The Ethics of the Climate Crisis by Robin Attfield
Book cover for Attfield (2024). Taken from the Polity Press catalogue.
Polity Press, 2024.
ISBN: 9781509559084, Hbk.
ISBN: 9781509559091, Pbk.
ISBN: 9781509559107, eBook.
RRP: £50.00 / £14.99, 276pp.
Recent opinion poll data has revealed that the vast majority of adults in the U.K. believe that climate change is happening, that it is largely caused by human activity and that it is a source of concern (Fisher, Fitzgerald and Poortinga 2018). Indeed, the most recent of these polls published on 14th June 2024 by YouGov revealed that 70% of the 2,369 people asked were worried about the impact of climate change and 80% were worried about declining wildlife numbers (YouGov 2024). Faced with public concern about climate change and bio-diversity loss, it is not surprising that interest has increased in Environmental Sustainability Education (ESE) and what is increasingly referred to as the Climate Crisis or Catastrophe as an area of university based research and higher education study (Standish 2020; Strickney and Skilbeck 2020).
The Universities Network that reported to COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 emphasised the need for engagement with ESE by academics and students in all areas of the university curriculum (Threw et al. 2021). In this paper entitled Mainstreaming Climate Education in U.K. Higher Education Institutions, the authors argue that, ‘the attitudes, mindsets, values and behaviours that graduates need to engage with climate change include the ability to deal with complexity, work collaboratively across sectors and disciplines and address challenging ethical questions’ (Thew et al. 2021, 1) (emphasis added). They also stress that the complexity of the climate crisis means that all disciplines and subject areas have a role to play in delivering this education for a net-zero transition.
The challenge, as others have outlined, is to avoid the ‘information dump delivery mode’, in which new facts about ecological destruction do little more than contribute to anxiety, cognitive exhaustion, hopelessness and paralysis in the face of ecological issues (cf. Campbell 2023). Robin Attfield’s book enters this space with a short introduction (132 pages excluding references and the index) to the basic contours of much contemporary debate about the science of the climate crisis as well as the related crises of biodiversity loss and air pollution. As a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Cardiff University and the author of several previous books on ethics he is well placed to undertake this task. The main text of Attfield’s new book is divided into five chapters sandwiched between short introductions and conclusions. This review provides a summary of the main elements of these five chapters, whilst outlining how they might be used in teaching and learning exercises for students and others with an interest in the issues raised by the book. Through this commentary I will also draw attention to the many strengths of the book as well as one or two areas where there may be scope for others to extend and develop the analysis outlined in it.
The first substantive chapter of the book, chapter 2, provides a short summary of the science of climate change. Here the effects of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons on global temperatures, rainfall, wildfires, wind and sea currents are documented and there is a discussion of the interaction of these changes in the global ecosystems. A particular focus in this chapter is on the tipping points that might be crossed and their consequences for the Amazon rainforest, the Gulf Stream, the forests of North West Canada, the El Niño weather system, the permafrost in Siberia and other major ecosystems. As with all sections in the book, chapter 2 includes lists of recommended and further reading which it is easy to imagine could be the springboard for further student and reader investigations to examine the latest estimates and forecasts from environmental scientists as well as the debate that accompanies the accuracy and range of these estimates. Here there is scope for discussion of base as well as best- and worst-case forecasts and the considerable progress that has already been made in reducing human emissions of greenhouse and ozone depleting gases. In other recent books there are a range of views from the pessimism of David Wallace-Wells to the more recent optimism of Hannah Ritchie (Wallace-Wells 2019; Ritchie 2024). In this discussion there might then be an opportunity to tackle ontological, epistemological and teleological debates as well as the ethical issues raised about the nature of the present interpretations of the past and predictions of environmental futures within different philosophical and scientific traditions.
