Children of a Modest Star is billed as a “groundbreaking” work that “presents a new and innovative framework that corresponds to our inherently planetary condition”; in doing so, it proposes “a bold, original architecture for global governance,” based in a concept of “planetary subsidiarity … designed to enable the enduring habitability of the Earth for humans and nonhumans alike” (see the book’s jacket description). Motivated by the examples of climate change and pandemic diseases, the book argues for developing a set of “content-specific, task-oriented” institutions to address planetary-scale challenges. As an illustration, co-authors Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman recommend addressing climate change through a new institution modeled on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to Blake and Gilman, the IPCC’s mandate should be radically extended beyond its current remit—of issuing reports assessing the state of the art in climate science and policy—to include dictating both global climate goals and the targets of individual countries. This enhanced IPCC would also have the power to back up its decisions, including through coercive force exercised against nation-states.
Children of a Modest Star is a timely contribution. It draws attention to some fundamental features of our predicament with appropriate urgency. It effectively communicates a range of interesting ideas, compelling insights, and promising proposals. It integrates material from across a wide, interdisciplinary literature, and in doing so, it makes these vital discussions more accessible to a broad readership. Moreover, Children is highly readable and displays great heart. The authors should be congratulated.
Still, the purpose of reviews is to provoke reflection and further discussion. So, let us consider their position. Blake and Gilman ground their general approach in a set of central claims that are likely to provoke controversy. However, I have also argued for versions of these claims as part of my proposal for a global constitutional convention for future generations and in other work on the concept of planetary health. Hence, I will simply highlight the common claims—leaving critical discussion of them to others—and then move on to our more specific disagreements.
The first common claim is that we should see ourselves as “children of a modest star.” As has become fashionable, Blake and Gilman refer to this as a “planetary” perspective. Others—such as myself and Oxford longtermists like Toby Ord—speak in similar ways about taking the perspective of humanity, as members of a recently evolved species on a small planet in a vast universe who have recently attained unprecedented power over what is currently their only viable home. I would add only that, as discovery of extraterrestrial life becomes increasingly likely and human expansion into outer space accelerates, we may be on the verge of changes that make a cosmic perspective more appropriate.
The second common claim is that we are in a situation of ongoing system failure. Current human systems are failing to respond adequately or effectively to a range of serious global, environmental, and (I would add) crucially intergenerational challenges.
The third common claim is that part of the explanation for this ongoing failure lies in a mismatch between existing institutions and challenges of those kinds, in part because those institutions were designed with other issues in mind. Blake and Gilman highlight the agenda of nation-states in promoting economic development as the primary driver of the present system, but I would also emphasize short election cycles and design flaws in contemporary market systems.
This institutional mismatch leads to the fourth common claim—that we should seek to fill this governance gap by adding new global institutions that function within a wider multiscalar governance network.
The fifth common claim is that the appropriate relationship between institutions in this network might usefully be understood as involving some form of subsidiarity, where governance decisions should be made at the lowest level capable of making them.
The sixth common claim is that a key concept to move toward in envisioning reform is planetary flourishing, rather than, say, the narrower “planetary health.” This is partly due to the risk of confusion within public health circles about the appropriate scope of the concept of “planetary health”; more deeply, it is due to the richness of concepts of flourishing by comparison with those of health. Consequently, “planetary health” should be seen as embedded within planetary flourishing.
Finally, the seventh common claim is that the project of reform should be understood in an ethically nonanthropocentric way as a multispecies objective. The authors do well to stress that we should recognize the moral status of a range of nonhumans as well as our dependence on other species and ecosystems.
Despite the strong overlap in our views, there are some aspects of the book’s analyses and argument that I would want to problematize. The first issue involves problem diagnosis. I have argued that climate change (like other global problems) involves the convergence of independently powerful obstacles to ethical action in a way that constitutes “a perfect moral storm.” I particularly emphasize the intergenerational dimension and the threat of intergenerational tyranny. I understand the intergenerational collective action problem—the tyranny of the contemporary—as a basic standing threat to human societies. It is also of greater significance for addressing climate catastrophe than the traditional tragedy of the commons, which often dominates scholarly discussion over the diagnosis of the climate problem. In my analysis, the intergenerational threat is partially shaped and augmented by other factors, including skewed vulnerabilities and the presence of background injustices (such as those connected with inequality, gender, race, the legacy of colonialism, etc.).
By contrast, Children of a Modest Star does not provide a specific diagnosis of the dynamics driving our current predicament. Notably, it also does not emphasize the challenge of intergenerational tyranny or other ethical dimensions of the perfect moral storm analysis. Instead, the authors rely primarily on the idea that current institutions are not oriented toward the ecological realities of humanity’s circumstances. While this is highly relevant, I would have liked to hear more from Blake and Gilman about why they do not highlight other drivers or take on views that emphasize structural and systemic barriers. One reason to think this is important is because problem diagnosis has serious implications for institutional design.
The second point of contention concerns the kind of reform required. The authors recommend new “content-specific, task-oriented” institutions. By contrast, in setting out guidelines for my proposal for a global constitutional convention for protecting future generations (GCC), I argue that the aim should be to establish new institutions with standing authority and a comprehensive remit, rather than a set of issue-specific bodies. One reason is that intergenerational tyranny is a basic standing threat that is pervasive in ways that more piecemeal approaches will struggle to confront. Another reason is that the effective intergenerational institutions may need to be proactive in supporting intergenerational concern.
My third query regards the kinds of concerns the authors see as motivating global institutional reform and the skills they argue are needed for effective global governance. For instance, in their “enhanced IPCC” proposal, Blake and Gilman emphasize the need for scientific and technological expertise supplemented with real power to dictate overall goals and specific targets, especially to nation-states. By contrast, I highlight deep-rooted structural issues that center on questions of justice and ethics, where these questions challenge individual societies and humanity as a whole at a foundational level. I also emphasize the issue of “moral corruption” and the need to safeguard against it. Amid the morally complex circumstances of the perfect moral storm, profound pressures can be exerted that distort our ways of thinking and thereby come to infect norms, principles, concepts, practices, institutions, and so on. One characteristic of effective institutions is to be resistant to these pressures. Summing up, the rather technocratic vision championed by Children of a Modest Star suggests a profound implicit optimism about the political aspects of institutional reform that many readers of this journal are likely to question. Readers may also be hungry for a more robust vision of how the new political structure would be operationalized—and in particular how its use of force against nation-states would be legitimized.
Perhaps, having set out their basic vision in Children of a Modest Star, Blake and Gilman will go on to confront these issues and questions in subsequent work. I, for one, would welcome their further reflections. I would also recommend paying more attention to the substantial literature on climate justice and ethics (especially in philosophy and political theory) and on alternative forms of institutional reform. This would place their ideas more firmly within the debates to which they most naturally belong.
In closing, Blake and Gilman have written a helpful and insightful book that should help these issues reach a wide audience. Children draws attention to some fundamental features of humanity’s predicament with notable honesty, humility and grace. Hopefully, together with other works in this area, it will help to inspire real change—in ways that our grandchildren will have reason to honor too.
