Imagine a parent–teacher conference. The teacher tells you your child is “on track” to graduate from high school. Relieved, you follow up: “Great! Can you tell me more precisely what that means?” The teacher responds: “Sure. ‘Being on track’ is a technical term. It means the probability of graduation is 50%–66%. Of course, there are complications. For one thing, 50–66% is for the average child. The rate of failure is much greater for high-risk students.” Anticipating your next question, they continue: “Unfortunately, we have no firm information about whether or not your child is high-risk. In addition, the projections assume that every student develops linearly over time. But it is well-known that some students go into downward spirals from which it can be challenging to rebound. Alas, it is difficult to predict to whom such spirals will occur or when.” Rallying, the teacher adds: “On the more positive side, the school is hopeful that new teaching technologies will dramatically improve outcomes. These technologies are, of course, speculative and have not been tested yet. Nevertheless, our probability assessments assume that they will work, and take up much of the burden of helping students graduate.”
I suspect most parents would be shocked by these revelations, and outraged by the misleading nature of the “on track” remark. Probably, they would sound the alarm about the state of the school and its messaging. They would demand that the education system take stronger, more decisive action, including by providing better safety margins and a higher standard of care.
If you agree, you are primed to join a climate activist organization like Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, or the Sunrise Movement. These groups are dedicated to fighting climate change, rather than reforming the education system. Still, there are similarities. Their primary focus is also on protecting the young, now and in the future. Moreover, many in these movements are motivated by the shock and righteous indignation you probably felt about our education example. Of course, there are some disanalogies. One is that things are worse when it comes to climate. No one says that humanity is currently “on track” to avoid dangerous climate change. Moreover, most people know that we are falling far short. Still, my point is that in the science and policy mainstream, even what counts as “on track” is pretty disturbing and in ways that are loosely analogous to our example. This point can survive even if the resemblance is not perfect. Let me explain.
Mainstream climate policy embraces some concerning baselines. For example, suppose our focus is on achieving the targets of the Paris Agreement, of holding average global temperature rise below 2°C and pursuing efforts to get closer to 1.5°C.
First, mainstream projections count humanity as “on track” to achieve these goals if it has—you guessed it—a 50–66% chance of avoiding 2°C or 1.5°C. Yet 50% is the equivalent of a coin toss, and even 66% implies a 1 in 3 chance of failure. Accepting a 33–50% chance of failure hardly seems a robust commitment to protecting the future. Recall that climate change threatens severe and potentially catastrophic outcomes for billions of people and, at the extreme, perhaps even human survival. In such circumstances, aiming for much higher probabilities (e.g., 95% or more) seems more appropriate, and more in keeping with a proper standard of care for the future. However, these would, of course, be much more demanding objectives.
Second, the mainstream approach seems unduly complacent in the face of uncertainty about precisely how sensitive the climate is to extra emissions. One issue is that conventional models typically employ a mid-range climate sensitivity, yet choosing a high sensitivity would make an enormous difference. For instance, some models suggest that a high sensitivity implies that the carbon budget for 1.5°C had already been breached by 2021. Other models project that a high sensitivity, high emission scenario would result in a global temperature rise of around 4.5-7 C by 2100. As one source puts it, for such scenarios, “within eight decades, the warming has a 50% probability of subjecting the global population to catastrophic (>3°C) to unknown risks (>5°C) and a 5% probability of being fully in the unknown risk category, which also includes existential threats for everyone.”
Given such projections, the ethical concern should be evident. Focusing solely on the mid-range climate sensitivity, and ignoring the risks associated with higher sensitivity, jeopardizes the future in a way that is difficult to justify. At the very least, the mainstream approach requires a further argument to be ethically defensible.
