A_perfect_moral_storm_the_ethical_traged

A Perfect Moral Storm
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate

Change
Stephen M. Gardiner
Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780195379440
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195379440.001.0001

Stephen M. Gardiner
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195379440.003.0002
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter provides a detailed introduction to the metaphor of the perfect moral storm
and its application to climate change. It sketches each of the main elements of the storm ‐
its global, intergenerational and theoretical dimensions—and also the resulting problem of
moral corruption. It also examines some exacerbating features of the climate case, such
as scientific uncertainty, the skewed vulnerability of those least responsible, and the
creation of new victims and tragic choices. These matters are taken up in more detail in
later chapters.
Keywords: climate policy, tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, global ethics, intergenerational
ethics, theoretical inadequacy, moral corruption, scientific uncertainty, nonhuman nature, tragic choices,
cost‐benefit analysis
We are heading substantially—and rapidly—in the wrong direction.
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date: 22 June 2015
—Dieter Helm (Helm 2008, 214)
I. Why Ethics?
In 2001, the most authoritative scientific report on climate change, from the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),1 began by saying:
Natural, technical, and social sciences can provide essential information and
evidence needed for decisions on what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate system.” At the same time, such decisions are value
judgments.2
There are good grounds for this statement. Climate change is complex problem raising
issues across and between a large number of disciplines, including the physical and life
sciences, political science, economics, and psychology, to name just a few. But without
wishing for a moment to (p.20) marginalize the contributions of these disciplines, ethics
does seem to play a fundamental role.
Why so? At the most general level, the reason is that we cannot get very far in discussing
why climate change is a problem without invoking ethical considerations. If we do not think
that our own actions are open to moral assessment, or that various interests—our own;
those of our kith, kin, and country; those of distant people, future people, animals, and
nature—matter, then it is hard to see why climate change (or much else) poses a
problem. But once we see this, then we appear to need some account of moral
responsibility, morally important interests, and what to do about both. This puts us
squarely in the domain of ethics.
At a more practical level, ethical questions are fundamental to the main policy decisions
that must be made, such as where to set a global ceiling for greenhouse gas emissions,
and how to distribute the emissions permitted by such a ceiling. Consider first where the
global ceiling is set at a particular time. In large part, this depends on how the interests of
the present are weighed against those of the future. As the IPCC said in its 2007 report:
“Choices about the scale and timing of [greenhouse gas] mitigation involve balancing the
economic costs of more rapid emission reductions now against the corresponding
medium-term and long-term climate risks of delay.”3
One way of making this point vivid is to imagine an extreme case. Suppose that the
president of the United States went on television tonight and said that he and other world
leaders were declaring a global state of emergency and ordering an immediate radical
cut in emissions (e.g., complete cessation, or an 80% cut). Such a cut would dramatically
reduce the risks to future generations of catastrophic impacts from climate change. Still,
the proposal is surely unreasonable and unethical. Since the global economic system—on
which most people's way of life depends—is substantially driven by fossil fuels, an
immediate radical cut in emissions would cause a social and economic catastrophe for
current people. Since there is no way that the system could cope with an overnight
change of this magnitude, such a policy would probably lead to mass starvation, rampant
disease, and war. Civil society would collapse. Even if this did “solve” the climate problem
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for future generations, the moral objections to such an approach would be

overwhelming.
(p.21) The instant radical cut strategy is thus not discussed, and for good reason.
Nevertheless, the prospect raises important questions. Suppose, for the sake of
argument, that such a cut would be what is best for future people.4 For example,
suppose that it would be awful for those living through it, but that at some point later
generations would be better off than under any alternative climate policy, and at least as
well off as we are now. If such an option were available, the question would become: how
far are current people entitled to inflict risks on the future in order to protect
themselves? If the threat to the present were imminent and widespread social collapse, it
seems that they are so entitled. But what if it were not? What if, instead, the cost facing
the current generation were merely a slightly lower standard of living than they are
currently used to? Moreover, what if this were necessary to save the future from a
genuine catastrophe? The crucial thought here is that presumably at some point the
interests of future people become so important, and those of current people relatively
less so, that the balance tips to the future. This is relevant because a decision on where to
set a global cap at a particular time implicitly answers the question of where we think this
tipping point is. Of course, even without an explicit cap, our actual behavior—the
emissions we allow at a particular time—also implicitly answers the question. At the time of
writing, this answer is very strongly in our favor. Indeed, it suggests the view that our
interests have absolute priority over the interests of the future: any interest of ours
(however trivial) is sufficient to outweigh any interest of theirs (however serious).
Consider now the second main policy issue: once a global cap for a particular time is set,
how do we decide how emissions are to be distributed under it? This is a very important
question. Given that fossil fuel consumption is currently fundamental to our economic
systems and likely to remain important for decades, even as we transition towards
alternatives, how we answer the question of who is allowed to emit how much will have
major social, economic, and geopolitical consequences. But many of the issues underlying
any answer are ethical. Any allocation must (explicitly or implicitly) take a position on the
importance of factors such as historical responsibility for the problem, the current needs
and future aspirations of particular societies, and the appropriate (p.22) role of energy
consumption in people's lives. Consider the following. Does it matter that the developed
nations are responsible for the overwhelming majority of emissions historically?5 Is it
important that their populations are, on average, much richer than those of the less
developed nations, and likely to remain so during the transition?6 What are we to say
about the fact that some people's emissions are largely “spent” on luxury items (such as
maintaining large houses at a constant temperature of 72 degrees F, or driving large and
relatively energy-inefficient vehicles, or taking exotic vacations far from home) whereas
others are the basis of bare subsistence?7
The relevance of ethics to substantive climate policy thus seems clear, and the topic
deserves serious independent treatment. This is a project to which I have contributed
elsewhere.8 Still, it is not my focus in this book. Instead, I address a further—and to some
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extent more basic—way in which ethical reflection sheds light on our present
predicament. This has nothing much to do with the substance of a defensible climate
regime; instead, it concerns the making of climate policy.
My thesis is this. The peculiar features of the climate change problem pose substantial
obstacles to our ability to make the hard choices necessary to address it. Climate change
is a perfect moral storm. One consequence of this is that, even if the difficult ethical
questions could be answered, we might still find it difficult to act. For the storm makes us
extremely vulnerable to moral corruption.9
Let us say that a perfect storm is an event constituted by an unusual convergence of

