Should we tolerate climate denial?

At 18.27 on 12 December 2015, Laurent Fabius brought down his gavel to mark the adoption of the Paris Agreement by nearly 200 countries. Even the most optimistic commentators agree that the scale and speed of the action needed to realize the ambitions of the Agreement are daunting. The history of action on climate change gives us no grounds for optimism. But perhaps, we still have grounds for hope (McKinnon 2014). Many things could snuff out this fragile hope. In this article, I shall address conduct that explicitly aims to do so: climate change denial (from here on in, “climate denial”). By “climate denial,” I mean the deliberate and deceptive misrepresentation of the scientific realities of climate change, such as the fact that climate change is happening, its anthropogenic causes, and its damaging impacts (Dunlap 2013). What I do not mean by “climate denial” are minority or outlier positions on aspects of climate science that lie within the range of normal and healthy disciplinary disagreement. There is an established international network of well-funded organizations devoted to organized climate denial, and their activity is on the increase (Boussalis and Coan 2016). The epicenter of this activity is in the United States, where climate denial has had a significant impact on public opinion (Leiserowitz et al. 2014), and has impeded legislation to tackle climate change (Farrell 2016; Oreskes and Conway 2012). My question is: should we tolerate climate denial? The “we” in this question refers to broadly liberal people and legislators in democratic societies, for whom principles of toleration and the virtue of tolerance are of fundamental importance in social and political life. Toleration is a matter of principled self-restraint with respect to conduct that would alter, suppress, or prevent the characteristics or conduct of people opposed by the tolerator (McKinnon 2006; McKinnon and Castiglione 2003). The tolerant agent refrains from interfering with those she dislikes or of whom she disapproves even when she believes that her dislike or disapproval is well-grounded. The agents of toleration can be individual people—when toleration is likely to manifest as a virtue, or as a civic disposition—or institutions, when fundamental political principles, the constitution, and laws and their implementation, are framed to respect the limits of toleration (McKinnon 2013). Toleration is difficult to justify and hard to practice at both the personal and institutional level, particularly for liberals (Scanlon 2003a). Liberalism is committed to freedom of association, conscience, worship, movement, and expression as a matter of fundamental principle (Rawls 1971). This delivers a distinctive liberal, permissive vision of the limits of toleration with respect to acts of expression. Given that climate denial is achieved through acts of expression, there is a heavy burden of proof attached to any liberal proposal to be intolerant of climate denial.1 My aim in this short article is to identify the proper site for this debate. What are the questions to be answered in deciding whether climate denial lies beyond the limits of liberal toleration? Although I do not answer these questions, by correctly identifying them I hope to show that the burden of proof is perhaps not as heavy as we initially might have thought

Climate justice in a carbon budget

The fact of a carbon budget given commitment to limiting global-mean temperature increase to below 2°C warming relative to pre-industrial levels makes CO2 emissions a scarce resource. This fact has significant consequences for the ethics of climate change. The paper highlights some of these consequences with respect to (a) applying principles of distributive justice to the allocation of rights to emissions and the costs of mitigation and adaptation, (b) compensation for the harms and risks of climate change, (c) radical new ideas about a place for criminal justice in tackling climate change, and (d) catastrophe ethics

Endangering humanity: an international crime?

In the Anthropocene, human beings are capable of bringing about globally catastrophic outcomes that could damage conditions for present and future human life on Earth in unprecedented ways. This paper argues that the scale and severity of these dangers justifies a new international criminal offence of ‘postericide’ that would protect present and future people against wrongfully created dangers of near extinction. Postericide is committed by intentional or reckless systematic conduct that is fit to bring about near human extinction. The paper argues that a proper understanding of the moral imperatives embodied in international criminal law shows that it ought to be expanded to incorporate a new law of postericide

