Dale Jamieson is a leading philosopher working in environmental ethics and environmental philosophy. His Reason in a Dark Time takes up the challenge of explaining in general terms why, despite actionable scientific evidence available for decades, we have failed to act collectively and forcefully to address anthropogenic climate change. The book also addresses the challenge of how best to proceed now that significant climate change is ongoing. Jamieson covers much ground in topics historical, political, economic, and philosophical, and in a clear, analytical style that should make the book accessible to a wide range of academic and professional audiences. The topic is of obvious interest, being what Jamieson says “can be seen as presenting us with the largest collective action problem that humanity has ever faced” (99).
After an introductory chapter, the second chapter reviews the history of the science and politics of climate change. This will be familiar ground to most, though with the emphasis given in the book’s title: We have now moved beyond a historical phase where one might hope for collective action to prevent a warming of two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. Jamieson paints a picture of an international community that largely meant well, but, with the need for consensus, came with either too few agreements or agreements with little teeth to them by way of preventing significant climate change. It is a reasonable position to take on the history, as is Jamieson’s further observation that regional, state, and local action on climate change is the more likely path moving forward.
The book’s next three chapters consider progressively deeper reasons for the failure. Chapter three reviews obstacles related to disseminating the relevant scientific results and the politicized opposition to it. Most readers will find this story familiar too, though with some useful emphases. One obstacle involves miscommunication between scientists, policy-makers, and individual citizens. Ignorance of science and its methods helped make this easier, especially given the actions of profit-seeking and politically motivated organizations to undermine meaningful action. Jamieson cites reasons rooted in human psychology as well. For a problem like climate change, evolution simply didn’t give us the psychological tools to act on the problem. Climate change is difficult to see, it occurs over a long period of time, and our own individual contributions to it proceed unseen. Our nature makes it easy for us to remain unmoved by a problem like anthropogenic climate change. That fact makes skepticism or denial even easier to acquire and sustain.
Yet Jamieson considers deeper barriers to collective action, even for those who accept the scientific consensus and agree that such action is necessary. Chapter four considers barriers tied to considering climate change using economic analysis. Take debates over the discount rate. Small differences in the discount rate entail large differences in what costs we ought to put on current events and the prevention or mitigation of harms that unfold over the long term. Yet Jamieson argues that disputes over the discount rate wind up being grounded in differing assumptions that may well have no obvious resolution. Placing a value on the environmental impact of climate change is thereby elusive because adequately quantifying current economic costs based on what is needed to prevent or mitigate the future impacts of climate change remains contentious.
Chapter five argues that ethics falls short too. Here ‘ethics’ refers mostly to “commonsense” morality, or that loose set of moral principles held by ordinary folk and most philosophers alike. In Jamieson’s view, these principles fail to justify the actions widely agreed to be necessary for addressing climate change. The nature of the problem again makes defending a solution by appeal to ethics very difficult. Most of those writing on this subject would agree, but while they typically ground their views in the existing body of commonsense morality, Jamieson argues instead that we have to revise our moral concepts. But the difficulty with that path is that it is unclear how to ground such revisions and what the revised concepts in the end ought to be. There is no consensus on the ethical foundations.
Given all of these obstacles to meaningful action, it is no surprise we have failed on climate change. There is some comfort in knowing failure was so likely. But we still face the problem, so what to do? Two chapters address this question. Chapter six offers revisions of commonsense morality, revolving around the general questions of how to live meaningfully in the so-called “Anthropocene,” and how to live by way of minimizing and ultimately reversing the negative effects of climate change. Jamieson proposes revising virtue ethics into a “green” version. Such a green virtue ethics emphasizes virtues like humility, temperance (or frugality), mindfulness (by way of considering our actions’ consequences more carefully), cooperativeness (186-187), and especially respect for nature (188-193). If such virtues were emphasized more, and if they were to become more entrenched in our cultural norms, this would undercut some of the self-interested tendencies that have helped give us climate change. It would also ground productive action on the problem.