independently harmful factors where this convergence is likely to result in substantial,
and possibly catastrophic, negative (p.23) outcomes. The term “the perfect storm”
seems to have become prominent in popular culture from Sebastian Junger's book of that
name, and the associated film.10 Junger's tale is based on the true story of the Andrea
Gail, a fishing vessel caught at sea during a convergence of three particularly bad storms.
The sense of the analogy is that climate change appears to be a perfect moral storm
because it involves the convergence of a number of factors that threaten our ability to
behave ethically.11
As climate change is a complex phenomenon, I cannot hope to identify all of the ways in
which its features cause problems for ethical behavior.12 Instead, I will identify three
especially salient problems – analogous to the three storms that hit the Andrea Gail – that
converge in the climate change case. These three “storms” arise in the global,
intergenerational, and theoretical dimensions, and I will argue that their interaction helps
to exacerbate and obscure a lurking problem of moral corruption that may be of greater
practical importance than any one of them.
(p.24) II. The Global Storm

The climate challenge is usually understood in spatial, and especially geopolitical, terms.
We can make sense of this by pointing out three important characteristics of the problem:
dispersion of causes and effects, fragmentation of agency, and institutional inadequacy.
1. The Basic Storm

Let us begin with the dispersion of causes and effects. Climate change is a truly global
phenomenon. Emissions of greenhouse gases from any geographical location on the
earth's surface enter the atmosphere and then play a role in affecting climate globally.
Hence, the impact of any particular emission of greenhouse gases is not realized solely at
its source, either individual or geographical; instead, impacts are dispersed to other
actors and regions of the earth. Such spatial dispersion has been widely discussed.
The second characteristic is fragmentation of agency. Climate change is not caused by a

single agent, but by a vast number of individuals and institutions (including economic,
social, and political institutions) not unified by a comprehensive structure of agency. This
is important because it poses a challenge to humanity's ability to respond.
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In the spatial dimension, this feature is usually understood as arising out of the shape of
the current international system, as constituted by states. Then the problem is that, given
that there is not only no world government but also no less centralized system of global
governance (or at least no effective one), it is very difficult to coordinate an effective
response to global climate change.
This general argument is typically given more bite through the invocation of a certain
familiar theoretical model.13 For the international situation is usually understood in game
theoretic terms as a prisoner's dilemma, or what Garrett Hardin calls a tragedy of the
commons. Let us (p.25) consider each of these models in turn (see also chapters 3 and
4). (The details of the next few paragraphs can be safely overlooked by those
uninterested in more technical matters.).)
A prisoner's dilemma is a situation with a certain structure.14 In the standard example,

two prisoners are about to stand trial for a crime that they are accused of committing
together.15 Each faces the following proposition. He can either confess or not confess. If
both confess, then each gets five years. If neither confesses, then each gets one year on
a lesser charge. But if one confesses and the other does not, then the confessor goes
free, and the nonconfessor gets ten years. Neither knows for sure what the other will do;
but each knows that the other faces the same choice situation.
Given this scenario, each person has the following preference ranking:
1st Preference: I confess, the other criminal doesn't. (Go free)

2nd Preference: Neither of us confess. (1 year)
3rd Preference: Both of us confess. (5 years)
4th Preference: I don't confess, but the other criminal does. (10 years.)
This situation is usually expressed with a diagram of the following sort:
B don't confess B confess

