Philosophy and the Climate Crisis
Thinking Clearly to Help Ensure the Future of Humanity

October 25, 2024 - 19 minutes read - 3988 words

This is a shortlisted entry from the Daily Philosophy Global Essay Contest 2024.

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Philosophy as moral thinking?

As the climate crisis has become the “defining issue of our times,"¹ philosophers are increasingly devoting their efforts to analyse such an issue. Quite often, philosophers suggest that the best way philosophy can address the crisis is by teaching people to do the right thing – or better, what the right thing to do is in the first place. Simply put, the primary role of philosophy seems to be that of promoting moral education.

As Kieran Setiya puts it, philosophy, “improves our moral thinking” by asking “abstract and existential [questions]” such as “why would we care about the survival of humanity?” By doing so, philosophy highlights the importance of caring for those who are most vulnerable to the effects of the crisis, as well as for future generations and non-human beings. Accordingly, philosophy exceeds the domain of politics or techno-scientific assessments, bridging the gap between theory and practice and providing us with universal moral guidelines to think and act more justly. Crucially, moral thinking helps us in “maintaining hope for the future” instead of “continuing to act without it."²

Along these lines, David Charles contends that philosophy should promote an ethics based on empathy and hope to counter the alarming lack of climate action by both individuals and institutions. Philosophy should then teach people to “take action out of virtue, out of care for the planet, ourselves and our families, and out of empathy for our fellow human beings."³ Through moral education, philosophy becomes a beacon of hope and a moral guide pointing towards ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’ – so to speak – and a better future. By enhancing individual and collective moral thinking, people will have a better understanding of the importance of climate action, and of fundamental values such as empathy and solidarity. Subsequently, moral education provides people with a stronger set of values and with a sense of hope that is allegedly integral for the future of humanity.

It is potentially misleading to contend that improving our moral thinking is our best possible response to the climate crisis.

However, I suggest that it is reductive to uphold philosophy as a mere form of moral education, and it is potentially misleading to contend that improving our moral thinking is our best possible response to the climate crisis. While this isn’t necessarily what Setiya or Charles suggest (and indeed I do not intend to individually criticise either of them), it is nonetheless fundamental to clarify that philosophy has a much more onerous task than that of teaching people to appreciate and then do ‘the right thing’ – hence giving people hope for the future.

Instead, philosophy must play a primary role in providing not simply a strong array of moral values, but rather an adequate understanding of the crisis and of our role within it, in order to help keeping the planet habitable for both human and non-human beings. That is, philosophy should not be conceived as a form of moral thinking that enhances virtuous actions and fosters hope for the future. Rather, philosophy ought to be a practice of clear thinking that elucidates the concrete predicament of the crisis and informs subsequent appropriate action. Accordingly, we need to understand the climate crisis in its full extent to face it adequately – without relying on false or misleading assumptions about our role in the crisis.

Thinking clearly within the crisis

Undeniably, the climate crisis threatens the future of most of life on Earth. If global warming keeps running unabated, consequences could be even more catastrophic than we might fear. Starting with increased levels of biodiversity loss, staggering sea-level rises, and extreme weather events, the worst case (but not impossible) scenario is that of a Sixth Mass Extinction. In fact, scientists estimate that only less complex lifeforms such as microbes and bacteria will be able to adapt fast enough to global warming at its current rates and survive the crisis.⁴ Hence, climate change constitutes a planetary-wide existential crisis: even a temporary rise of global temperatures above 1.5°C or 2°C (which seems now inevitable) will permanently alter existing flora and fauna.⁵

Additionally, mitigating the crisis simply by reducing our emissions and adopting a more virtuous behaviour is no longer possible.⁶ Rather, we will have to complement emissions reductions and behavioural changes with so-called negative emissions technologies, which should remove excessive greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and store them in ‘carbon sinks.'⁷ These technologies, however, might not be developed in time or deployed at a sufficient scale to remove enough atmospheric CO₂, and do not really solve the problem. At best, they allow us to buy more time to figure out the next steps.

Mitigating the crisis simply by reducing our emissions and adopting a more virtuous behaviour is no longer possible.

