Pass the Turkey and Some Skepticism

The following is an email conversation between my Dad and I--its a brief summary of our back and forth over the issue of climate change, but our talks this weekend covered everything from climate change to politics to retirement. The most interesting (and least argumentative) parts of these talks, though, came when I used some of the terms from class, such as the tragedy of the commons and the prisoner's dilemma, and my Dad was able to relate these abstract terms to experiences in the real world and talk about how they function in his everyday life in the healthcare industry--none of that made it into this email conversation, but at any rate, these emails can give you a small idea of what I spent my weekend "battling" against when it came to politics and environmental issues:

Dad:

There are a few problems in the current global warming theory. I will try to outline them for you with the following thoughts:

First of all the current trend of climate change does not take into account any natural cyclical changes which may be occurring over thousands or millions of years in the natural evolution of our planet. For example, how does the current theory explain the ice age periods and then the retreat of the glaciers without man contaminating the environment with carbon from fossil fuels? How do we know that the current warming trend is not merely part of a continuing cycle of a natural evolutionary process?

Next, the scientific model is difficult to apply without an adequate control process involved in the equation. In other words, the influence of man in the environment is difficult to isolate due to the multitude of variables involved. We must therefore make assumptions which are difficult to either prove or disprove. If the CO2 level was the only variable, the current argument would be more plausible.

Finally, the assumptions concerning previous cyclical changes to the earth's environment are merely our best efforts to explain a process not fully understood. For example we make statements such as a catastrophic event occurred to alter the earth's environment. This event may have been a massive meteorite or a huge volcanic eruption to alter the particulate count in the atmosphere. If we can not fully explain these processes with certainty, then we can not explain the natural variability in the processes.

Due to the above listed reasons, it is difficult for me to believe that the current climate changes are strictly related to the increasing CO2 levels and man's influence on the environment.

Me:

I think you bring up several good points here on why the science behind climate change theory seems a bit lacking--and I think you'll find that your reservations are shared with a lot of skeptics out there as well. There are, however, a few counter points that I would like to bring to your attention--if not necessarily to convince you of the threat of global climate change, then to at least to get you to take another look at this issue and its more recent developments.

First of all, since I know you are a man of science, I think you would be surprised to know that the science behind this issue is actually a pretty closed subject: 98% of all climate scientists (and most scientists from other disciplines) are confident in the science behind this theory, and, what is more, they are positive that humans are driving this warming trend. You are right, climate change has occurred in the past without the influence of humans, but the next step you take in your argument is a bit flawed. Of course natural cycles of warming and cooling occur, and the world today is going to continue in that cycle...only this time with a more than doubled concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In your argument you say that you hesitate over science's ability to isolate variables in this equation, and what I would respond with is this: that those other variables are negligible. Solar intensity fluctuation, volcanic activity, el nino, etc, have all been considered in the equation, these are actually psuedo-controls because although they vary, the fact that they vary over time is the same--what is new in this equation is the unprecedented amount of CO2 in our atmosphere. In other words, these other variable, or pseudo-controls, are comparable to the fluctuations of the past--climate change science recognizes these other measurable variables and they can record their influences and contributions to the warming and cooling trends, but again, what is different about this warming trend is our CO2 levels.

I think the major sticking point you are wrestling with here is the futuristic nature of this problem and scientific investigation. Instead of looking back at past precedents (which, really, are non existent--CO2 levels have never been this high) and establishing scientific laws and theories, we can only project this problem into the future. More CO2 means higher temperatures...eventually. Its a fact, but, unfortunately a fact that can't be experienced or proven until the higher temperatures are here...but then its too late.

The science making these projections is good, like I said 98% of the scientific community is buying in. The science, though, as you point out is not our typical deductive thought (although it is fairly deductive to say more CO2 ='s higher temperature), it has a major inductive portion to its logic: its says that since the beginning of time Earth has undergone fluctuations in temperature, and, for the most part, the variables have been the same (solar fluctuations, particulate counts, weather patterns, etc) but what is different this time is the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so it (inductively) logically follows that this time the warming period is going to be exaggerated, and possibly catastrophically so (as you pointed out with your dinosaur example).

Essentially, my counter argument is this: past precedent is useful in its evaluation of influences that are alike today, such as solar intensity, but what we cannot fail to recognize is how we are in a different position today.

Dad:

I understand that 98% of the scientists agree with the accepted logic in your view of climate change. I also understand that universally accepted theories have time and again been revised with as yet undiscovered data or new models. Only time will tell. Reducing CO2 levels could not be a bad thing, but failure to do so may not be as catastrophic as your view predicts.

Leaving Room for Hope; the problems with privatization.

The conversation surrounding the question of resource privatization is an extremely complex one. One side, the private sector, argues that through privatizing our natural resources we place them in the hands of the most efficient of stewards; that with profits to be made and stock holders to be satiated, the privatization of natural resources leads to the most economically efficient handling of these limited and valuable resources. The other side, those battling for public and shared ownership of these resources (usually in the form of government municipalities), claims that these resources are best managed by the demands of the community; that these resources are for the community and should be managed with the community’s best interests in mind and under their control.

Both sides have their weaknesses. Certainly, the pro-public sector advocates are correct, and statistically supported, in arguing that the private ownership of natural resources leads to the formation of monopolies and that private ownership only considers profit and a select portion of community (the stock holders) when they make decisions concerning the management of these goods. Yet, on the other hand, the private sector does extend a compelling argument against the inefficient managing strategies that are inherent to public management of these resources—especially during times of economic strain.