The third chapter looks at biodiversity loss, focusing on the loss of insects, particularly pollinators, damage to marine biological diversity, specifically in coral reefs, deforestation and the impacts of air pollution. As the author reminds us, the current Anthropocene period of human initiated environmental destruction, while inducing change that is 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than general evolution, is not the first mass extinction. There have been five previous mass extinctions linked to volcanic activity and meteor impacts as well as ice ages and other significant shifts in temperature linked to changes in the orbit of our planet. The current accelerated waves of extinction then are perhaps the first where action we are conscious of, even if it is not consciously premeditated, has led to adverse and often existential changes for many species, but importantly not the animals that initiated the change.
The discussion of the sciences of climate crisis provides the background information for the discussions of ethics, needs and climate justice as well as the political implications of these changes in chapters 4, 5 and 6. In these sections we are asked to consider who is ‘considerable’, or to put it another way who should be considered when ethical decisions are made? Should it be current generations or should it include future generations and what weight should be given to current inhabitants of the Earth vis-à-vis the many generations as yet unborn. This discussion is linked to a consideration of the development of the Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015) in Wales, which places a duty on politicians and policymakers to consider these issues in their decisions. It is also taken up in the discussion of the use of economic discounting in the assessment of government investments. In these discussions reference is made to the seminal works by recent philosophers of ethics, including Kenneth Goodpaster, Derek Parfit and Onora O’Neill, as well as the established scions of Locke, Kant, Rawls and Dworkin etc.
The tendency to privilege the present and the past in preference to the future provides a rich vein for classroom and group discussion as well as activist engagement with the policies of governments and corporate bodies, from the potential legislation in New Zealand seeking to encourage consideration of the future in policy decisions, or discussion of the defence of non-violent action to prevent future deaths in Andreas Malm’s 2023 film How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
A related discussion of who counts in decisions about climate change and action forms the centrepiece of chapter 5 which considers Anthropocentrism, Sentientism and Biocentrism. in short, who should be considered? Is it just humans, or also animals and other living things? Here the discussion also extends to consideration of the priority that should be attached to the members of these groups. Should the focus be on those which have not yet met their basic needs, or some other measure, and do all animals and living things have an equal claim to consideration? Does food derived from insects provide a more morally justified source of nutrients for humans in a world which will not be able to sustain an expansion of meat production and consumption in the future? Again, all good seminar or book club questions and with the added potential to try some of these nutritional alternatives in person.
The last substantive sections of the book consider how climate change might be limited through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and pollution using various alternative energy generating technologies, reforestation, the promotion of seagrass and preservation of peat bogs, as well as measures to mitigate and adapt to these changes through carbon capture and storage, flood defences and adaptive architecture. To fund these changes, particularly in the world’s poorest nations, the author considers the ethical merits and pitfalls of systems where either the polluter pays, or the beneficiary funds the changes, or the wealthiest make the largest contribution. The analysis of these options is then linked to comment on the successes and setbacks in recent rounds of the annual COP process and international treaty developments including the potential creation of a crime of ecocide to be judged by the International Criminal Court. These issues open up the possibility in classroom and other settings of staging a mock parliamentary debate in which the merits of this type of regulation are debated by the advocates and opposers of this type of reform. In the U.K. this might focus on Baroness Rosie Boycott’s recent private members bill in the House of Lords which proposed writing into the criminal law in England and Wales a crime of Ecocide. Similar draft legislation and regulation has been proposed in Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, the Netherlands, Belgium, and, most recently, Scotland.
Climate change and biodiversity issues get limited coverage in the English National Curriculum and curriculum in Northern Ireland, but more extensive treatment in the Curriculum for Wales and Scottish Curriculum for Excellence. The limited coverage of this area of teaching in the most populous parts of the U.K. has meant that there is a limited range of teaching materials available for this area, the notable exceptions being teaching and learning resources from Sustainability and Environmental Education, UCL’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education and the World Wildlife Fund (SEEd 2024; UCL 2024; WWF 2024). These resources are helpful, particularly for school-based education, but do not deal with ethical issues because this can be seen as contentious and/or political. Attfield’s book deals with these challenges in a sensitive and non-political manner that responds to the challenge set out by the Universities Network at COP26. The book is ideally placed to provide Year 12 and 13 pupils, as well as undergraduates and lay readers, with a grounding in the key ethical issues and challenges facing individuals, households, employees of corporations and other organisations as they consider the options to deal with the climate crisis.