A don't confess 1, 1 (2nd, 2nd) 10, 0 (4th, 1st)
A confess 0, 10 (1st, 4th) 5, 5 (3rd, 3rd)
The reason why the situation is called a dilemma is as follows. Suppose I am one of the
prisoners. I cannot guarantee what the other prisoner will do, and I lack any effective
means to make it that I can do so. So I need to consider each possibility. Suppose he
confesses. Then it is better for me to confess also (since 5 years in jail is better than 10).
Suppose he does not confess. Then it is better for me to confess (since going free is
better than 1 year in jail). So, whatever he does, I should confess. (p.26) Unfortunately,
the situation is exactly the same for him. So, reasoning in the same way I do, he will also
confess. This means that the outcome will be that both of us confess (getting 5 years
each). But this is suboptimal: each of us prefers the outcome that comes from us both not
confessing (1 year each) over the outcome that comes from us both confessing (5 years
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each).16
For current purposes, the central difficulty can be (roughly) characterized as follows:
(PD1) It is collectively rational to cooperate: each agent prefers the

outcome produced by everyone cooperating over the outcome
produced by no one cooperating.
(PD2) It is individually rational not to cooperate: when each individual
has the power to decide whether or not she will cooperate, each
person (rationally) prefers not to cooperate, whatever the others do.
PD1 and PD2 generate the paradox as follows. In prisoner's dilemma situations, each
individual has the power to decide whether or not she will cooperate. Hence, given PD2,
if each person is individually rational, no one cooperates. But this means that each person
ends up with an outcome that they disprefer over an outcome that is available. For,
according to PD1, each prefers the cooperative over the noncooperative outcome.
Obviously, this is unsatisfactory, by each agent's own lights.
The tragedy of the commons model is perhaps more familiar in environmental contexts
than the prisoner's dilemma, but seems to have the same underlying logic. In essentials,
the tragedy of the commons appears to be a prisoner's dilemma involving a single
common resource. (I offer a more complex account of the relationship between the two
models in chapter 4.) In his classic example, Hardin imagines a group of herdsmen
grazing their cattle on common land. Each herdsman is considering whether or not he
should add to his herd. Hardin assumes that the relevant factors to consider are: on the
positive side, the benefit of an extra cow, which is roughly the price it will fetch in the
market place; and, on (p.27) the negative side, the effects of this cow's grazing on what
is left for other animals. But, he observes, these benefits and costs are distributed
differently: whereas the benefit accrues only to the individual herdsman, the costs are
spread across all the cattle in the pasture, and so are shared by all herdsmen.17 Suppose
then that each herdsman has as his goal the maximization of his own profit. Given the
distribution of costs and benefits, each will find himself with a strong incentive to add
extra cattle; and so all will. But if they do, this will result in the systematic overgrazing of
the commons, which is disastrous for everyone.
The force of Hardin's example is as follows. The situation facing the herdsmen is
paradoxical. On the one hand, each prefers the outcome of everyone restricting their
own herd (i.e., the commons remaining intact) over the outcome produced by no one
doing so (i.e., the collapse of the commons). But, on the other hand, when each is deciding
what to do in his own case, each prefers to add more cattle to his own herd.
Unfortunately, it is this latter preference that drives the outcome. Since each herdsman
makes his decision in isolation, all add cattle. This destroys the commons, to their mutual
ruin.
Hardin's description of this kind of situation as a tragedy is apt. For what happens is more
than simply a bad thing. The initial situation drives people by an inexorable process
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towards an outcome that is worse by their own lights, and away from one that is better.
Indeed, it is the very same values that make cooperation preferable that drive each agent
away from it. In Hardin's example, each herdsman wants the maximum profit, which is
why all prefer collective constraint; still, when they act as individuals, it is their desire for
profit that drives them to pursue more (and more) cattle, and so leads to the collapse of
the commons.18
The basic features of the herdsmen example can be generalized to fit other cases in the
same way as those of the prisoner's dilemma. Roughly speaking, the tragedy of the
commons holds when: (TC1) each agent prefers the outcome produced by everyone
restricting their consumption over the outcome produced by no one doing so; but (TC2)
each agent has the power to decide whether or not she will restrict her consumption,
each (rationally) prefers not to do so, whatever the others do. Again, this (p.28) is
paradoxical: according to the first claim, each agent accepts that it is collectively rational
to cooperate; but, according to the second, each agent believes that it is individually
rational not to cooperate. Moreover, if the second claim dominates—if the parties all act
on individual rationality—the situation generates tragedy. All are lead to a situation that
they agree is worse than another that is potentially available.
The tragedy of the commons has become the standard analytical model for
understanding regional and global environmental problems in general, and climate change
is no exception. Typically, the reasoning goes as follows. Think of climate change as an
international problem, and conceive of the relevant parties as individual countries, who
represent the interests of their countries in perpetuity. Then, the above claims about
collective and individual rationality appear to hold. On the one hand, no country wants
catastrophic climate change. Hence, each prefers the outcome produced by everyone
restricting their own emissions over the outcome produced by no one doing so, and so it
is collectively rational to cooperate and restrict global emissions. But, on the other hand,
each country prefers to free-ride on the actions of others. Hence, when each country has
the power to decide whether or not she will restrict her emissions, each prefers not to
do so, whatever the others do.19;
If climate change is a normal tragedy of the commons, this is a matter of concern. Still,
there is a sense in which this turns out to be encouraging news. In the real world,
commons problems are often resolvable under certain circumstances, and at first glance
climate change seems to satisfy these conditions.20 In particular, it is widely said that
parties facing a commons problem can solve it if they benefit from a wider context of
interaction—that is, if they have reasons to cooperate with one another over other
matters of mutual concern. This appears to be the case with climate change, since
countries interact with each other on a number of broader issues, such as trade and
security.
This brings us to the third characteristic of the climate change problem, institutional
inadequacy. There is wide agreement that the (p.29) appropriate means for resolving
commons problems under the favorable conditions just mentioned is for the parties to
agree to change the existing incentive structure through the introduction of a system of
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enforceable sanctions. (Hardin calls this “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.”21 ) This
transforms the decision situation by foreclosing the option of free-riding, so that the
collectively rational action also becomes individually rational. Theoretically, then, matters
seem simple; but in practice things are different. The need for enforceable sanctions
poses a challenge at the global level because of the limits of our current (largely national)
institutions, and the lack of an effective system of global governance. In essence,
addressing climate change appears to require global regulation of greenhouse gas
emissions, where this includes establishing a reliable enforcement mechanism; but the
current global system—or lack of it—makes this difficult, if not impossible.
The implication of the familiar (spatial) analysis, then, is that the main thing needed to solve
the climate problem is an effective system of global governance (at least for this issue).
There is a sense in which this is still good news. In principle at least, it should be possible
to motivate countries to establish such a regime, since they ought to recognize that it is in
their long-term interests to eliminate the possibility of free riding and so make genuine
cooperation the rational strategy at the individual as well as collective level.
2. Exacerbating Factors
Unfortunately, however, this is not the end of the story. There are other features of the
climate change case that make the necessary global agreement more difficult, and so
exacerbate the basic global storm.22 Prominent amongst these is scientific uncertainty
about the precise (p.30) magnitude and distribution of effects, particularly at the
national level.23 One reason for this is that the lack of trustworthy data about the costs
and benefits of climate change at the national level casts doubt on the collective rationality
claim—that no one wants serious climate change. Perhaps, some nations wonder, we
might be better off with at least a moderate amount of climate change than without it.
More importantly, some might ask whether, faced with a given serious change, they will
at least be relatively better off than other countries, and so might get away with paying
less to avoid the associated costs.24 Such factors complicate the game theoretic situation,
and so make agreement more difficult.
In other contexts, the problem of scientific uncertainty might not be so serious. But a
second characteristic of the climate problem exacerbates matters in this setting. The
source of climate change is located deep in the infrastructure of current civilizations;
hence, attempts to combat it may have substantial ramifications for social life. Climate
change is caused by human production of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide.
Such emissions are brought about by the burning of fossil fuels for energy. But it is this
energy that supports existing economies. Hence, if halting climate change requires deep
cuts in projected global emissions over time, we can expect that such action will have
profound effects on the basic economic organization of the developed countries and on
the aspirations of the developing countries.
The “deep roots” problem has several salient implications. First, it suggests that those
with vested interests in the continuation of the current system—for example, many of
those who have substantial political and economic power, or who expect to gain such
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power, through selling emissions-intensive resources—will resist such action. Second,