For me, however, this question may be resolved by the assumptions and guiding principles that underlie these two arguments. For the arguments behind privatization, there lie a several assumptions, but the most important are the idealizing of economic efficiency as the highest aim of efficient resource management and the belief that natural resources are capable of actually being owned. The counter argument holds, obviously, different assumptions, these assumptions, instead of idealizing economic efficiency and private ownership, place communal access to resources and the belief that natural resources are a communal (un-ownable) resource. In my evaluation of these assumptions, only one strategy seems to ensure the most efficient and morally sound management of natural resources: public and shared ownership.

Only through public and shared ownership are we able to provide access to these resources to the largest majority of people, the disenfranchised are still represented in this very democratic system of resource management and seems, in my opinion, to most closely embody the proper use of these resources. Being human, we tend to only evaluate these resources in an anthropocentric vein, and what we often fail to realize, is the importance these resources have in their overall ecosystem—more than just humans depend on these resources and (just as importantly) humans depend on more than just these resources (i.e the maintenance of the ecosystems around them). Privatization only considers the human element in its cold calculations that assume anthropocentric utility and profit are the only measures of value that can be assigned to these resources, but what it fails to consider in its measures are the values that go beyond simply profit making.

Coca Cola in India declines to recognize the importance of water for agricultural uses, insisting the profits made from their non-essential (luxury) product is just as worthy a cause as the production of food or the maintenance of a precariously balanced ecosystem that relies on the cyclic nature of the water cycle to maintain itself. This example highlights only a couple of the several potential miscalculations that are made when we consider only profit making and when we suppose that conscientious stewardship applied to resources through profit minded private owners is powerful enough to ensure the consideration of the resource in its larger environement. Profit concerns and obligations to stock holders do not protect the disenfranchised; from the poor to the larger environment, private ownership’s inherent limited scope makes room for too many abuses of these other groups to be considered a legitimate proposal for sustainable and efficient resource management.

Of course, in making this argument, I may seem to be implying that cooperative and public ownership protects the rest of the natural world (including ourselves) from this selfish, limited, and ultimately utilitarian use—but I would like to take this opportunity to state that I am not making this claim. Public ownership does not guarantee the survival of limited and common pool resources, it does not guarantee that we wont abuse the rest of nature and its fragile ecosystems, it does not even guarantee that we will not abuse our fellow humans—but what it does offer is the possibility for all of this. The examples that Ostrom points out in her case studies of various successful CPR management strategies reveals this possibility, and although it is true that most CPR collapse and that abuses still do occur, the possibility for hope is what we can take from these case studies. Instead of resigning to our, apparently, inherent selfish natures, by resisting this urge to own and utilize anything and everything we can get our hands on, and by continually insisting on the foresight and goodness in people, we can hope for a better future and a spread in the ideals of sustainable and responsible stewardship of these resources. Privatization does not leave room for this hope. Privatization is a resignation into our inherently selfish natures; it’s the ceasing of aspiration for a higher moral good and in the end provides us only with a temporary solution to the problems that we are facing. As Hardin insists (somewhat contradictorily, in my opinion) the solution to our problems with the commons and natural resources lies not in any simple solution, it requires a shift in morality. Privatization only gives us more of the same, whereas communal ownership of resource, at the very least, leaves room for a hope in the realization of this moral shift.

So despite its obvious short comings, I find that public and shared ownership of common resources is the only legitimate strategy of management that leaves any room for hope in a better future and management policies that will situate humans more sustainably in the environment around them.

Philosophy, Take 2

After our last few class meetings, I would have to say that my environmental philosophy has not been changed—rather, it would be more accurate to say that it has been reaffirmed. I found that my extrapolated philosophy from Steinbeck resonated especially well with Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin wants to insist that there is no “real” solution to the problem of the commons, that the only possible solution to this predicament is through a change in “morality”--and, for me, this echoed almost exactly Steinbeck’s “is thinking” philosophy. What both of these thinkers are getting at is that in order to avoid ecological catastrophe and collapse, we have to change the way that we think and interact with the environment. Hardin calls it a change in “morality,” Steinbeck refers to it as a shift in “thinking,” but the unifying and underlying idea here is that there is something inherently skewed about modern humans’ relationship with the world around them.

Both Steinbeck and I, I suppose, would want to reference the apparently natural impulse for people to grasp the world around them in only terms of instrumental value as the root of all these problems; and if telic thinking involves finding anthropocentric-purpose, and instrumental value is defined as having value (or purpose) for someone, then this is so. This tendency to view the world only in terms of instrumental value would seem to be the major impetus behind the modern world’s obsession with consumerism (which seems to drive most of our ecological problems). Under this compulsion to consume, society leaves no stone (or double-rainbow) unturned in search of a profit--which removes almost any other type of value (inherent or intrinsic) left to people today through which they may evaluate the world around them. For how can we think non-teleologically, and non-instrumentaly, if we are conditioned to always try to find a way to “turn a buck” off of, or simply put to use, the things around us?

This seems to dovetail nicely with Hardin’s essay. Hardin argues that we must change our moral beliefs in order to better situate ourselves into a sustainable relationship with nature. He argues that we must rearrange our moral beliefs to accommodate for the realities that we are confronted with--but what Hardin lacks is a vehicle or a method to get us there. He proposes several changes in legislation and perception of freedoms and relationships in the modern world, but where I found his theory lacking was how he proposed to bring about these changes, especially in our moral capacities. And certainly Steinbeck does not propose any methods for getting people to think non-telically, but I was thinking while reading Hardin’s article that the two proposals could potentially go a long ways together in mapping out the possibilities available to us for a new and sustainable future; possibly a future where legislation and morality are determined by coming to terms with how the natural world “is” and how humans can most unobtrusively position themselves in this natural world.

Certainly more thought is required on the subject, but at any rate, I found that Steinbeck and his “is thinking” philosophy has, thus far, been a solid foundation for my environmental philosophy, and that it supports a great variety of the thought and material that we have covered in class.