The climate crisis is therefore a crisis in the truest sense of the word, being an extremely dire situation where a desperate solution – which may not even exist – is needed. The Greek term κρίσις (krisis), moreover, derives from κρίνω (krino, ‘to judge’) and from κριτικός (kritikós, ‘able to distinguish’); it indicates judgement, and a capacity for drawing distinctions and for choice. Hippocrates originally used this term to refer to a decisive moment in a patient’s clinical condition, namely to that moment in which a patient’s state of health could only improve or get worse but could not remain the same. That is, a patient in a state of crisis could only either make a recovery or pass away. The very same thing is true for the planet’s biota. The fact that we are in a climate and environmental crisis literally indicates that most of the existing biophysical world will either be brought to a renewed vitality or perish by means of (another) mass extinction, induced by human activity. Either way, the living world, just as anything that comes out of a true crisis, will not be the same again.

Although the previous paragraph may seem grim and even a bit fatalist, it does not provide ground-breaking information. Martin Schönfeld, in a 2011 editorial for the Journal of Global Ethics, already foresaw that climate change “puts all the traditional problems in a new place. It arises as the salient context for all of them. Thus, it is not an entry on the list; it is the new paper the old items are written on. To put it baldly, it is the list."⁸ Subsequently, Schönfeld suggests that climate change is not a problem that we have to solve, but rather an existential predicament that we have to cope with. To clarify, this does not mean that nothing should (or could) be done about climate change. Rather, Schönfeld’s statement highlights the radically existential nature of the philosophical challenges that the climate crisis poses.

Four years before Schönfeld’s editorial was published, Stephen Gardiner argued that, in order to effectively respond to the planetary and existential challenges posed by the climate crisis, we need to develop an “ethics of the transition”. That is, “in the absence of a compelling grand vision,” philosophy should stand “between grand theory and pragmatism” and tackle concrete environmental concerns. Philosophy, then, “articulate[s] the way forward” and enables us to embrace the kind of living world that will emerge from the crisis.⁹

More recently, the Director General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay claimed that an unsuccessful mitigation of the crisis would signify “a failure to preserve the habitability of our world and the diversity of species that inhabit it.” In order to cope with the planetary existential predicament of the climate crisis, she continues, “our relationship with nature and with other living beings needs a radical rethink.” Therefore, “we need to design and create a truly shared world” and to develop “a new set of ethics for the living world, which will serve as a basis for lasting reconciliation between humans and all other species and forms of life."¹⁰ Azoulay’s statement is deeply philosophical, and highlights the urgency of ensuring that global warming is abated before it makes the planet uninhabitable for both humans and non-human beings.

Moreover, hope is not always and necessarily a good thing.

It is important to clarify that while both Azoulay and Gardiner stress the importance of ethics in this process, their claims should not be interpreted as a broad call to prioritise the development of alternative moral values. That is, they do not necessarily identify an enhanced form of moral thinking as our best response to the crisis, and as a beacon of hope for the future of life on Earth. Rather, their claims are way more practical and effective if we understand them as a call to practically reorganise the living world in a way that makes it still liveable for its current lifeforms. The point here is to see and think clearly, to assess what can be done practically about the crisis, and not to foster a sense of hope based on abstract moral questioning.

Moreover, hope is not always and necessarily a good thing. Baruch Spinoza famously defines hope as “an inconstant joy which has arisen from the image of a future or past thing whose outcome we doubt,” which goes hand in hand with fear, namely “an inconstant sadness, which has also arisen from the image of a doubtful thing."¹¹ Accordingly, for Spinoza hope is fundamentally irrational and unphilosophical, and a direct cause of superstition, as it arises from a false belief regarding the reality of things.¹² However, Spinoza does not deny that hope can also contribute to the achievement of good collective outcomes and motivate people to act towards a common goal. Nevertheless, given its unreliable nature, Spinoza maintains that we should break free from hope and from the false beliefs that hope rests upon.

But what kind of false belief is hope based upon, in the context of the climate crisis? In fact, it is undeniable that the climate crisis literally depicts a future whose outcome is extremely doubtful and uncertain – to the point that we don’t even know whether there will be a future at all for life on Earth. This seems to align with the notion of ‘radical hope,’ which Jonathan Lear describes as “directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is."¹³

Nevertheless, hanging onto the hope that an unspecified future good is contingent on an enhanced moral thinking is highly unphilosophical, as it denotes an inability to understand the present, and not just the future. Herein, hope is the opposite of knowledge and power: if I know the concrete gravity of the crisis, I am aware of the radical measures required to mitigate it (which may not even exist or work properly). This gives me the power to act in an informed manner both individually and collectively. If I don’t, I rely on the misconception that abstract moral questioning is the highest instrument to ensure a brighter future for all.

