The last Awkward Mixture article about environmental ethics
described a method of determining whether one’s behavior was environmentally
viable, using Kantian philosophy. Then it
demonstrated that nobody in the United States lives in a sustainable fashion.
To survive citizens don't need a car, a computer, heat, AC,
or planes.
To live in society is to use these things. To take a vacation, to drive to work, to
relax in spite of exhausting heat, to engage with the world from home, to be
comfortable in the winter.
Clearly they violate the Categorical
Imperative. If everyone on the
planet flew in a plane once a year, if every house maintained a 70 degree temperature
regardless of the conditions outside, if everyone ate meat at the same rate as
Americans, even if everyone drove a car an hour a day, the environmental situation
would deteriorate rapidly. These actions
would not result in the outcome everyone desires: happiness, comfort, and
safety.
One could voluntarily quit society. Try to find one of the few isolated spots
left on earth and eke out an existence. Meanwhile,
the wealthy can construct their own zero emission houses to ease their guilt. Both are fruitless quests. One person's withdrawal would have no discernible
effect on the global carbon output, the pervasiveness of chemical and plastic
pollution, the devastation of wildlife habitat.
Perhaps they would be more virtuous in this choice, justified by the
effort alone. One certainly couldn't begrudge
anyone for choosing this path.
But if one is looking for actual solutions there needs to be
another choice.
It is not entirely wrong, considering the needful circumstances,
to use various earth devastating technologies (considering the uselessness of
individually abandoning them) to remain a part of society. Yet a person who does not attempt to change
society, when given the power to do so, is ethically barren. Everyone who has ignored the plight of the
planet and leveraged devastation for their advantage; spent the money of oil
donations, spread the propaganda of fossil fuel producers for decades, and who
still deny the young their last chance at overturning a fate they alone will
have to face, is ethically corrupt and enduringly cruel.
The most basic power which everyone in the United States
should have is the right to vote. While
citizens may be living in a manner which harms their future, and the future of
their children, and their children's children, they need to seek a different
channel. They need to vote for
representatives who will seek this change.
The multitude of excuses for not preventing this inevitable
global catastrophe are long and obscene in their deception. Global Warming isn't real. The United States doesn't bear any
responsibility for global warming. Even
if the United States reduced its CO2 emissions to zero in a decade, it would
have no effect because of the increasing output of China, India, and other
developing countries. All of these are
absurd. The same propagandists claim
that the cost to implement even mild solutions is too much. Yet the cost future generations will bear for
the lack of leadership demonstrated by the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomers,
and even the Greatest Generation, is immeasurable. These elders may find the cost too much,
because they have already reaped the rewards of their selfishness, but those
who must live with their fallout believe the cost of preventing climate change at
this late hour, reasonable compared to the cost of doing nothing.
Citizens need to vote against their immediate interest, in
order to preserve their future interest.
If everyone votes similarly, it won't confer an advantage on any
particular person. The United States can
seek environmental sustainability and economic justice. It can lead the way forward with innovative
technologies. If it chooses to abdicate responsibility,
there are two likely options; ecological collapse, or (if it is to be
prevented), the United States will accede to the dominance of the nation which
will develop both the technology and the leadership needed to govern. If citizens choose to both pollute the earth
and to vote against any curb, any alteration, any progress, then they are
doubly guilty.
In 2020 the United States, nay the world, needs a President,
a Congress, a UN, a China, a Europe, a World dedicated to saving it from the
past century. If the United States
reelects Trump, or a Republican Congress devoted the oil, coal, and gas industries,
short of a miraculous technology, the chance to avoid a disastrous threshold
will be lost. Conditions across the world
will deteriorate and suffering will increase at home and abroad.
Though the exactness is impossible to measure, at an
indeterminable level the use of dangerous and deadly technologies are not
justifiable. The more one harms the
earth with their everyday activities the greater their responsibility to seek a
new path for humanity. The mass of
people have little power to solve the problem.
They must live their life the best they can while urging their
Representatives, their Senators, and their state officials to implement new
policies which will put the planet on a sustainable path. Representatives must vote for the broad outlines
of the Green New Deal. Senators must
vote for Jay Inslee's detailed plan to prevent devastating climate change, or a
similar plan. The issue needs to be
resolved now, there is no time to delay.
There is no later.
There is no greater threat than ecological collapse, and
there are few futures more likely as this.
Global warming is not the only man made threat to life on earth, but it
is one that must be solved now.
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