Climate change: against despair

In the face of accelerating climate change and the parlous state of its politics, despair is tempting. This paper analyses two manifestations of despair about climate change related to (1) the inefficacy of personal emissions reductions, and (2) the inability to make a difference to climate change through personal emissions reductions. On the back of an analysis of despair as a loss of hope, the paper argues that the judgements grounding each form of despair are unsound. The paper concludes with consideration of the instrumental value of hope in effective agency to tackle climate change. Overall, the paper’s assessment of personal despair about climate change as philosophically unjustified provides a fresh perspective on aspects of the debate about how to frame climate change in public debate

Vertical toleration as a liberal ideal

This paper argues that the direct, vertical toleration of certain types of citizen by the Rawlsian liberal state is appropriate and required in circumstances in which these types of citizen pose a threat to the stability of the state. By countering the claim that vertical toleration is redundant given a commitment to the Rawlsian version of the liberal democratic ideal, and by articulating a version of that ideal that shows this claim to be false, the paper reaffirms the centrality of vertical toleration in the Rawlsian liberal account of state-citizen relations

Justice, justification and self-respect

This thesis explores the role of self-respect in liberal justification and debates about justice. It is argued that self-respect depends on doing certain things with the right self-conception, and thus that there are two sorts of ways in which political institutions and procedures governing the distribution of goods can impede the development of self-respect: by damaging the conditions of self-respect supporting action, and by undermining self-conceptions without which putative self-respect supporting action is impotent. With respect to questions of liberal justification, acceptance or rejection of opportunity for self-respect as a criterion of justice does not settle hard metaethical questions about the extent to which political justification should mirror moral truth. Nevertheless, positing self-respect as a justificatory value helps in clarifying what is at issue between the two dominant positions. Perfectionism and Neutralism. With respect to justice-related questions about liberty and group membership, appeal to opportunity for self-respect allows for a fine-grained distinction between different sorts of groups, which supports an unequal distribution of the right to exclude consistent with the priority of liberty. With respect to distributive justice, appeal to opportunity for self-respect recommends a sufficiency approach to the distribution of economic goods qua social basis of self-respect, and suggests the adoption of unconditional basic income as policy

The culture of toleration in diverse societies

The idea of toleration as the appropriate response to difference has been central to liberal thought since Locke. Although the subject has been widely and variously explored, there has been reluctance to acknowledge the new meaning that current debates on toleration have when compared with those at its origins in the early modern period and with subsequent discussions about pluralism and freedom of expression. This collection starts from a clear recognition of the new terms of the debate. It recognises that a new academic consensus is slowly emerging on a view of tolerance that is reasonable in two senses. Firstly of reflecting the capacity of seeing the other's viewpoint, secondly on the relatively limited extent to which toleration can be granted. It reflects the cross-thematic and cross-disciplinary nature of such discussions, dissecting a number of debates such as liberalism and communitarianism, public and private, multiculturalism and the politics of identity, and a number of disciplines: moral, legal and political philosophy, historical and educational studies, anthropology, sociology and psychology. A group of distinguished authors explore the complexities emerging from the new debate. They scrutinise, with analytical sophistication, the philosophical foundation, the normative content and the broadly political implications of a new culture of toleration for diverse societies. Specific issues considered include the toleration of religious discrimination in employment, city life and community, social ethos, publicity, justice and reason and ethics. The book is unique in resolutely looking forward to the theoretical and practical challenges posed by commitment to a conception of toleration demanding empathy and understanding in an ever-diversifying world

Climate change justice: getting motivated in the last chance saloon

A key reason for pessimism with respect to greenhouse gas emissions reduction relates to the ‘motivation problem’, whereby those who could make the biggest difference prima facie have the least incentive to act because they are most able to adapt: how can we motivate such people (and thereby everyone else) to accept, indeed to initiate, the changes to their lifestyles that are required for effective emissions reductions? This paper offers an account inspired by Rawls of the good of membership of ‘intergenerational cooperative union’ to achieve justice that provides a solution to the motivation problem