Chapter seven gives Jamieson’s proposals for meeting climate change-related challenges. These fall into general categories Jamieson names “adaptation,” “abatement,” “mitigation,” and “solar radiation management” (207). Adaptation strategies reduce negative effects of ongoing or predicted climate change (e.g., building seawalls, moving populations). Abatement strategies reduce greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., by converting to renewables for energy production). Mitigation strategies reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations (e.g., by planting trees). Solar radiation management aims to artificially alter the Earth’s energy balance (e.g., by painting roofs white). The chapter continues with a range of policy proposals and suggestions: have economic development with adaptation in mind; have “full-cost” accounting, with accompanying emissions pricing; and force the use of climate-beneficial technology, among others. Jamieson suggests some guiding principles as well: have broad competition among strategies, combine strategies where possible, and focus on good strategies rather than perfect or optimal ones.
The policy proposals are all welcome additions and repetitions of existing proposals. Grounding such proposals in a green virtue ethics is useful too, for perhaps only a shift in fundamental ethical concepts can avoid the sort of well-meaning but ultimately unsuccessful efforts on climate change outlined earlier in the book. Two sorts of criticism might serve to push the work forward from here. One involves the relationship between virtue and action. The other asks for more business-specific extensions of the green virtues themselves.
A general criticism of virtue ethics asks its adherents to spell out the connection between virtue and action. This seems connected to the question of analyzing particular virtues. What really is it to be frugal person? And what actions would a frugal person do? Frugality is a green virtue too, and similar challenges arise for analyzing such a virtue with meaningful action on climate change in mind. In Jamieson’s earlier discussion, we learn (or are reminded) that there are subtle and perhaps intractable difficulties in assigning responsibility for climate change (e.g., is my trip to the mall today contributing to climate change?) and in theoretical concerns that ground policy (e.g., what is the right discount rate?). Similar questions in green virtue-theoretic language arise. Would a frugal person have taken my trip to the mall today? What error might we tolerate in judging the right discount rate for making climate-related policy decisions, where we also aim to be frugal in addressing all societal problems? These aren’t decisive objections, for similar questions might be asked of other approaches. But one does wonder how much the move to a virtue-based approach makes our theoretical and practical problems any easier, beyond the further emphasis on environmental concerns.
Jamieson might make two replies. One is that for him, the deeper theoretical grounding for ethics is consequentialist, and a virtue-based approach is instrumental for reaching consequentialist goals (see Jamieson, Reference Jamieson2007). Jamieson might reply further that the advantage of a green virtue-based approach is that compared with cultural norms rooted in self-interest, norms rooted in green virtue would likely produce frugal behavior, mindfulness before acting (say for consumer choices), cooperative action, and action respectful of nature. A society with such virtuous individuals would be well placed to flourish while addressing our climate problems. This is an admirable suggestion, but Jamieson is no doubt aware that changing society in this way is a daunting task. One wonders whether and how such deep-level societal changes can happen rapidly enough.
A second concern involves virtue-based recommendations for business. Presumably, green virtues for business would mirror green virtues for individuals. But not precisely: while individuals can choose, for instance, not to consume, most business entities are in the business of encouraging the contrary choice. That seems to run counter to the virtue of frugality or temperance. It is one thing for business to operate frugally—resource conservation minimizes expenses—but another for it to promote our being frugal. If business were to do this, its profits presumably would suffer. Worse still for business, it seems the greenest, lifetime-carbon-neutral product still sins against green virtue if it is unneeded. Existential threats loom. Jamieson singles out coal use as a target for elimination, but what of other products? If we’re to have economic lives at all in the Anthropocene, then these issues seem central. Economic activity gave us the problem of climate change, and it will be crucial to meeting it. Is it possible to have an expanding economy with all constituencies being virtuous in the green sense, and where this helps meet our climate-related problems? If not an expanding economy, then what sort? Again, these are not decisive objections to the book itself. But the natural extension of the book’s recommendations would be to answer such questions.
The book is a welcome addition to the literature by a leading scholar of the field. It proposes revising our moral concepts by way of embracing a green virtue-theoretic conceptual base for conduct in a world dominated by anthropogenic climate change. Extending the book’s proposals more explicitly to the moral conduct of business and its constituencies is the natural next step for those sympathetic to Jamieson’s approach to pursue.
