Ed’s Imagined Podcast Transcript

Ed:  I am here with Bill McKibben, author and climate change activist, to discuss his book, Falter – Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out (referenced as “Falter”). Joining us are Hope Jahren, biology professor and researcher, and author of The Story of More (referenced as “More”), and Robin Attfield, professor emeritus at Cardiff University and author of several books on environmental ethics, including the popular Environmental Ethics, A Very Short Introduction (referenced as “Short Introduction”). Welcome to you all.

Bill, the subtitle of your book strikes me a bit ominous. What do you mean by the “human game,” and do you think the 'human game has begun to play itself out’, or do you believe we will avert the worst imaginable outcomes of climate change in the century ahead? If so, how? If not, why not?

McKibben:  Thank you for having me here. I am excited to be here discussing this most important issue with Hope and professor Attfield. When I talk about the human game, I am talking about the sum total of culture and commerce and politics; of religion and sport and social life; of dance and music; of dinner and art and cancer and sex and Instagram; of love and loss; of everything that comprises the experience of our species. (Falter, 8) What I am calling the human game is unimaginably deep, complex, and beautiful. It is also endangered. Indeed, it is beginning to falter even now. (Falter, 10) I spend the book explaining the danger, and, at the end pointing to some ways we might yet avert it. (Falter, 10)

Ed:  Hope, your book has a similar theme, doesn’t it? What is the story of more?

Jahren:  Yes, Ed. Like Bill’s book, mine details much of the devastation of the world as a result of climate change. And everyone who really understands climate change understands that its principle driver is the burning of fossil fuels. My book is about consumption, the production of more stuff. Underlying that is the idea of the necessity of economic growth. Bill explains the problem of the focus of economic growth excellently in his book Deep Economy, where he states plainly that ‘the invention of the idea of economic growth was almost as significant as the invention of fossil fuel power’. (9/24/20 blog post A McKibben Miscellany/Deep Economy)

Ed:  So are you arguing that economic growth is bad? Is that the story of more?

Jahren:  The Story of More, the book, is something I want to communicate. (Jahren video; all references to “Jahren video” refer to the section from 0:31:00 to 0:42:00) I am a teacher. In 2009 I was asked by my department chair to teach a course on climate change. (More, 6) I sat down at my desk, turned on my computer, and began to research change. (More, 7) Over the next several years, I cataloged the data that described how population has increased, how agriculture has intensified, how energy use has skyrocketed over the last half century….I search the data for patterns across the decades of my own life. I set out to quantify global change in the most concrete and precise terms that I could comprehend, and I learned a lot by doing it. (More, 7)

I learned that in my lifetime, population has doubled, but food production, grain production, meat production and oil usage have tripled; electricity and sugar production has quadrupled; plastic production has increased ten times. All of this has led to increased waste, as a result of poor distribution. This is really the story of the book; it is the story of more. If you graph this data, you see the shape of more. (Jahren video)

Ed:  Professor Attfield, you have written extensively on environmental ethics. Both Bill and Hope have written about the physical harm to our planet due to climate change, and specifically, carbon emissions. They speak of what we should do, in Bill’s words, to continue the human game. But is there an ethical argument for what we need to do? Is there an “ought”?

Attfield:  Well, yes, Ed, I think that there are strong ethical aspects to climate change. Bill and Hope laid out strong cases for the very real imminent threats to human civilization, and the relationship of human activity to those threats. Climate change is taking place, regardless of the causes, so humanity needs to adapt. Countries have problems right now, so there is a strong ethical case for adaptation. There is certainly a strong ethical case for curtailing fossil fuel emissions which cause climate change. (Attfield video)

Now even if we don’t know that humans are causing climate change, as some assert, we do know that it is seriously possible. So how should environmental ethicists reply to skeptics? A good answer lies in the Precautionary Principle, which specifically applies whenever complete scientific consensus is lacking…. This widely endorsed principle advocates action to prevent outcomes from which there is reason to expect serious or irreversible harms, even in advance of scientific consensus. (Short Introduction 107-108; Attfield video)

A key word is obligation. If we know we are causing a risk to a great number of people, we have obligations resulting from those risks, even if we’re not certain we are causing harm. Human rights is a relevant ethical term. Present and future peoples are put at risk from rising sea levels, spreading deserts, hurricanes and storms, wild fires, and so on. It is likely that human action is causing that, and that is infringing people’s rights. (Attfield video)