Another issue is that the models on which mainstream climate targets are based normally assume that future climate change will be linear. Consequently, they do not take the prospect of nonlinear or even abrupt climate change seriously enough. Yet it is well known that positive feedback mechanisms (e.g., rapid permafrost melt) may accelerate climate change and that there are likely to be major “tipping points” in the climate system. Although we do not know precisely when and where such nonlinear behavior would be triggered, it is likely to result in serious and possibly catastrophic negative impacts. Leading experts say such climate surprises “require an emergency response.” However, conventional mitigation policies do not focus on them, and so arguably do not afford sufficient protection against dangerous climate change. Again, the mainstream appears unreasonably and unethically complacent.
A third baseline issue is equally worrying. Mainstream projections embody substantial technological optimism. Strikingly, they already assume that over this century, there will be massive contributions to mitigation from technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This feature is built into all mainstream scenarios for 1.5°C and most for 2.0°C. Indeed, these projections typically assume that “negative emissions” technologies will become available on a large scale as soon as 2030, that deployment will be quickly ramped up, and that negative emissions will play a major role in constraining climate change across the second half of the century.
It is then sobering to learn that negative emissions technologies are currently highly speculative. Many either do not yet exist or are untested. All face significant challenges if they are to be deployed at anything like the scale envisioned. Under such conditions, already factoring them into solutions seems deeply complacent and, again, unethical. It involves a high-stakes gamble on the fate of billions of people; one primarily affecting the young, the most vulnerable, and future generations. If the gamble fails, life will be very different in the second half of this century and beyond.
To sum up, mainstream climate targets rely on baseline assumptions that look ethically contentious, resulting in estimates of what it would take to be “on track” that seem unduly weak and poorly justified. In assuming mid-range probabilities, mid-level climate sensitivity, a linear climate system, and great optimism about negative emissions technologies, the prevailing view seems to place less importance on protecting the future than one might reasonably expect or which can be ethically defended. One might say that the standard picture ‘stacks the deck’ against the future.
How have we found ourselves in this position? The situation is complicated. A full explanation would undoubtedly have many parts, including familiar points about bad actors, inequality, and background injustices. These factors are important. However, allow me here to focus on the intergenerational dimension specifically.
On the face of it, the norms for climate targets have become corrupted. They are distorted in ways which suggest that the present is taking advantage of the future. Unfortunately, such corruption is predictable. One aspect of the climate problem is that many negative impacts of current emissions come with a long fuse. They will be disproportionately imposed on the young and other future generations. However, these groups lack much power within conventional political systems. Indeed, those yet to be born or still very young cannot even speak up to defend themselves. Therefore, the temptation exists for older generations to continue to impose severe risks on the future for the sake of benefits for themselves, even when many of those benefits are modest. Hence, we see not a classic tragedy of the commons but a tyranny of the contemporary.
The prospect of intergenerational tyranny is morally disturbing. Many would prefer we not talk about it. Still, I argue that talking about it is necessary if humanity is to confront the challenge before us. There is a strong temptation for those engaged or complicit in intergenerational tyranny not to acknowledge that it is an integral part of the climate problem. From that viewpoint, deflecting attention to other, less embarrassing questions will seem better. Unfortunately, the current framing of climate targets facilitates this kind of moral corruption. The distortion created by overly complacent targets makes it easier to disguise abuses of intergenerational power.
On my reading, one thing activist organizations like Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future are doing is calling out intergenerational tyranny. Alas, mainstream climate targets can make them seem overly alarmist. In the eyes of some, the activists are like neurotic parents who need to relax about their child’s education and trust in the schools. Our education analogy, however, casts the problem in a different light. Against highly complacent norms, alarm is an appropriate response, especially when the future of your children, their children, and indeed all children is at stake.
The Current Events Series of Public Philosophy of the APA Blog aims to share philosophical insights about current topics of today. If you would like to contribute to this series, email rbgibson@utmb.edu or sabrinamisirhiralall@apaonline.org.
Stephen M. Gardiner
Stephen M. Gardiner is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle. He specializes in climate ethics, political philosophy and ethical theory. He is the author of A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (2011). His latest book, Dialogues on Climate Justice (co-authored with Arthur Obst), tells the story of Hope, a fictional protagonist whose life is shaped by a series of conversations about ethics and justice in a climate-challenged world.