unless ready substitutes are found, real mitigation can be expected to have (p.31)
profound impacts on how humans live and how human societies evolve. Hence, action on
climate change is likely to raise serious, and perhaps uncomfortable, questions about who
we are and what we want to be. Third, this suggests a status quo bias in the face of
uncertainty. Contemplating change is often uncomfortable; contemplating basic change
may be unnerving, even distressing. Since the social ramifications of action appear to be
large, perspicuous, and concrete, but those of inaction appear uncertain, elusive, and
indeterminate, it is easy to see why uncertainty might exacerbate social inertia.25
A third and very important feature of the climate change problem that exacerbates the
basic global storm is that of skewed vulnerabilities. The climate challenge interacts in some
unfortunate ways with the present global power structure. For one thing, the
responsibility for historical and current emissions lies predominantly with the richer,
more powerful nations, and the poor nations are badly situated to hold them accountable.
For another, the limited evidence on regional impacts suggests that it is the poorer
nations that are most vulnerable to the worst impacts of climate change, at least in the
short- to medium-term.26 Finally, action on climate change creates a moral risk for the
developed nations. Implicitly, it embodies a recognition that there are international norms
of ethics and responsibility, and reinforces the idea that international cooperation on
issues involving such norms is both possible and necessary. Hence, it may encourage
attention to other moral defects of the current global system, such as global poverty and
inequality, human rights violations, and so on. If the developed nations are not ready to
engage on such topics, this creates a further reason to avoid action on climate change.
Indeed, the unwillingness to engage puts pressure on the claim that there is a broader
context of interaction within which the climate problem can be solved. If some nations do
not wish to engage with (p.32) issues of global ethics, and they believe that creating a
climate regime leads down this path, then this lessens the incentive to cooperate.27
III. The Intergenerational Storm