Jarhen:  It is interesting, Professor Attfield, that you speak of an obligation. Despite the bleakness of my book, I do have some hope. And I believe that if you hope for something, you are obliged to work for it; that you have a duty. And that duty requires courage to not just criticize government and corporate policies, but to look at your own life and take stock and see how you can be different. (Jahren video)

Attfield:  Ah, Hope, now you are becoming a philosopher. Several philosophers have proposed that rightness means compliance with certain rules. Thinking that right, ethical, actions spring from duty is a deontological moral theory. This is to be contrasted with consequentialist moral theories, which base right action on the consequences of the act or rule. (see generally Short Introduction, 51) But your reference to courage invokes what is called virtue ethics. Courage is one of the four classic Greek virtues, along with temperance, wisdom, and the ultimate, justice. These virtues result in good character. Character is more important than right action, because it makes people dependable and trustworthy, and more likely to behave consistently and fairly in future than adherence to moral rules. (Short Introduction, 48)

McKibben:  You’ve hit the nail on the head there, professor. The crisis we face today is, in my opinion, the result of a lack of character. This discussion of ethics, of virtue and character, is fundamental to understanding why we are on the verge of rendering our planet unfit for human habitation. When I got into this thirty years ago, I thought we were engaged in an argument about the causes of climate change. I was wrong. It was clear by that time that we had won that argument; there was no doubt about what was causing climate change. But we were losing the fight. The fight was about money and power. And the richest industry in the world was using its resources to win even at the cost of breaking the planet. (McKibben video, at 7:33) I explain in my book how Exxon knew as early as the late ‘70s that its product was going the wreck the planet. (Falter, 72) Company documents from 1982 warn that heading off global warming would require major reductions in fossil fuel consumption. (Falter, 74) Yet Exxon chose to emphasize the uncertainty of scientific data about climate change, and thus began the most consequential lie in human history. (Falter, 76) So all this time, when we could have been addressing the problems of climate change, we have been locked in a sterile debate about its causes. (McKibben video, at 10:15) This is an ethical failure on a grand scale.

Jahren: Bill, I can feel your frustration. For 25 years I have worked with scientists calling for policy change, and there has been none. People say your own actions won’t make a difference without policy change, but I’m not willing to wait anymore. That’s why I wrote my book. I want to encourage people to look at their own life, take stock, and see how they can be different. (Jahren video)

McKibben:  That’s right, Hope. But, and I’m sure you’ll agree, being different requires more than a change in personal habits. I no longer try to fool myself with that is how we deal with climate change. Climate change is a math problem. There is no way to make the math work one Tesla at a time, or one vegan meal at a time, or one solar panel at a time. A movement is required. The only thing an individual can do is become less of an individual and join with other people in movements large enough to make a difference. (McKibben video, at 12:05)

Ed:  I’m sorry folks, but we are going to have to wrap this up. But before we go, let me ask you Bill, do you think the human game has begun to play itself out?

McKibben:  Let me just say that I am very concerned. I am concerned that too many ordinary people fail to appreciate the wonder of the human game and the threats to it. Even – especially – in its twilight, the human game is graceful and compelling. (Falter, 256) Martin Luther King liked the quote that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’. Well, the arc of the physical universe is short, and it bends toward heat. If we don’t win soon, we don’t win. (McKibben video, at 22:17)

We have had more success than I imagined we would, … but we have yet to turn the tide; the power of people is not yet mobilized in sufficient strength to outweigh the financial majesty of the fossil fuel industry, so we continue down an ever-hotter path. (Falter, 191) Consider this. Just this week, the nominee for the vacant seat on the United States Supreme Court refused to say whether she accepts the science of climate change under questioning from Senator Kamala Harris, saying she lacked the expertise to know for sure and calling it a topic too controversial to get into. This is nothing more than a perpetuation of the great lie. This nominee, not unsurprisingly, is promoted by the Federalist Society, which is funded by the oil rich, ultra-libertarian Charles Koch, who has spent millions denying climate change. We face a huge political problem. The key is how we see ourselves. If, as the antigovernment rhetoricians like Koch insist, we view ourselves only as individuals, then the game is lost: we will never combine in numbers large enough to overcome the deep power and unrelenting focus of great wealth. (Falter, 192, 193)  Hope lies in a movement of resistance.

Ed:  This has been a great conversation, and I thank you all. Any last words?

McKibben, Jahren, Attfield (together): VOTE!