Abstract:

Today, a few people would argue that ethics is an integral part of science; fewer would agree that the lack of this acknowledgment and understanding is the front-running issue contributing to the climate change problem. To a varied extent, ethics is deep-rooted in every individual’s intention, even though one might assume higher regard for science and logic, or they might be unaware that it is. The author, through this project, intends to get through to people in general but essentially to environmental activists who still need to be well-acquainted or re-acquainted with the ethical motivations of their activism. This essay’s primary purpose is to bring attention to the subjects and groups most vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change but abandoned the care and concerns long due.  It expands on the idea that climate protestors who are genuine empaths care about the planet and beyond just the human species. Further on, it discusses the instances and reasons people’s moral vulnerabilities, regardless of acknowledgment and understanding, lead to inaction or opposition to specific ethical actions. Therefore, the fundamental question is how does the climate crisis relate to ethics? Also, why the acknowledgment of this relation is so important?

Keywords: moral storm, climate change, ecology, bioethics, anthropogenic, virtue signaling, the value of species, sentience

Literature Review (Popular and Scholarly):

In the Preface of his book A Perfect Moral Storm, the philosopher and environmental ethicist Stephen M. Gardiner, introducing his eight propositions, calls attention to the often-overlooked challenges of climate change. The first proposition, “Runaway Emissions,” unfolds how strikingly humankind continues to produce an exponential rise in carbon emissions despite the scientists’ warnings about the planet being at serious risk of a global climate shift comparable in magnitude to an ice age estimated to occur over decades instead of millennia (Gardiner xi). This situation is what he metaphorizes as the perfect moral storm, categorizing it into three “storms”/problems. The first storm, he states, is Global: the world’s most affluent nations take advantage of the poorer nations and people in ways that favor their concerns alone because such is the resulting temptations of their asymmetric power. The second, Intergenerational, refers to the irreversible power the current generation has over the future ones. Gardiner regards the intergenerational storm as the most prominent of the three; the temptations to take advantage are much more profound since the future has no power over the past. The third discerns the Underdeveloped Theories about essential subjects: “intergenerational ethics, international justice, scientific uncertainty, and the human relationship to animals and the rest of nature” (Gardiner 7). He remarks that these three make the perfect scenario for the moral storms and dilemmas that complicate taking appropriate actions and make people vulnerable to submit to unethical temptations.

In Chapter 1: I of the book “Why Ethics,” Gardiner then delves into demonstrating how ethics as a discipline plays a fundamental role in solving or worsening climate change. He writes, “If we do not think that our own actions are open to moral assessment, or that various interests­—our own; those of our kith, kin, and country; those of distant people, future people, animals, and nature—matter, then it is hard to see why climate change (or much else) poses a problem.” (Gardiner 20). Without a sense of empathy, without moral considerations, there wouldn’t exist any form of justice system or demands for rights against any form of problems, inequality, or violent crimes. No one could possibly go very far in discussing why climate change is a problem without invoking ethical considerations. The book proclaims that the climate crisis is an “ethical failure” of the inability to have the agency in making these connections (Gardiner 3).

The video titled Climate Protester Loves Meat More Than the Planet – “Tell the Environment I’m Really Sorry” was recorded in London, UK, on “World Youth Climate Strike 2019,” where the author Earthling Ed interviews the protestors involved. The central motive for this video is to raise awareness and incline people to think about the link between climate justice, animal sentience, and equality. It starts with a partly comical discussion with the teenagers on our environmental impacts and what we can do individually to reduce them. Most people, including the younger protestors, know their reasons for being there. Later, they reveal that their justification for individual inaction roots in “we can’t just do everything!” (4:18). To this, Ed raises a vital point: we can undoubtedly make a direct impact with individual action; while protesting the government, we may or may not as we depend on them whether they choose to listen to us or not. At 8:40, a participant talks about reduction before transition when asked about the correlation between meat consumption and the climate crisis. The author also quotes a 2018 University of Oxford study at the end: “The single simplest thing we can do to reduce or to have lower impacts on the environment is living vegan.” 

In June 2019, USA Today published an article titled “You can’t save the world going vegan. Corporate polluters must be held accountable,” contributed by climatologist Michael E. Mann and Penn State Professor of History Jonathan Brockopp. The article offers the principal argument that the call for individual actions like the “People start pollution. People can stop it” campaign, “going vegan” movement, and avoiding flights distract from the systematic changes needed to effectively avert the climate crisis. According to the authors, these are acts of desperation in an era of political division and “virtue signaling,” even “suicidal.” Ironically, they admit that many of these actions are worth taking and stem from the best of intentions. The systematic changes they refer to include calling out corporate companies, packaging waste producers, and those responsible for making and passing policies.

In his article “The Climate Activists Who Dismiss Meat Consumption Are Wrong,” Jan Dutkiewicz provides contrasting statements and claims by various authors and organizations about their opinions on climate solutions. He poses an informative critique of Mann’s idea of “We don’t need to ban burgers; we need climate-friendly beef” and other ideas of climate advocates alike. Given the evidence that cattle and their feed crops occupy much more land, fertilizers, and manure run-off than the plant-based, climate writers’ advocating for “carbon-neutral beef” and “low-methane” cows do not meet the eco-friendly adequacies. Dutkiewicz also mentions the meat industry’s role in breeding superbugs, zoonotic diseases like Covid, labor exploitation, biodiversity loss, and pervasive animal cruelty where “animals bred for rapid growth go from chick to slaughter in just over a month.” Furthermore, he writes, “To suggest that better factory farms are environmentally desirable—or just—solutions is to efface all ecological and ethical concerns in the name of greenhouse gas reduction,” implying that solely focusing on emissions is not enough.

