The Ethics of Climate Change

I am a Unitarian Universalist.   Recently , our minister preached  - yes, big surprise - that's what ministers do!  She explored  the subject of " neighbours."

Well, I believe that we are all connected - people, animals, insects, viruses, plants, fungi, stars - you get the idea.   So my answer to the question "Who is  my neighbour? "   is -  everyone and everything.  Therefore, it behooves me to look after my nieghbour - or not to actively harm them.   Therefore, I must  act to prevent  climate change as well as work to persuade others of the necessity of acting.

I'm not the only person who has arrived at this conclusion.

Climate change is changing our world. Not only is it changing our physical world, but also our intellectual, social, and moral worlds, in ways that we could not have imagined a  generation or two ago. The science of climate change, and the political impasses associated  with dealing with it, demonstrate that we are in a profoundly unsafe, interdependent, and uncertain world....[Therefore] be willing to take an ethical stand on climate change.  There is no place to hide form this....Regard economics as being about provisioning - that is, the way socities organize themselves to provide for the sustaining and flourishing of life. http://www.e3network.org/papers/Ethics_and_the_Economist_033111.pdf

So what do I do to live ethically and to prevent and mitigate climate change?

Little and big - in no particular order:

• I walk to work.  If you cannot do that, take transit.  Or car pool! If everyone drove to work with one aother person, you'd reduce vehicles on the road by one -half and greenhouse gas emissions accordingly.
• I shop at the local farmers' market and freeze and preserve food  for the winter.  Trucking and flying goods generates a lot of greenhouse gases.
• I am a vegetarian.  Eating meat raised in the agri biz is not only cruel to animals, and  destructive to the environment,  but the industry  generates almost 20 % of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
• I buy fair trade food.  (OK - it's trucked in  -but at least shade grown coffee doesn't destroy the environment. And as soon as I find coffee that arrives om the Bluenose, I'll buy that.)
• We have cut our electrical bill to one- half its former total by turning off lights/ appliances/ clock radios  and installing CFLs.  We replaced our washer , dryer , and dishwasher with European models that use very little electricity or water.
• We(me and my partner)  turn our heat backto 15 C at night and up to 17 C during the daytime.  Walking around in a sweater isn't a hardship.  And snuggling is fun!
• We installed a solar hot water heater.   Lots of susnshine in the Interior of BC.
• We don't fly anywhere.
• I write letters to politicans and urge them to to take action on climate change ( and perahps salvage Canada's reputation in the process.)  
• We donate to climate action groups.
• We help organize climate change rallies and vigils - in fact, we volunteer a lot of time.  Not only do we work for a good cause, we enlarge our community of friends.  And have fun.
• I educate myself  on the issue and on the psychology of climate change denial.
• I meditate to grow my loving kindness and to generate more love in the world.

Anyone can do some of these things.  I / we didn't begin by doing all of them at once. Just begin! 

If you can only choose one, please choose creating more love in the world - for yourself as well as all others. After all, Gandhi said  "Be the change you want to see in the world."   I say once we learn to love the world and ourselves, we will not destroy it  - we will  create a velvet climate revolution.

PS The picture was taken at a candlelight vigil for the Copenhagen Conference - the action was suggested by the folks at
http://www.350.org/             Check the website out - lots of ideas for actions in the fall of 2011.

The Ethics of Climate Change

Finally - a mention of ethics in the mainstream media.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/climate-change/copenhagen-and-the-ethics-of-climate-change/article1404694/

Imagine the world being shuffled like a deck of cards and redealt. Canadians suddenly no longer know who they are, where they live, how much money they have, what their status is – they exist behind what U.S. philosopher John Rawls termed a veil of ignorance.

Thus separated from the biases of their former selves, they can consider the morality of a given issue. Would they condone the carbon emissions of the tar sands if they found themselves living in an impoverished society on the equator, struggling for a sliver of industrialization while temperatures rise and bake their land?

No, of course they wouldn't condone the gHG emissions of the developed world.....

Ethics and Climate Change (First Posted Dec. 15, 2009)

Climate change is a fact.  Look outside your door in the Interior of BC  at the pine trees killed by the mountain pine beetle and climate change.  Look at the loss of permanent sea ice in the Arctic.  Ladakh villagers building dams to save their glaciers.   Kenyans perishing of starvation.  Polar bears eating their own young .  Glaciers that have vanished.  Temperature data (no, not all data was produced through CRU at East Anglia)  showing a relentless upward trend line.  The early arrival of spring.

And then consider who climate change will impact most in the future.  Asian rivers like the Indus, Ganges, and Yangtze may dry up as the Himalayan glaciers melt - leaving more than a billion people  without water for their crops.  The Maldives and other low lying Pacific atolls may vanish. Starvation caused by drought will decimate Africa.  Most of the damage will be in places other than Canada.  Most of the toll will be on future generations of poorer, browner people.

Cutting down and phasing out greenhouse gas emissions is a matter of intergenerational and social justice.  No economist or climatologist can tell us what to do based upon their data: however, they can recommend a course of action. We, as a community, then decide what to do based upon  our values.

What are our values?  Facing a crisis of monumental proportions, what course of action should we take?  What kind of society do we want?

Check Your Pension Fund

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/pension-funds-cast-eyes-on-oil-sands-stake/article1395300/

The hot rumour in Calgary this week - and there's always a hot rumour or two in the oil patch - has one or more public sector pension funds negotiating with ConocoPhillips for the oil sands holding the U.S. energy giant put on the block last month. The Syncrude stake could be worth anything up to $4-billion, and ConocoPhillips wants to deploy this capital on new reserves.

Check the investments your pension fund holds: if it contains tar sands companies (like Suncor, Syncrude or others mentioned in the article,) let your pension fund know you don't want your pension funded by the destruction of the boreal forest and  by greenhouse gas emissions.  Check out the coporate triple bottom line link on this blog to find alternate investments your pension fund could make - or better yet, send your pension fund administrators the link . The adminstrators could then check out all prospective investments for their triple bottom line statements.  This is an alternate way of slowing tar sand development: pension funds invest big bucks.