Continuing Our Journey - Environmental Ethics Independent Study Week 4

      Continuing our reading of Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, Maslin discusses the global politics surrounding climate change in chapter seven. As someone from the United States, I found this chapter disheartening and embarrassing because our country is so often the reason that global treaties to address the climate crisis have failed. I have to wonder what the rest of the world and future generations will feel about our inaction, knowing that so much of it was caused by the lobbying of fossil fuel companies. I can only hope that the tide will turn and our leaders will act in the interest of the planet and our own health, instead of acting in the interest of the 'all-mighty' dollar. As the old Native American proverb states: "Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money." 

     Maslin explains: 

The UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] was created at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to negotiate a worldwide agreement for reducing GHGs [greenhouse gases] and limit the impact of climate change...Since the UNFCCC was set up, the nations of the world, 'the parties', have been meeting annually at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to move negotiations forward. (p.106-107)

There have been three major agreements since the establishment of the COP: Kyoto 1997, Copenhagen 2009, and Paris 2015, and the United States has been directly involved in the failure of all three to reach their goals. However, as of 2021, the U.S., along with many other member nations, has "pledged to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050." (p.115) 

     Though, as Maslin points out, the UNFCCC seems to have several major flaws.  The first is that all of the past and current pledges and agreements fall short of where we need to be. "[T]he current Paris Agreement, if all the pledges are honored, still causes global warming of at least 3℃ and the associated impacts..." (p.115) The second major flaw is that there is no enforcement of any of these agreements of pledges; they are all voluntary. "This is why policies and laws are required at a regional...and...national level...The only way to translate international treaties into a reality is through regional and national laws." (p.115) The third major issue is 'green colonialism', Maslin explains that many have "raised philosophical and ethical doubts about climate negotiations as a whole...[because] they reflect a version of colonialism, since rich developed countries are seen to be dictating to poorer countries how and when they should develop." (p.116) The last flaw could best be described as a conflict between global markets and national governments. Maslin gives the example, "if the USA through the Paris Agreement wanted to reduce carbon emissions from heavy industry, it could impose a carbon tax on steel and concrete production. [However,] if other countries in the world do not have this restriction, their products become cheaper, even including the cost of transportation...to the USA, all of which would lead to the emission of more CO2 overall." (p.116)

     In chapter eight, Maslin discusses the "three types of solutions to climate change:" adaptation, mitigation, and geoengineering. (p.122) Adaptation "is providing protection for the population from the impacts of climate change." (p.122) Maslin states: 

The IPCC gives six clear reasons why we must adapt to climate change: (1) climate change impacts cannot be avoided even if emissions are cut rapidly to zero...; (2) anticipatory and precautionary adaptation is more effective and less costly than forced last-minute emergency fixes; (3) climate change may be more rapid and more pronounced than current estimates suggest, and unexpected and extreme events are likely to occur; (4) immediate benefits can be gained from better adaptation to climate variability and extreme atmospheric events...(5) immediate benefits can also be gained by removing maladaptive policies and practices...; and (6) climate change brings opportunities as well as threats. (p.123)

Mitigation "in its simplest terms is reducing our carbon footprint and thus reversing the trend of ever-increasing GHG emissions." (p.122) This can be achieved by rethinking many of our actions from lessening fossil fuel consumption by switching to renewable or cleaner energy sources to moderating deforestation for urbanization and agriculture to buying more locally produced foods and goods. Lastly, geoengineering "which involves large-scale extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere or modification of the global climate." (p.122) As Maslin writes: "Ideas considered under geoengineering range from the very sensible to the completely mad." (p.141) And, there are no geoengineering solutions currently available that would eliminate the need for us to implement major mitigation techniques now.

     This week in A Sand County Almanac, we will examine Part II, Sketches Here and There. In this section, Leopold describes various moments in his younger life that led him to believe in the importance of conservation. The section is divided into several states and territories in which Leopold lived or spent his time. While in Wisconsin, he describes the feeling of seeing cranes "on the great marsh." (p.89) Leopold states:

Our ability to percieve quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, in this higher gamut, as yet beyond the reach of words. (p.90)

Part of what gives Leopold this feeling about the crane is its place in history: "He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men." (p.90)

     Throughout his journeys, Leopold seems to recognize the importance of preserving the plants and animals in nature as he witnesses their diminishment or extinction. He writes of a monument to the end of pigeons in Wisconson, learning a lesson about overhunting in Illinois and Iowa, watching the light go out of a wolf's eyes after shooting it and the slaughter of the last grizzly bear in Arizona, and the clearing of the last jaguar in the Delta of the Colorado, along with the disappearance of many different 'wild' areas. It seems that he definitely mourns what he knew. He writes: 

It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise. Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark. (p.102)

     It is sad to say, but as we sit here in the midst of the sixth mass extinction and climate change, both caused in large part by human actions, I do not think this message was taken to heart by enough of us. Hopefully, we can still learn from Leopold's message and try to turn things around. 

Next week we will finish these first two books.