The global storm emerges from a spatial reading of the characteristics just mentioned
(i.e., dispersion of causes and effects, fragmentation of agency, and institutional
inadequacy). However, these characteristics are also highly relevant in the temporal
dimension, and this gives rise to a more serious, but relatively neglected, challenge. I call
this “the intergenerational storm.”
1. The Basic Storm

Consider first the dispersion of causes and effects. Human-induced climate change is a
severely lagged phenomenon. This is partly because some of the basic mechanisms set in
motion by the greenhouse effect, such as sea level rise, take a very long time to be fully
realized. But it is also because by far the most important greenhouse gas produced by
human activities is carbon dioxide, and once emitted molecules of carbon dioxide can
spend a surprisingly long time in the atmosphere.28
(p.33) Let us dwell for a moment on this second factor. In the past, the IPCC has said
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that the average time spent by a molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is in the
region of 5–200 years. This estimate is long enough to create a serious lagging effect;
nevertheless, it obscures the fact that a significant percentage of carbon dioxide
molecules remain in the atmosphere for much longer periods of time, of the order of
thousands and tens of thousands of years. For instance, the climatologist David Archer
says:
The carbon cycle of the biosphere will take a long time to completely neutralize and
sequester anthropogenic CO2. We show a wide range of model forecasts of this
effect. For the best-guess cases … we expect that 17–33% of the fossil fuel carbon
will still reside in the atmosphere 1kyr from now, decreasing to 10–15% at 10kyr,
and 7% at 100 kyr. The mean lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 is about 30–35 kyr.29
This is a fact, he states, which has not yet “reached general public awareness.”30 Hence,
he suggests that “a better shorthand for public discussion [than the IPCC estimate]
might be that CO2 sticks around for hundreds of years, plus 25% that sticks around
forever.”31
The fact that carbon dioxide is a long-lived greenhouse gas has at least three important
implications. The first is that climate change is a resilient phenomenon. Given that
currently it does not seem practical to remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere, or to moderate its climatic effects, the upward trend in atmospheric
concentration is not easily reversible. Hence, a goal of stabilizing and then reducing
carbon dioxide concentrations requires advance planning. Second, climate change impacts
are seriously backloaded. The climate change that the earth is currently experiencing is
primarily the result of emissions from some time in the past, rather than current
emissions. As an illustration, it is widely accepted that by 2000 we had already committed
ourselves to a rise of at least 0.5 and perhaps more than 1 degree Celsius over the then-
observed (p.34) rise of 0.6C.32 Third, climate change is a substantially deferred
phenomenon. Backloading implies that the full, cumulative effects of our current emissions
will not be realized for some time in the future.
Temporal dispersion creates a number of problems. First, as is widely noted, the

