Climate Change, Solidarity and Love

So today I want to talk a bit about our attitude or approach to climate change. 

Ok so in a paper entitled “What has posterity ever done for me?” the economist and philosopher Robert Heilbroner says that most of us don’t really care if humans survive into the future! He begins his paper like this, he says: Suppose we knew with a high degree of certainty that humans could not survive a thousand years unless we gave up our diet of meat, abandoned all pleasure driving, and cut back on our everyday use of pleasure. He asks, Would we care enough for posterity or for future generations to make those sacrifices, to make sure they survive? His response, I doubt it! 

So why don’t we care? Well, Heilbroner continues, he says: By the year 2150 you will be dead and so will your children. So what does it matter then what life will be like then. Why should I lift a finger to affect events that will have no more meaning for me 100 years after my death?

Ok so what’s Heilbroner’s point so far. Well, it’s this, it’s that no argument based on reason or rational self-interest is ever going to get us to care enough for future generations to lift a finger on its behalf! In other words, reasonable cool calculation just can’t give us a convincing argument and therefore the motivation to care enough for future generations of people. 

Ok well then if reason or rationality can’t do it, what can? Well, Heilbroner’s answer is this: it’s the cultivation of empathy and moral sensibility! In other words, it’s to allow ourselves to feel the anguish that comes with seeing ourselves as the executioners of humankind, and taking personal responsibility for it, a responsibility, he says, that defies all the homicidal promptings of cold rationality. 

Actually, now that I think about it, Heilbroner’s message here reminds me a bit of what the French philosopher Albert Camus was saying as well, even though it was 70 years ago and so in a bit of a different context. For Camus the future of humanity was seen to be in jeopardy because of increasing nuclear escalation and because of the possibility of more world wars. Now Camus’ message at this time was that everyone has to do what they can to preserve peace, that they have to act so as to not divest any future of its meaning. At one point he’s even quoted as saying that “if we are to fail, it is better to have stood on the side of those who wish to preserve life than on the side of those who are destroying it”.  In other words, the very least we can do is to act and live in a way now that keeps our hands clean of the blood of future generations! Now that comes sort of close to what Heilbroner said, right? That when we open ourselves up to the anguish of seeing ourselves as the executioners of humankind, we might be motivated to take responsibility and to act differently now. 

And actually there are more similarities between them. Like Heilbroner, Camus also didn’t think that the solution to a concern for posterity lay in abstract moral theory or cold rationality; no, for him it was a sense of solidarity that mattered and that needed to be cultivated. Now solidarity for Camus is a big topic but essentially what he believed is that because we all share the same fate as human beings in this indifferent and precarious universe in which we find ourselves, which is death, the best we can do is to love and to look out for each other, and, despite the odds, to work together to make things the best they can be and to extend our time here. In a way, you might think of it this way, what we are is we’re all on the same lifeboat together, so we have to unite together to defend ourselves against the sea and its ravages, because if we don’t, well, then we all go!

And what’s more, solidarity for Camus, rooted as it is in love, also means that we respect the dignity of human life, which means this, it means that we declare that human life, whether present or future, has a value that must be defended against the powers that threaten it. So all human life must be valued and protected, regardless of time or space. And again, all of this begins with love, and commitment, and empathy, and a sense of solidarity;  that’s what’s most essential here and those are the things that are going to motivate us to care not just for our present neighbours but also for our brothers and sisters who do not yet exist. 

Ok well so what do we have going on today? Well to put it bluntly, should we keep our current course, our civilization today won’t be tenable tomorrow. We’re steering ourselves incrementally towards irreversible ecological destruction. We’re ignoring our climate commitments and we’re doing it at the expense of an environment that sustains us and of the livelihoods of others, both present and future, and ultimately we’re doing it at the expense of our very survival as a species. 

Climate is the concern of us all. No one is immune to it. This is our lifeboat problem. Yet we continue with our ways. We continue to take from the world in the way that deprives and harms others, especially of course future generations of people. Remember young Greta Thunberg’s moving denunciation of world leaders at a climate summit in 2019: “How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood’, she said. She’s right. We’re making thoughtless and self-interested decisions now that seal the fate of our children and radically damage the quality of their life. 

I don’t know, I think maybe thinkers like Heilbroner and Camus are helpful in reminding us of our basic moral sentiments and just how powerful they can be, if we truly open ourselves up to them. Loving the earth and each other and our children’s children can make all the difference between life and death. And so can genuine cooperation amongst one another and amongst nations.  

Human solidarity in the face of catastrophe can create a powerful collective response, one that can make real changes. 

So why should we lift a finger to affect events that will have no more meaning for us 100 years after our death, because real love asks something of the future, and not just of the moment, because real love wants to preserve life, even if ours has long passed.