Values, Human Nature, and Climate Politics

As sometimes happens, I have been involved in discussions at other blogs that have produced more writing of substance than I would otherwise have on offer here today.  So let me commend to you Dan Trabue's engaging post and its commentary on the Unintended Consequences of human activity and the choices we make as individuals and as nations; Terry Cowgill's post and its commentary on the politics of climate change in A Lot of Hot Air; and Biotune's post and its commentary entitled "Are Humans Natural?" Alas, I cannot recommend the quality of my comments at Tigerhawk's link to their sister at BioTunes, as against my better judgment I have taken the bait and gotten involved in a smackdown with some anonymous and unverified climate change deniers: not my proudest moment, but satisfying in its unproductive way.  If you'd care to wade in with a well reasoned argument one way or the other and save me from myself you would be most welcome.

The thread that links these varied conversations and issues together is the question of intrinsic value and human values.  Here is some of what I wrote along those lines in response to what these bloggers have posted and their commentators have shared:

"One cannot speak of either conservation or consumption without attending to the overarching question of values. By this I mean not merely value in the monetary sense, for there are qualitative vales that do not so easily compute on a balance sheet.

Values are either intrinsic - the right of coexistence for a species' own sake regardless of its utility or impact on other things we humans may value - or values are defined by our own species and inform how we perceive our environment and the choices we make about it...

Very few of those who advocate on behalf of biodiversity conservation have a problem with managing individual species that threaten the resources we value, and this includes human health and wellbeing as well as broader ecological considerations. No one that I work with believes we need to reintroduce smallpox as a globally endangered organism worthy of conservation. But we are inclined to insist that human beings, the greatest change agent in this period of Earth's history, make informed choices that look beyond the short term about what we choose to conserve and what we consume.

We are, so far as we are aware, the only intelligent agent of global change to have acted on the world stage at this scale and magnitude. One does not expect an asteroid to choose where it impacts the surface, but our species has its much vaunted free will, and as such the question of both value and values is paramount."

"...I suspect much of the resistance to "government interference" comes from folks whose experience of government is as a bureaucratic meddler, an inefficient implementor, a poor steward, an uneven enforcer, and even a perfidious collaborator with polluters (think coal, Kentucky). Government can be all of these things, but they are not the limit of its capabilities and some of these safeguard all our interests. Those that pertain to shared resources and our natural heritage are a critical element of any conservation effort.

Advocates of landowner rights place a premium on the choices made by the individual private property owner, regardless of unintended consequences, the impact of these choices on shared resources, the size of the management unit, the short and long term objectives of the land owner, and may not account for the qualitative values of the land that do not so easily tally on a balance sheet. Before the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, private ownership and decentralized regulation lead to extraordinary levels of pollution and environmental degradation. Before the Endangered Species Act, private ownership and the unrestricted free market allowed for the rapid extinction of the single most abundant species on earth (the passenger pigeon) and the near extinction of American bison and many other species. In the global marketplace our resources are treated as fungible, so who needs temperate broad leaf forests in the eastern US if we have them in China and Japan? The scale of the problem is greater than private individuals or non profit agencies to deal with, nor is private ownership the best tool to safeguard the resources on which all life depends.

There are three ways to change behavior: voluntarily, through incentives and subsidies, and coercively through regulation and law. Voluntary action does not occur at the scale and scope required to address the issues of climate change and natural resource management alone. A combination of all three, applied appropriately, is what the situation will require."

"...I will offer one piece of anecdotal observation which you may treat as such. On January 6th of this year, three timber rattlesnakes were observed outside a den site in the mountains of Eastern New York. Normal emergence for this species is mid April, and this is the only record of them ever emerging in January in this region. On this same day, maple sap was running in trees that are usually dormant for another two months. By any modern measure, these are unprecedented events for the prevailing climate conditions of this area and outside the “normal range of variation”.

One data point (and anecdotal at that) does not a theory make. But there is a great wealth of verifiable data that change is taking place - however we may quibble about the relative contribution of our species’ part in it. I dislike smug scientists and simplistic political opportunists just as others do, but that does not address the consequences of our actions or inactions. It seems to me if we are going to reject some courses of action in favor of others it should be an informed (and timely) choice...we would do well to try and get the best picture possible on climate change in the time we have and respond decisively. Even the Marines aim for the 70% solution."

These last two paragraphs are actually recycled commentary originally appearing in response to Sissi Willis' post last month at Sisu - "When consistency is obtained, the hypothesis becomes a theory" - but it made the point rather well, I thought, and worthy of reprise, if not without reprisal.  I'm usually well behaved in other people's houses, just as I would prefer that you did not foul the air we breathe and water we drink on which all life depends. 

Comments

[GreenmanTim]

Nope, I am assuredly not the type. This particular case resisted all attempts at civility, at which point I ought to have retired but instead found my blood was up. Someone starts swearing at you and calling you hopelessly ignorant, it becomes hard to cleave to the high road. This is why I am not a politician or a trial attorney (that, and the divorce I would face should I choose such paths). Ah, well, lesson learned.