resilience of climate change implies that sustained action across many decades is
required, and that this needs to anticipate (and so avoid or moderate) negative impacts
that are some way off. Given this, periods of procrastination and vacillation have serious
repercussions for our ability to manage the problem. Second, backloading implies that
climate change poses serious epistemic difficulties, especially for normal political actors.
Backloading makes it hard to grasp the connection between causes and effects, and this
may undermine the motivation to act33; it also implies that by the time we realize that
things are bad, we will already be committed to much more change, undermining the
ability to respond. Third, the deferral effect calls into question the ability of standard
institutions to deal with the problem. Democratic political institutions have relatively short
time horizons—the next election cycle, a politician's political career—and it is doubtful
whether such institutions have the wherewithal to deal with substantially deferred
impacts. Even more seriously, substantial deferral is likely to undermine the will to act.
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This is because there is an incentive problem: the bad effects of current emissions are
likely to fall, or fall disproportionately, on future generations, whereas the benefits of
emissions accrue largely to the present.34
These three points already raise the specter of institutional inadequacy. But to appreciate
this problem fully, we must first say something about the temporal fragmentation of
agency. To begin with, there is some reason to think that this might be worse than spatial
fragmentation even considered in isolation. In principle, spatially fragmented agents may
actually become unified and so able to act as a single agent; but temporally fragmented
agents cannot actually become unified, and so may at best only act as if they were a
single agent. Hence, there is a sense in which (p.35) temporal fragmentation may be
more intractable than spatial fragmentation. At a minimum, theoretical accounts of how we
might act so as to overcome temporal fragmentation seem even more pressing than in the
spatial case.
More substantively, the kind of temporal dispersion that characterizes climate change
seems clearly much more problematic than the associated spatial fragmentation. Indeed,
the presence of backloading and deferral together brings on a new kind of collective
action problem that not only adds to the global storm, but is also more difficult to resolve.
This problem might aptly be described as one of “intergenerational buck-passing.”
We can illustrate the buck-passing problem in the case of climate change if we relax the
assumption that countries can be relied upon adequately to represent the interests of
both their present and future citizens. Suppose that this is not true. Assume instead that
existing national institutions are biased towards the concerns of the current generation:
they behave in ways that give excessive weight to those concerns relative to the
concerns of future generations. Then, if the benefits of carbon dioxide emission are felt
primarily by the present generation35 (in the form of cheap energy), whereas the costs
are substantially deferred to future generations (in the form of the risk of severe and
perhaps catastrophic climate change), climate change may provide an instance of a severe
intergenerational collective action problem. For one thing, the current generation may
“live large” and pass the bill on to the future. For another, the problem may be iterated.
As each new generation gains the power to decide whether or not to act, it faces the
same incentive structure, and so if it is motivated primarily by generation-relative
concerns, it will continue the overconsumption. Thus, the impacts on those generations
further into the future are compounded, and more likely to be catastrophic. If in the long-
term there are positive feedback mechanisms, or dangerous nonlinearities in the system
(as some scientists suspect), this worry increases.
(p.36) Chapter 5 argues that we gain some insight into the shape of this
intergenerational problem if we consider a pure version, where the generations do not
overlap.36 I call this “the central problem of intergenerational buck-passing” (CPIBP or
“the central problem”), and think of it as the core concern of distinctively
intergenerational ethics (“the pure intergenerational problem,” or PIP). The main idea is
that future generations are extremely vulnerable to their successors. They are subject
to what we might call an ongoing “tyranny of the contemporary” that is parallel in some
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ways to the problem of the “tyranny of the majority” that exercises a great deal of
traditional political theory.
It is useful to compare the pure intergenerational problem to the more traditional

prisoner's dilemma or tragedy of the commons. The two have strong similarities. Suppose
we envision a paradigm form of intergenerational buck-passing, a case where earlier
generations inflict serious and unjustifiable pollution on later generations. On an optimistic
understanding of things, this situation might involve the following claims about collective
and individual rationality:37
(PIP1) Almost every generation prefers the outcome produced by

everyone restricting its pollution over the outcome produced by
everyone overpolluting.
(PIP2) When each generation has the power to decide whether or not
it will overpollute, each generation (rationally) prefers to do so,
whatever the others do.
We might notice that PIP2, the claim about individual rationality, is structurally identical to
PD2 in the prisoner's dilemma, and that PIP2, the claim about collective rationality, is also
very similar to PD1. Still, even given this similarity, there are important differences. On
the one hand, PIP1 is worse than PD1 because in intergenerational buck-passing not all of
the actors prefer the cooperative outcome; instead, the first generation is left out,
because it prefers noncooperation. (The cooperation of its successors does not benefit it;
and since the costs of its overpollution are passed on to the future, holding back does not
benefit it either, but requires a pure sacrifice.) Worse, because of this, there is a new
problem (p.37) of defection. Since subsequent generations have no reason to comply if
their predecessors do not, noncompliance by the first generation reverberates so as to
undermine the collective project. If the first generation does not cooperate, then the
second generation does not gain from cooperation, and so is put in the same position as
the first. Hence, it does not cooperate, and so puts the third generation in the same
position as the first; so, it does not cooperate, and so on. In short, the defection of the
first generation is enough to unravel the entire scheme of cooperation.
On the other hand, the claim about individual rationality is worse in intergenerational
buck-passing because the reason for it is deeper. Both claims about individual rationality
hold because the parties lack access to mechanisms (such as enforceable sanctions) that
would make defection unattractive. But whereas in normal tragedy of the commons cases
this obstacle is largely practical, and can be resolved by the affected parties creating
appropriate institutions together, in the pure intergenerational problem the parties do
not coexist, and so the afflicted are in principle unable to directly influence the behavior of
their predecessors.
This problem of interaction produces the second respect in which the pure
intergenerational problem is worse than the tragedy of the commons. This is that it is
more difficult to resolve, because the standard solutions to the tragedy of the commons
are unavailable. One cannot appeal to a wider context of mutually beneficial interaction,
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nor to the usual notions of reciprocity. First, the appeal to broad self-interest relies on
there being repeated interactions between the parties where mutually beneficial
behavior is possible. But between present and future generations there is neither
repeated interaction (by definition, there is no interaction at all), nor mutual benefit (there
is no way for future generations to benefit present generations).38 Second, in this
context, an appeal to reciprocal fairness initially seems more promising. In particular, if
one generation unilaterally restricts its pollution, then subsequent generations can owe
the obligation to their forefathers to restrict theirs for the sake of future generations.
(Subsequent generations get a benefit from not inheriting an overpolluted planet, but
then must, out of fairness, pass this on, so that there is a kind of indirect reciprocity.)
However, one problem with this is (p.38) that we need to assume that the initial
generation makes a pure sacrifice, with no compensation. So, their action cannot be
justified by an appeal to (even indirect) reciprocity.39
These problems reflect the difference in structure of the cases already mentioned. In the
prisoner's dilemma case, most of the proposed solutions rely on rearranging the situation
so as to provide some kind of guarantee of the behavior of others when one cooperates.
But in the PIP, the situation cannot be rearranged in this way.40 If the parties cannot
interact, future generations are in no position to benefit or to engage in reciprocal acts
with their forbears.
The upshot of all this is that the intergenerational analysis will be less optimistic about
solutions than the prisoner's dilemma analysis. When applied to climate change, the
intergenerational analysis suggests that current populations may not be motivated to
establish a fully adequate global regime. Given the temporal dispersion of effects—and
especially the substantial deferral and backloading of impacts—such a regime is probably
neither in their interests nor responsive to their concerns (see chapter 2).41 This is a
significant moral problem. Moreover, since in my view the intergenerational storm
dominates the global in climate change, the problem may become acute.
(p.39) 2. Exacerbating Factors

