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Moral Issues

Collective Action & Climate Change

Nevin Chellappah says we can’t dodge responsibility by our effects being small.

A common response climate activists face when they ask people to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions is: “My individual emissions make no difference to the harms done by climate change, so I have no moral reason to reduce my emissions.” This argument is problematic given the current threat climate change poses for our lives, for it could lead to apathy and defeatism about the climate crisis. It raises the problem of collective impact, which concerns how the aggregation of individually inconsequential actions can produce a morally bad outcome overall.

First, I shall formally set out the argument against us having a moral reason to reduce our individual emissions. Then, I’ll argue against the argument’s first premise, demonstrating that individual emissions have non-zero expected effects on a chaotic weather system. Thereafter, I’ll respond to an objection by arguing that the effects of individual emissions have an average negative value. Next, I’ll reframe the argument using small non-zero expected effects before arguing against the second premise, suggesting that individual emissions worsen the effects of climate change experienced by individuals. Subsequently, I’ll respond to another objection by suggesting that not having a marginal effect does not absolve you of responsibility for the overall outcome. Finally, I shall conclude that the argument that we have no moral reason to reduce our individual emissions is unsound.

We Have No Moral Reason to Reduce Our Emissions

The argument that we have no moral reason to reduce our emissions can be formally presented as:

P1. Individual emissions have zero expected effects on climate change.

P2. Zero expected effects on climate change cause no harm.

C1. Individual emissions do not cause harm.

P3. To have a moral reason to cut our emissions, individual emissions need to cause harm.

C2. Therefore, we have no moral reason to cut individual emissions.

P1 suggests that individual emissions have zero expected effects on climate change because Earth’s weather system is large, so an individual’s emissions are effectively zero compared to the total. P2 suggests that zero expected effects on climate change do not cause harm because such harm cannot be traced back to individual emissions. Accordingly, individual emissions do not cause harm. P3 implies that to make a difference our emissions must cause harm. Thus, for individual emissions to make no difference to climate-related harms, individual emissions need to have zero expected effects on climate change.

Premise 1 is unjustified, as the expected effects of individual emissions on climate change are non-zero. The expected effects of individual emissions equal the climate effects caused by those emissions, multiplied by the probability of those effects occurring. Individual emissions increase both effects and probability because the weather is a chaotic system, meaning that it exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Small perturbations increase exponentially over time in full-scale weather models (Kautz 2011: 161). If we begin with two slightly differing models and allow each to develop according to climate change equations, they will rapidly diverge over time – the difference between two modern weather models might double in a week. This implies that individual emissions do not have zero expected effects on climate change due to the famous ‘butterfly effect’, whereby small changes in one area can result in large differences elsewhere, like a butterfly flapping its wings in Melbourne causing a tornado in Manchester. Earth’s weather will differ over time between scenarios: one where you drive your diesel car and one where you do not. This indicates that individual emissions do not have zero expected effects on climate change because they increase climate change’s effect and risk. Suppose in the scenario where you do not drive your car that there is a 0.01% chance of 5 annual droughts. Contrastingly, if you drove your car, there could be a 0.010001% chance of 5 annual droughts. In which case, individual emissions do not have zero expected effects; their effect is non-zero in either increasing climate effects or the chance of those effects. Therefore, P1 is unjustified.

Response to an Objection

One objection is that since the butterfly effect amplifies the weather’s complex behaviour, we cannot predict individual emissions’ effects (see W. Sinnott-Armstrong 2005: 340). Indeed, our emissions may actually have a beneficial effect or no effect. It could be that driving your car implies a small probability that your choice to drive at midday leads to a future with one less drought than if you drive at midnight. Thus, there is no certainty that the expected effects of our emissions will be negative.

However, this objection is surmountable as whilst individual emissions will not have negative expected effects every time, they will on average be negative. Individual emissions will often have effects that cancel each other out; we cannot predict an individual effect being positive or negative. As the butterfly effect is so complicated, we cannot evaluate where driving a diesel car will fall on a probability distribution of its effects. There is an equal chance of driving at midday falling in the top 5% as driving at midnight falling in the bottom 5%. Yet, the expected effects of our emissions will adhere to a normal probability distribution, symmetrical about the mean, due to what statisticians call the Central Limit Theorem. This says that if something results from multiple, small, non-perfectly correlated factors then there will be a normal distribution. Accordingly, there will be an equal probability of positive and negative effects from the mean, indicating such effects cancel each other out. This does not imply that driving a diesel car will have zero effect, because a distribution may be symmetrical but its mean be skewed towards harmful outcomes (Morgan-Knapp & Goodman 2015: 185). Thus, the distribution of expected effects from a diesel car’s emissions is symmetrical about a mean, but that mean will be negative because of the causal chain that emissions produce CO₂, adding to the greenhouse effect, resulting in climate change. This demonstrates that driving a car on average has negative expected effects. The butterfly effect on its own is so complicated that it does not offer an insight to how we can prevent climate change, yet combined with the scientific process of climate change it does offer such an insight. Accordingly, whilst we cannot know the expected effects of driving our car every time, we can know that the average effect will be negative. Therefore, the objection is surmountable.

From Zero Expected Effects to Small Expected Effects

Proponents of the argument that we have no moral reason to reduce our emissions may suggest we change ‘zero expected effects’ to ‘small expected effects’, as follows:

P1*. Individual emissions have small expected effects on climate change.

P2*. Small expected effects on climate change do not cause harm.

C1*. Individual emissions do not cause harm.

However, P2* then becomes unjustified because small expected effects on climate change cause harm. Imagine the following experiment. We ask a Somali farmer to report her experiences under randomly chosen atmospheres affected by climate change on a scale of 0-10, where 0 is that she experiences no suffering and 10 is that she experiences extreme suffering. These atmospheres are differently affected by climate change due to the different percentage levels of greenhouse gases. We order the results based on the percentage level of greenhouse gases. There will be a difference between the endpoints of the results’ distribution because at one end there are no greenhouse gases and at the other end the atmosphere is all greenhouse gases. If the farmer suffers from the accumulation of climate change effects caused by emissions, then she feels worse at the end point rather than at the beginning (Morgan-Knapp & Goodman 2015: 187). Consequently, there is at least one point, if not multiple, where individual emissions cause her harm. Suppose the difference between values 4 and 5 is the farmer having harvests and not. In Somalia the Gu rains from April to June produce harvests, and such rainfall occurs when average air temperature is 2°C (Binder et al. 2022). Producing harvests is dependent on many necessary and sufficient ecosystem conditions, one of them being air temperature around 2°C. This ecosystem is delicate because it has many tipping points and existing climate change makes these tipping points more vulnerable. Hence, small expected effects on climate change could cause temperatures to rise from 2°C to 2.0000001°C which could go past that tipping point, leading to an air temperature no longer conducive to the Gu rains, thereby destroying the harvest. Across the spectrum of suffering, the report’s values changing demonstrate individual emissions are sufficient to push one ecosystem condition past its tipping point, acting as the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The Gu rains is just one of many tipping points that our emissions could push over. Thus, small expected effects can cause harm. Therefore, P2* is unjustified; the reformulated argument remains unsound.

Response to Another Objection

One objection notes this point’s limited scope, arguing that there are some cases where small expected effects do not cause harm because our emissions cannot be individually disaggregated. Whilst driving a car means the driver caused its emissions, flying by plane is less obvious. If our emissions cannot be individually disaggregated, then our actions have no marginal effect on climate change. We can only be said to cause an outcome if we produce an effect – and if we did not cause an outcome, we cannot be held morally responsible for it. Flying by plane implies that we are not responsible for the emissions produced, because the flight would have gone anyway regardless of our choice. If our emissions cannot be individually disaggregated, then the Somali farmer would experience no difference between whether you took the plane or not. This objection challenges the point’s scope, thereby supporting P2* because in cases like plane flights small expected effects do not cause harm.

This objection is surmountable because we contribute to the plane’s emissions by purchasing a ticket, thereby enabling its harm. This is because we contributed to the plane’s emissions by taking it when there were alternatives. Airlines offer flights depending on profitability, which decreases if the plane is less full. Purchasing a ticket increases the chances of that route remaining operational, hence taking a flight has ‘contributory consequences’ resulting in emissions produced (Regan 1980: 13). Contributory consequences means our individual action of taking part in a collective action implies that the individual action shares the consequences that such a collective action causes. If the plane’s emissions cause Somalians harm, then we cause them harm because of the contributory consequences of taking that plane. It does not matter that our emissions cannot be individually disaggregated, since the contributory consequences suggest that the effect of the plane’s emissions can be individually disaggregated in terms of responsibility. Therefore, the objection is surmountable.

Conclusions

In 2006, South Park released an episode called ‘ManBearPig’ which ridiculed Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth – a documentary about climate change. In the episode, Gore enlists the kids of South Park to find ManBearPig, a beast he claims has been causing damage in their town. As the episode progresses, it becomes abundantly clear that ManBearPig is a fictional beast. The episode ultimately portrays Gore as a hypocrite about climate change. Yet twelve years later, South Park released an episode called ‘Time to get Cereal’ in which ManBearPig is in fact a real problem. The show’s characters regret how they mocked Gore, but ultimately put on hold any changes to the town of South Park, instead preferring to pass the problem down to the next generation.

It is possible to imagine the characters of South Park citing a similar argument as to why they did not make any changes to reducing their emissions. They would say that their individual emissions make no difference to the harm done by climate change; therefore, they have no moral reason to reduce our emissions. However, such an argument is unsound. It is unsound under both versions of the argument, using either zero expected effects or small expected effects. For the former, P1 is unjustified because the effects of individual emissions on climate change are non-zero. For the latter, P2* is unjustified because small expected effects on climate change do cause harm. Hopefully, this removes any moral reluctance to reduce our emissions now, rather than having to wait twelve years for an apology of sorts.

Nevin Chellappah enjoys reading philosophy, watching films – even better, trying to understand both – and boring his friends with his so-called ‘philosophical prowess’.