BRINGING PHILOSOPHY TO LIFE
NOT JUST CLIMATE
On April 8, 2024, millions of people experienced the same cosmic event—a total eclipse of the sun. In addition to being a profound reminder of the unity of the human species and the rest of the biosphere, this event showed the power of modern science to predict the future using observation and mathematical calculation. Based on those predictions of the time and place of the eclipse, many people went to the exact spot where they could experience that amazing phenomenon, and many others watched the event on large and small screens.
That same community of scientists is almost unanimous in predicting that unless major changes are made soon, the climate changes we are already experiencing will become irrevocable, threatening the Sixth Extinction in which the human species will disappear. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the year 2023was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880. In fact, the past ten years are the warmest on record.
On April 9, 2024, The Washington Post reported that “a Top European court found that Switzerland violated human rights by failing to slow the impact of global warming—a landmark ruling hailed by climate activists.” However, they also reported that the same court tossed out two other cases that activists had hoped could force governments to protect their citizens from climate change.”
According to The Post, “Tuesday’s hearings on the trio of cases at the European Court of Human Rights marked the first time an international court has ruled on such cases of climate change inaction, as advocacy groups and lawmakers around the world try to spur governments to take stronger action on climate change through legislation. The court sided with the Swiss group Senior Women for Climate Protection, . . . which comprises more than 2,000 senior women. Their complaint said the government’s failure to mitigate the effects of global warming harmed their living conditions and health” (Ellen Francis and Chico Harlan, The Washington Post April 9, 2024).
The ruling said Switzerland has failed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to meet its own targets. The European Convention on Human Rights “encompasses a right to effective protection” by national authorities “from the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, wellbeing, and quality of life. The European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, France, is part of the Council of Europe — a 46-member international organization that is separate from the European Union. The court hands down binding decisions, but governments do not always comply. . . . The decision Tuesday shows how governments can potentially be held to account in court for climate-related issues, and could influence similar litigation worldwide.”
In the other two cases, the charges were dismissed for procedural reasons—the plaintiffs lack proper legal standing to bring those charges. Those two other cases accused European governments of not doing enough to prevent climate change — one by a former mayor in northern France and another by group of young people in Portugal. In the case by six young people in Portugal who were born between 1999 and 2012, the complaint argued “that existing and future effects of climate change, including heat waves and wildfires, exposed them to harm. They blamed Portugal and 32 other countries for failing to meet targets to reduce emissions” (The Washington Post, April 9, 2024).
As Earth Day (April 20) approaches, the philosophical issue I wish to explore in this episode links the eclipse and the news concerning litigation related to human responsibility for climate change. Our lives are heavily shaped by legal and scientific issues, but those concepts and decisions rest on even more fundamental questions of ontology and of philosophical ethics. The existential connection between human beings and other species requires us to examine the interconnection among the geological realm, the biological domain, and the mental aspect of reality, all of which play a central role in shaping our worldview. What is most important about the mental dimension of being is that it provides the freedom to choose among alternatives, a necessary condition for moral responsibility.
I define philosophy as: “The rational analysis and justification of fundamental concepts, principles, decisions, and actions.” Without freedom, decisions and actions are meaningless. Science helps us understand the world; our decisions and actions have the power to change the world. Unfortunately, we have the freedom to not only to choose what is just and right and good but also to select and promote the opposite. We can choose what is just or what is unjust, what is right or wrong, and what is good or bad. That is why it is so important to bring philosophy to life.
One contemporary philosopher who is bringing philosophy to life is Vandana Shiva, the author of several books and a leading activist for changing the way we think about nature and our place in it. Here is an excerpt from her 2018 book Oneness vs. the 1% that makes clear what she believes is at stake in the current climate crisis:
Humanity stands at a precipice. There is an uncertainty regarding our potential for future evolution. Ecologically, the uncertainty arises because every aspect of the dominant model of thinking and living is destroying the earth’s capacity to support our lives. The erosion and extinction of our species, the destruction of soils and water, and climate chaos, are wreaking havoc on the conditions necessary to continue as members of the earth community. The extractive model of economic development and growth, of corporate control and the greed economy are not just destroying nature, they are destroying our humanity which is the human capacity for solidarity, compassion, and the ability to take care of each other (Shiva, Oneness vs. the 1%, p. ix, 2018, Kindle Edition).
Shiva’s philosophy is not merely another doomsday vision of the future that is designed to frighten people. Rather, it is a clear-minded analysis that shows how we might change both our way of thinking and our way of acting in order to regain our humanity and take our proper place in the cosmos. She puts that positive vision this way:
Going off the precipice, towards extinction, is not inevitable. We can choose to walk away from the mechanistic world of invented constructions, and free ourselves from the forces and paradigms that have brought us to it. We can realise that we are members of the earth community and that the earth has an amazing capacity and potential to rejuvenate and renew; and since we are part of the earth, not separate from her, we share that capacity and potential. A consciousness of our power to ‘be the change we want to see’, as Gandhi said, forms the basis for cultivating hope, love, and compassion in these times of despair, fear and hate. Within the crises that have brought us to the precipice lie the seeds of hope and freedom, the seeds to renew our humanity and our earth citizenship (Shiva, p. x).
My personal awareness of the climate crisis emerged in the 1960s when I began incorporating books and articles into my courses. I have a vivid memory of joining 20 million others in celebrating the first Earth Day in 1970. One of the articles I used often was written by Lynn White, Jr., a professor of medieval history at Princeton University. White, like Vandana Shiva, emphasized the role that our worldview plays in how we think about the environment and how we act toward the natural world. He was especially harsh in his critique of the dominant Christian view that separates human beings from the rest of nature. He said:
This . . . exploitive attitude appears slightly before A.D. 830 in Western illustrated calendars. In older calendars the months were shown as passive personifications. The new Frankish calendars, which set the style for the Middle Ages, are very different: they show men coercing the world around them--plowing, harvesting, chopping trees, butchering pigs. Man and nature are two things, and man is master (Lynn White, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” 1967).
White praises Asian religious traditions such as Buddhism for uniting and integrating humanity with the rest of the cosmos rather than separating them and suggests that within Christianity Saint Francis offered a better way of thinking about humanity’s place in nature.
As we approach Earth Day, 2024, the crisis has become far worse. Political economy today lies at the heart of human exploitation of the environment, especially as it is reflected in the power of a few people to control and exploit land, sea, and air. Shiva offers a chilling summary of how rapidly this is happening. “In 2010, 388 billionaires controlled as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity; this number came down to 177 in 2011; to 159 in 2012; 92 in 2013; 80 in 2014; 62 in 2016; and it shriveled to a mere eight in 2017” (Shiva, p. vii).
The great strength of Vandana Shiva’s philosophy is her ability to relate fundamental philosophical ideas with an activism that unites science, economics, agriculture, politics, ethics, and other vital forces that shape our current world and open the way for shaping the future. I am comfortable leaving the details of that vibrant vision to her as she writes her books, gives her lectures, and leads non-violent gatherings throughout the world. I will give her the final words in this episode concerning the future of democracy:
Seeding the future when possible extinction stares us in the face, seeding freedom when all freedoms of all beings are being closed for the limitless freedom of the 1% to exploit the earth and people, to manipulate life and our minds, calls for a quantum leap in our imaginations, our intelligences, our capacity for compassion and love, as well as our courage for creative nonviolent resistance and non-cooperation with a system that is driving us to extinction. Our only option is to heal the earth, and in so doing, heal and reclaim our humanity, creating hope for our only future—as one humanity on one planet (Shiva, pp. 171-172).