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The Quadra Project – A Moral Dilemma

We don’t usually consider the moral implications of our carbon dioxide emissions, but an article in The Economist (December 23, 2023) presents this issue in the bluntest of terms. How many people are dying as a result of our personal contribution to the global warming crisis?

The mathematics to calculate this are not complicated. Consider the per capita emissions of each country in the world, count the number of people globally who die as a direct consequence of climate change, and it’s possible to determine the responsibility that each person has for the death of others.

John Nolt, a philosophy professor from the University of Tennessee, did such a calculation in 2011. By his estimates, a typical American, born in 1960, “would be responsible over his or her lifetime to cause between one and two deaths.” Another philosopher, John Broome, calculated that the typical Westerner, because of their high carbon dioxide emissions, would have shortened every human life on the planet by about six months.

This guilt is not distributed equally. Americans and Canadians, who emit about 15 tonnes per capita—this is The Economist’s estimate, but it’s probably in the range of 20 tonnes per capita—are disproportionally responsible for the deaths of others. Their proportion of the guilt compares to 8 tonnes per capita by the Chinese and 3.6 tonnes for the conscientious Swedes. The global average for everyone on the planet is close to 4.7 tonnes per capita. If the global temperature rise is to be kept below 2.0°C by 2070, then the average global per capita emissions must fall from 4.7 tonnes to 2 tonnes. As The Economist points out, “one long-haul flight in a year leaves you no ‘carbon budget’ for heating, eating, driving—or flying home.”

Of course, everyone everywhere must do their best to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. This is their individual responsibility, the moral philosophers remind us. But the ecological effects of one individual’s behaviour on a planet of more than 8 billion is so negligible as to be nearly zero—except, of course, if they are high emitters who live lavishly, consume excessively and fly extensively. Consequently, the majority of the responsibility for carbon dioxide reductions, The Economist suggests, falls to the governments of nations. Their policies regulate emissions, set standards, guide consumerism and collectively manage the overall environmental health of the planet. This is why we gather at international meetings to set aspirational targets that will reduce emissions by national regulations, and why these meetings are now imbued with an inescapable moral dimension.

But this article, “The Moral Philosophy of Climate Change: The Green Man’s Burden”, raises a moral question that is going to become increasingly evident as global temperatures rise, as weather extremes become more common, as people are displaced from where they once lived, and as the resulting political and economical turmoil becomes more pronounced. We don’t usually think of environmental issues in such moral terms, but the circumstances will force us to do so.

In some profound respect, this represents a loss of our individual and collective innocence. Our personal freedom to do whatever we like is compromised by its effect on others. Flying to a wedding in a far-away and exotic location loses some its charm when considering the multiple tonnes of carbon generated by the multi-family gathering of such an act. Behaviour of this kind becomes increasingly difficult to rationalize given the realization that such an act is contributing in its way to a flood, a forest fire, a drought or a destructive storm, all of which will affect the wellbeing of others—not only their health, but possibly resulting in their death.

So climate change is not just about the physical ecology of our planet. It’s also about our moral ecology. We are not just destroying our planet’s natural ecosystems, but we are destroying our inner ecosystems, too—the ones that hold us together as societies and define us as individual people with moral responsibilities. The former issue is serious enough, but the latter one is even more difficult, more challenging and more threatening for us to confront. In the new world order of interconnectedness, whatever we do has consequences for others. The environmental crisis is presenting us with a moral dilemma, whether we like it or not.

Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra

Top image credit: Air Canada – Photo by Nick Goodrum via Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED)