Stephen Salter (only a namesake I’m sorry to say) for increasing cloud albedo. It needs are mere £5M: do humanists have money (please don’t tell me god has given it all to the evangelists) along with their other merits?