Intergenerational buck-passing is bad enough considered in isolation. But in the context
of climate change it is also subject to morally relevant multiplier effects. First, climate
change is not a static phenomenon. In failing to act appropriately, the current generation
does not simply pass an existing problem along to future people. Instead, it adds to it,
making the problem substantially worse. For one thing, it increases the costs of coping
with climate change. Failing to act now increases the magnitude of future climate change
and so its effects. For another, in failing to act now the current generation makes
mitigation more difficult because it allows additional investment in fossil fuel-based
infrastructure in developed and especially less developed countries. Hence, inaction
raises transition costs, making future change harder than change now. Finally, and
perhaps most importantly, the current generation does not add to the problem in a linear
way. Rather, it rapidly accelerates the problem, since global emissions are increasing at a
substantial rate. For example, total carbon dioxide emissions have increased more than
four-fold in the last fifty years:
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Graphic 1.1.
(p.40) Both global emissions and the emissions of most major countries have been
increasing steadily during this period. For example, from 1990–2005, global emissions
rose by almost 30% (from 6164 to 7985 million metric tons of carbon), and U.S. emissions
by just over 20%.42 In addition, global emissions have been growing even more rapidly
in the recent past, from an average of 1.5–2% per annum in the late 1990s to nearly 3% in
2007. Though 2% may not seem like much, the effects of compounding make it significant,
even in the near term: “continued growth of CO2 emissions at 2% per year would yield a
22% increase of emission rate in 10 years and a 35% increase in 15 years.”43 Moreover,
the magnitude of the most recent growth is shocking. As the Washington Post put it late in
2008, “The rise in global carbon dioxide emissions last year outpaced international
researchers' most dire projections.”44
The second multiplier effect is that insufficient action may make some generations suffer
unnecessarily. Suppose that, at this point in time, climate change seriously affects the
prospects of generations A, B, and C. Suppose, then, that if generation A refuses to act,
the effect will continue for longer, harming generations D and E. This may make
generation A's inaction worse in a significant respect. In addition to failing to aid
generations B and C (and probably also increasing the magnitude of harm inflicted on
them), generation A now harms generations D and E, who otherwise would be spared.
On some views, this might count as especially egregious, since it might be said that it
violates a fundamental moral principle of ‘do no harm’.45
The third multiplier effect is that generation A's inaction may create situations where
tragic choices must be made. One way in which a generation may act badly is if it puts in
place a set of future circumstances that make it morally required for its successors (and
perhaps even itself) to make other generations suffer either unnecessarily, or at least
more than would otherwise be the case. For example, suppose that (p.41) generation A
could and should act now in order to limit climate change, and if it did so that generation
D would be kept below some crucial climate threshold, but delay would mean that they
would pass that threshold.46 If passing the threshold imposes severe costs on generation
D, then their situation may be so dire that they are forced to take action that will harm
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generation F (such as emitting even more greenhouse gases) than they would otherwise
not need to consider. One possibility is this. Under some circumstances actions that harm
innocent others may be morally permissible on grounds of self-defense, and such
circumstances may arise in the climate change case.47 In short, if there is a self-defense
exception to the prohibition on harming innocent others, one way in which generation A
might behave badly is by creating a situation such that generation D is forced to call on
this exception, and so inflict extra suffering on generation F.48 Worse, this problem can
become iterated: perhaps generation D's actions force generation F to call on the self-
defense exception too, with the result that it inflicts harm on generation H, and so on.
(This is one instance of a more general scenario I refer to as the “intergenerational arms
race” in chapter 6. See also chapters 10 and 11.)
IV. The Theoretical Storm