My only criticism of this short text is that it would have been good to see more attention devoted to the activities of campaigning and pressure groups advancing the case of action to deal with the climate crisis. Whether it is long-established groups like the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, or more recent collectives like Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil or the Earth Liberation Army, what are the ethical limits of justifiable action and how might these be considered and determined? How should we view die-ins, glitter sprinkling, gridlocking, krazy gluing, powder/paint throwing, Skolstrejk för Climatet, slow protests, roaming/trespass, tree housing, tunnelling and ecotage? These are also some of the ethical dilemmas and divides in current eco-activism and very much the questions occupying the minds of many campaigners young and old. How might these campaigns be considered from the perspectives of consequentialist, deontological, existential, Kantian, pragmatist or virtue ethics? Perhaps these questions might be issues to be considered in a subsequent book by Attfield, or in one of what will doubtless be the many future editions of this excellent introductory text.
References
BRC (2024) Climate Change Education Resources. Available at: https://www.redcross.org.uk/get-involved/teaching-resources/climate-change-education-resources. Last accessed 3rd July 2024.
Campbell, C. (2023) ‘“What do we talk about when we talk about climate change?”: meaningful environmental education, beyond the info dump.’ Journal of Philosophy of Education 57(2).457–477. DOI: 10.1093/jopedu/qhad020
Fisher, S., Fitzgerald, R. and Poortinga, W. (2018) ‘Climate change Social divisions in belief and behaviour,’ in Phillips, D., Curtice, J., Phillips, M. and Perry, J. (eds), British Social Attitudes: The 35th Report, London. The National Centre for Social Research. Available at: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/21046/1/bsa35_climate_change.pdf Last accessed 3rd July 2024.
Ritchie, H. (2024) Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, London, Chatto and Windus.
SEEd (2024) Sustainability and Environmental Education. Available at: https://se-ed.org.uk/. Last accessed 3rd July 2024.
Standish, P. (2020) ‘Preface.’ Journal of Philosophy of Education (54)4. 789–790. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.12499
Stickney, J. And Skilbeck, A. (2020) ‘Problematising “Transformative” Environmental Education in a Climate Crisis.’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54(4). 791–806. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.12486
Thew, H., Graves, C., Reay, D., Smith, S., Petersen, K., Bomberg, E., Boxley, S., Causley, J., Congreve, A., Cross, I., Dunk, R., Dunlop, L., Facer, K., Gamage, K. A. A., Greenhalgh, C., Greig, A., Kiamba, L., Kinakh, V., Kioupi, V., Lee, M., Klapper, R., Kurul, E., Marshall-Cook, J., McGivern, A., Mörk, J., Nijman, V., O’Brien, J., Preist, C., Price, E., Samangooei, M., Schrodt, F., Sharmina, M., Toney, J., Walsh, C., Walsh, T., Wood, R. Wood, P., and Worsfold, N.T. (2021) Mainstreaming climate education in Higher Education Institutions. COP26 Universities Network Working Paper. Available at: https://uucn.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Mainstreaming-Climate-Change-Education.pdf Last accessed 3rd July 2024.
UCL (2024) Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/ucl-centre-climate-change-and-sustainability-education. Last accessed 3rd July 2024.
Wallace-Wells, D. (2019) The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future. London: Allen Lane.
WWF (2024) Climate Change Resources. Available at: https://www.wwf.org.uk/get-involved/schools/resources/climate-change-resources. Last accessed 3rd July 2024.
YouGov (2024) Wildlife and Countryside Link Survey Results. Available at https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/WCL_Environment_240614_W.pdf. Last accessed 30th June 2024.