Unlike priests, philosophers are not required to teach people to act morally in view of a future goodness.

But unlike priests, philosophers are not required to teach people to act morally in view of a future goodness beyond their understanding. Instead, the best (and only) way for philosophy to help ensuring the future of human and non-human life on Earth is to unambiguously face the current existential predicament of the climate crisis, whereby not only there is no ‘light at the end of the tunnel,’ but there is no tunnel either. What there is, instead, is an emerging living world which has been fundamentally altered, and which we need to learn to live in, if at all possible. This seems to be a necessary step for philosophy (and philosophers) to think clearly and responsibly in, about, and beyond the crisis.

Now, this is not to suggest that values such as empathy, solidarity, and altruism are not important or cannot lead to a better future. Similarly, I am not denying that moral education is a valuable and much needed resource to combat systemic climate injustice and inequalities.¹⁴ However, a further endeavour is required for philosophy to play a meaningful role in ensuring that human and non-human life on Earth will have a future. Once again, philosophy will not fulfill its task by merely teaching people to think and act morally, or to cherish hope for the future. Rather, philosophy is valuable insofar as it enables us to think adequately and to see things clearly – even if that means embracing the radical uncertainty of an altered planetary existential predicament attained through unreliable mitigation attempts.

In practice, this entails recognising that the climate crisis did not originate from poor moral thinking, but rather from an unsustainable way of being through which humans have led most of the current biophysical world on the brink of extinction. Therefore, climate action must be informed by this dire predicament, instead of relying on the misleading hope that an improved moral thinking is the best path to future goodness. I will elaborate on this in the next section.

There is no hope (and thank goodness!)

Given the planetary and existential magnitude of the crisis, Catriona McKinnon points out that we should not indulge in “the false comfort that the humanity is on track to ‘fix’ climate change,” as some experts and politicians would too optimistically contend based on the global targets set by the Paris Agreement. Instead, “the scale of the changes we need to really ‘fix’ climate change will impact on every person’s life."¹⁵ That is, it is not simply changes in our moral thinking and values that are required to face the crisis. Rather, much more radical changes are necessary to allow for an equitable redistribution of resources between the Global North and the Global South and for a fair scaling and effective implementation of carbon-neutral and negative emissions technologies. Moreover, these changes should operate on an even more fundamental level, namely on the very foundation of our relationship with the living world – i.e., both with other humans and non-human beings.

With her pioneering work in environmental philosophy, Val Plumwood already foresaw the radical nature of such changes. She contends that Western philosophy is dominated by a dualist ideology according to which humans and nature are separate and incommensurate ontological dimensions. As Plumwood herself puts it, such a dualist mindset regards “the human as not only superior, but as differing in kind to the non-human, which is conceived as a lower non-conscious and non-communicative, purely physical sphere that exists as a mere resource or instrument for the higher human one."¹⁶ Nature is then conceived as a passive and hostile system, which can be exploited and improved by (but also subjugated to) human rationality and self-interest.

Philosophy serves to rethink the complexity of the mutual embeddedness of all living beings, and to help building a more habitable and just planet.

This approach is dangerous not only because it legitimates the idea that the natural world is secondary to human existence, but also because it presupposes that humans and nature are not mutually interdependent. To counter this dangerous mindset, we need to challenge the dominant canon of Western thought and change our way of being in the world. Hence, philosophy serves to rethink the complexity of the mutual embeddedness of all living beings, and to help building a more habitable and just planet.

On top of that, overcoming traditional dualism also means that philosophy has the fundamental task of repositioning the human within nature, and not above it. This entails not abstract moral questioning, but “an ethics of place,” namely a concrete way of being that involves “being able to live in a way that doesn’t degrade other places and other people’s places and other species’ places as well."¹⁷ Practically, this fosters a better understanding that climate change – although caused by humans – mainly affects the natural world, and that we can survive the crisis only if the natural world survives it too.