A healthy skepticism is a necessary thing. An entirely anthrocentric outlook is indeed a logical fallacy. My issue here is not that we all ought to jump on the climate change bandwagon, but that the debate should emphasize what steps we can and ought to take, sooner rather than later, to deal with what changes we can reasonably ascribe to human causes and develop strategies that are thoughtful, adaptive, and at appropriate scales to mitigate those impacts we deem unacceptible and within our power to address. There is plenty of room for discussion here, but I can't help but feel we are spinning our wheels on the same old ground when climate change, with numerous change agents including the activities of our own species, is exceedingly well documented. Predictive models that benefit from better data are now within a narrower but still alarming range. The place I would love to see broadbased discussion is at the value and values levels (why should we care and a cost/benefit analysis of what we risk based on various courses of action). My skeptism is focussed squarely on proposed solutions at this point,some of which have missed the important consensus building steps around values and value.

Thanks again, Terry. Hope to catch up over coffee sometime.

[Terry Cowgill]

Tim,

As they say in blog-nacular, thanks for link, dude!

You never struck me as a smack-down kind of guy. You are always gentlemanly and thoughtful on my blog.

Let me be clear that I think climate change is real, but assigning blame only to man follows the classic construct of the logical fallacy: A is happening at the same time as B, so A must be causing B.

I know the experts have algorithms and other predictors that give them a 90% certainty, but I think it is wise to be at east somewhat skeptical of something that cannot be proved.

As always, thanks for your insights.

[GreenmanTim]

A great question, Sissi, and one I especially welcome as I'm embarrassed to say I was unable to sustain a reasoned dialogue on this topic over in the comments at Tigerhawk while still suffering fools gladly without resorting to mockery. As I said off-line to CV, it was my mistake to take a rapier to a duel with cudgels. I ought to know better.

To clarify my statement that human beings are "the greatest change agent in this period of Earth's history", I would add modifiers having to do with time and causality. Wind and rain will level mountains more completely, given enough time, than a cut and fill coal operation in Kentucky, but time is the significant factor. One rightly thinks of Shelley's Ozymandias - "Look on my works, ye mighty and despair" - but it wasn't intentional anthrocentric hubris on my part that prompted this declaration. Spending time in places where our species was not the undisputed top of the food chain added a good dose of humility in that regard. And needless to say, an asteroid impact on the scale of 65 million years ago would invalidate my statement, hence the qualifier about "this period of Earth's history."

There are parasites and microbes that look on us, to the degree that they give any thought to us at all, as mere hosts for their sole benefit. But wasn't one of the lessons of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel precisely that it was the movement of these microbes over large spacial gaps with human assistance that made them so devastating to populations without acquired immunity? The Black Death moved to Europe thanks to religious war and commerce, just as Ebola and other recent horrors (HIV among them) appear to have emerged when diseases found in remote animal populations made the jump to humans encroaching for the first time on habitat. With global movement of species made possible by all the marvels of our modern world - marvels that I grant bring many, many clear benefits along with these unintended but unfortunate consequences - what might have been doom for isolated human populations now impacts us all.

This is the causality factor that I believe justifies my change agent statement. The activities of our species enable pests and pathogens to spread and increase in virolence. The fossil fuels we burn affect the atmosphere longer and more completely than even the "asteroid winter" that must have followed the great impact that closed out the Miocene. Unintended consequences, to be sure, and the rub seems to come when we get down to what it would require to modify the impact of our behavior. China's miracle of 100 years of economic development in only 30 comes with a corresponding and sobering increase in the rate of environmental degradation and pollution they and those downwind now face. To address these costs would by some estimates wipe out the entire GDP increase this growth has generated. Clearly they will not choose that path.

Sunspot activity and cosmic rays modify climate, permeate the atmosphere, and may be responsible for genetic defects and mutations that are not fully understood by science. They are therefore environmental stressors of indeterminate significance and in aqny case beyond our control (except to the degree we can reduce the thinning of the protective Ozone layer which again, our activities and choices have impacted).

The degree of contribution of these stressors (human, microbial, extra-planetary) on global biodiversity or climate change may be a point of debate, but not, I think,the fact that they do contribute in substancial ways and some of the consequences may be worth our collective effrts to address, and even reason for hope that it within our power to modify these impacts if we should so choose.

Best regards, Tim

[Sissy Willis]

It's a blessing to have knowledgeable conservation-minded stalwarts like yourself on the case, but let me ask you this: You assert that human beings are "the greatest change agent in this period of Earth's history." Are you not giving short shrift to the microbes and viruses and other invisible (to us humans) forces that have engaged us from Day One in this tooth-and-claw arms race for survival? You know the type -- the cholera bacterium in 19th-century London, the AIDs retrovirus today, sunspot activity and cosmic rays from time immemorial?