Consequently, Dutkiewicz encourages the climate advocates, who frown upon “individual actions” and think defending burgers makes their messages more palatable, to consider research showing that reducing their own carbon footprint increases the public’s support. Rebutting the claims that the call for individual action distracts the public from big policy changes, he consoles the stance of non-flying vegans for practicing what they preach. Admitting the need to decarbonize the oil giants, he appeals that we can simultaneously think of new radical solutions for a less anthropocentric earth.

The Independent UK published an article in January 2018 titled “Why veganism isn’t as environmentally friendly as you might think,” where the author Henderson argues that eating lamb chops from a neighborhood is much better for the environment than eating an avocado imported from the other side of the world. She reports that while the number of vegans increased by 160% in 10 years, avocado and quinoa prices have been soaring due to Western demand. Despite being the world’s 6th largest exporter of avocado, Kenya had to ban avocado exportation in 2018. This shift in the food industry revealed people’s awareness of cutting meat consumption and eating more vegetables; however, the author reminds us that there also needs to be a sensible balance. According to the Vegan Society, 16% of the UK’s agricultural land is assigned to grow protein crops and all the rest to animal farms. Ultimately, the country is compelled to import most protein crops for human consumption. To solve this problem, the organization suggests that growing more protein grains like lentils, chickpeas, and quinoa would contribute to food self-sufficiency and reduce the need for imports. 

Directed by Lesley Chilcott, Watson is a documentary based on Captain Paul Watson’s daring life devoted to protecting the seas and the lives within. He is the founder of Sea Shepherd (1977) and was one of the founding members and directors of Green Peace, from which he had to resign the same year he founded Sea Shepherd. With its launch, he made a clear statement that it was not merely a protesting but an “anti-poaching” action organization; he affirms in the movie, “We can’t just stand. We have to intervene!” (Watson 0:24). 

When the media and the public question the safety of the volunteers on deck risking their lives for other beings (sea creatures) who are not even humans, he replies, “It’s not unfair at all. Our society asks young people to risk their life, to give their life, and to take lives to protect oil wells, real states, flags and religion. I think it’s a far more noble act to protect an endangered species or a threatened habitat.” (Watson 0:33). 44 minutes into the documentary, he introduces the three basic laws of ecology:

1. Law of Diversity: The strength of an ecosystem is dependent upon the diversity within it.
2. Law of Interdependence: All the species within that diversity are interdependent.
3. Law of Finite Resources: There is a limit to growth. Limit to carrying capacity. When our numbers (human population) increase beyond what is healthy, we steal the carrying capacity from other species, so they have to disappear for and because of us. 

Shedding light on what the natural, eco-friendly balance truly means and signifies, the documentary releases ground-breaking insights into the countless illegal trade in the oceans, from fish netting to shark culling and endangered whale hunting. It also features the dauntless acts of trying to stop them between the borders of the nations and their conflicting laws.    

The Value of Species, written by Edward L. McCord, draws its readers’ attention toward the values of species beyond their practical or anthropogenic use. In the first chapter, titled “To an Inquisitive Mind Open to Honest Reflection, the Value of Every Species is Incalculable,” McCord finds it ironic that despite their cognitive capability, humans are the ones extinguishing other species from Earth. The first and most crucial issue the book tackles is the proclamations that appreciation of species is a matter of personal taste—like a fondness for particular sports. The author makes a concise distinction between the “instrumental value” and the “intrinsic/inherent value” that we as a human species hold for other species for different reasons. The instrumental value includes the sectors of human civilization, from food production to tourism. The intrinsic value is found of significant value in nature, regardless of its practical uses— by studying the species in depth, stirring up “intellectual interest,” and through evolutionary relationships (McCord 7, 10). Throughout the book, he poses many questions to his readers while setting forward his observations about sentience. In Chapter 7, “Species Have No Direct Claim for Consideration in an Ethical Community,” he specifies that compassion is attributed to individuals and “strictly to sentient organisms in certain circumstances and never to species as such” (McCord 110).

Through her article “Adapting to Climate Change: What We Owe to Other Animals,” Angie Pepper makes a stance that climate change is as much an animal rights issue as it is a human rights issue referring to Simon Caney’s viewpoint that enlists HR1, 2, and 3: the right to life, health, and subsistence. Caney uses theories of “cosmopolitan justice” and “general duty of adaptation” in his arguments. Since nonhuman animals have clear interests in living healthy lives free from physical and psychological pain and suffering and in ways that matter to them, Pepper argues that the scope of the three rights is equally applicable and should be extended to all sentient beings. As the anthropogenic practice has been and will continue to affect the lives of other sentient beings adversely in billions, their interests in adaptation must be dealt with as a significant matter of climate change action. The author also states that even if one denies these claims made in favor of animals or successfully argues otherwise, their global vulnerability will continue to place significant constraints on climate justice.

Maintaining that there are compelling reasons in the views of climate justice and basic rights for nonhuman animals to have a special claim at ethical considerations from us, Pepper illustrates four derivative human duties to facilitate their adaptation to the changing climate. As she acknowledges the shortcomings and limitations in her discussion, she fetches attention to questions for the future, addressing how we could forge just relations with other animals, measure their vulnerability, respect their agency, and decide whom to assist first.