Brian Burkhart helps us clarify this point. Being embedded in the non-human world, in Burkhart’s view, means to locate human existence on “a relational ground for kinship” whereby “humans do not float free from land but are fundamentally intertwined with this relational kinship ground."¹⁸ Such intertwinement does not simply refer to a material and causal relation between humans and nature, and between humans and non-human beings, but depends on a more fundamental ontological level. Accordingly, human beings are neither the undisputed masters of nature, nor incommensurate with the ‘inferior’ and objectified natural world. Instead, nature actively shapes and participates in human life – just as humans actively shape and participate in non-human life.

Here, philosophy emerges in all its significance – but not as an “abstract movement of time and history,” as is the case with “European philosophy and religion that are now divorced from European lands and places and function as universal ideals across all lands and places."¹⁹ Simply put, philosophy is not a form of abstract moral thinking that provides universal values that all humans have to embrace in response to the climate crisis.

Rather, philosophy is a concrete practice of knowledge that puts humans in their right place. That is, philosophy moves from the knowledge emerging from the mutual intertwinement of humans and nature, instead of abstracting from it. The climate crisis threatens precisely this intertwinement, as the future of most life on Earth is in jeopardy because of human activity. Such an intertwinement can endure only if the planet will remain habitable for both humans and non-human beings, which in turn requires a redesigning of the living world.

It is apparent that neither Plumwood nor Burkhart appeal to morality and hope to justify their critique. Instead, their work aligns with the notion that philosophy should enable us to think more clearly and adequately about the actual predicament that the crisis has put us in, free of the irrational and unphilosophical assumptions that humans are incommensurate with – and inherently superior to – nature. Similarly, philosophy should not indulge into the platitude that a sharper moral thinking provides hope for a better future for both humans and non-human beings.

In this regard, philosophy should emphasise in the clearest terms that there is no hope.

In this regard, philosophy should emphasise in the clearest terms that there is no hope, which we should welcome as very good news. Indeed, saying that there is no hope means that there is neither room nor need for irrational superstitions or false beliefs, if the future of humans and non-human beings is to be somehow ensured. Instead, it is clear thinking and reliable knowledge that can contribute to ensuring the future of life on Earth. Borrowing again from Spinoza, an adequate idea of a thing “clearly and distinctly situates its object in all of its causal nexuses and conceptual relations, and shows not just that it is, but what it is and how and why it is.”

An adequate knowledge, then, unequivocally shows that the roots of the crisis are in the unsustainable ways in which humans have exploited the natural world, whose catastrophic effects on the natural world are arguably irreversible. If instead we rely on “our fortuitous and haphazard encounter with things in the external world,"²⁰ then we might embrace the false belief that the climate crisis emerged primarily from poor moral judgement and is aggravated by a lack of hope. Philosophy should therefore build on the planetary existential predicament that the climate crisis has generated – whereby the future of life on Earth as we know it is in jeopardy and is contingent on our precarious ability to keep the planet habitable.

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Instead of becoming discouraged, it is crucial to emphasise the practical relevance of an adequate knowledge of the crisis to everyday life. It is important that potential responses to the crisis are based on the concrete reality of a permanently altered living world, and not on the false belief that abstract moral questioning is the best philosophical response to this crisis. Indeed, it is only through a concrete and adequate knowledge of the predicament we’re in that we can properly learn to live in it, to allow other living species to live in it, and to generate a more just and equitable future for all. Conceptually, this allows us to better face the radically uncertain future of life on Earth, by becoming aware of the fact that we are living in a drastically different planetary predicament.

Concretely, this means to adopt alternative ways of existing, both as individuals and as a species. For instance, an adequate knowledge of such a predicament allows us to be open minded and favourable to new practices in agriculture, biodiversity conservation, reforestation, carbon capture, and climate and bioengineering – which are integral if there is to be a future for life on Earth at all.

This is not the time to “anticipate a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it,” as per Lear’s radical hope. Rather, it is time to properly understand the present and build a liveable future. While there is no guarantee that this approach will be successful, and while the future of life on Earth is anything but certain, the planetary and existential magnitude of the crisis must be faced. After all, the “creation of a truly shared world” advocated by Azoulay means not to adjust our moral values, but to keep the planet habitable for all lifeforms.

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I would like to sincerely thank Associate Professor Roger Dawkins for his feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

Daniele Fulvi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology. He specialises in modern and contemporary continental philosophy and environmental ethics, and his current research focuses on the ethical and social dimensions of synthetic biology applied to climate change mitigation. He is also a member of the editorial team of the journal Environmental Philosophy, and associate editor of the Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene (forthcoming, Springer Nature).