The final storm I want to highlight is constituted by our current theoretical ineptitude. We
are extremely ill-equipped to deal with many problems characteristic of the long-term
future. Even our best moral and political theories face fundamental and often severe
difficulties addressing basic issues such as intergenerational equity, international justice,
scientific uncertainty, contingent persons, and the human relationship to animals and
nature more generally. But climate change involves all of these matters and more. Given
this, our theories are poorly placed to respond. Theoretically, we are currently “inept,” in
the (nonpejorative) sense of lacking the skills and basic competence for the task.
(p.42) One sign of our theoretical problems comes from the leading economic approach,
cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Much work has been done trying to analyze climate change in
these terms. But it tends to point in radically different directions. There is an explanation
for this. Here is what John Broome, White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, and
formerly a Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol, has to say about the
method when applied to climate change:
Cost-benefit analysis, when faced with uncertainties as big as these, would simply
be self-deception. And in any case, it could not be a successful exercise, because
the issue of our responsibility to future generations is too poorly understood, and
too little accommodated in the current economic theory.49
Unlike many concerned with environmental issues, Broome is a defender of CBA in

normal contexts.50 Nevertheless, he thinks that there are special problems in this setting
that undermine its application (see chapter 8). Given such worries, we should be
surprised at the continued predominance of economic analysis in policy discourse. Why
indulge in “self-deception”? Unfortunately, other components of the perfect moral storm
provide an answer. (See below.)
A second sign of our theoretical problems comes from the relative silence of most of the
prominent political philosophies of the day on global environmental problems.51 Of
course, there is a feeling that such theories ought to have something to say about climate
change. After all, such change is likely to be severely detrimental to concerns that they
hold dear, such as happiness, individual rights, and the integrity of national cultures. Still,
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in practice, these approaches seem peculiarly reticent in the face of the threat. This raises
the worry that they may facilitate the perfect moral storm. Chapter 7 explores this worry
by asking whether contemporary political theory and the institutions it tends to support
are guilty of failing an important global test. If a set of institutions and theories leave
humanity open to, or even encourage, self-inflicted disaster, should they not be
criticized, or even rejected, because of this?
(p.43) A third sign of possible theoretical trouble comes from the fact that the global
test is stated in purely anthropocentric terms, and instrumental ones at that. But surely a
more general worry about the human exploitation of nature also lurks in the background.
To be sure, to a significant extent, the problem posed by the perfect moral storm is that
nature becomes a vehicle through which injustice is visited on other people. It facilitates
the exploitation of the poor by the rich in the global storm, and of the future by the
present in the intergenerational storm.52 Such injustice is made vivid even in narrowly
instrumental terms. Environmental injustice impacts the wealth, health, and so on of
vulnerable human beings.
Nevertheless, there may be more to consider if one thinks that nature may have
noninstrumental value. To see this, consider an example. Many years ago, I came across a
magazine article by an economist that argued that climate change is not a problem
because future generations of humanity could always live in massive domes on the
earth's surface if they needed to.53 (Call this scenario dome world.) This claim is troubling
for many reasons. But one that is especially striking is that it suggests that the
disappearance of nonhuman animals and the rest of nature would not be a serious loss
(or, at best, that it would be a compensable one). I take this to be a profound claim with
which many people would disagree. On the one hand, many will object because they
believe that a good relationship with the natural world is, or should be, constitutive of a
flourishing human life. In that case, dome world involves another important manifestation
of the global and intergenerational storms. On the other hand, some will insist that the
dome world scenario is also morally horrifying because the loss of other living beings and
systems on the planet would be a tragedy in itself, independently of its effects on human
interests. This suggests a further, “ecological storm.”
It is plausible to think that the structure of the distinctively ecological storm bears some
similarity to the tragedy of the commons or intergenerational buck-passing models.
Consider the following simple metaphor, (p.44) which I shall call kick the dog. In the old
story, the farmer kicks his wife, his wife kicks the child, and the child kicks the dog. In the
perfect moral storm, the parallel is likely to be that the current rich “kick” the current
poor, and both “kick” future generations. But the “kicking” is unlikely to stop there.
Chances are that many of the costs of our problematic ways of life will be passed on to
other species through the ecological systems on which they depend. Some of this will be
done directly by the rich, but some will also be done by the initial victims, the current
poor and future generations. In other words, the initial bad behavior may set off a chain
reaction towards the end of which stands not just the most vulnerable humans, but also
many animals, plants, and places. Moreover, if and when the natural world kicks back, it
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may just induce a further cycle of further buck-passing. (This might parallel the
“intergenerational arms race” discussed in chapter 6.)
The kick the dog scenario has strong initial plausibility. The signs are that such ecological
buck-passing is already rife in the global environmental tragedy more generally.
Humanity as such is kicking the atmosphere, the rainforests, the Arctic, and so on, and
thorough them the polar bear, the big cats, and many other species. Much of this buck-
passing is disguised by the complicated causal routes through which it occurs. But the
fact that it is disguised does not mean that it is not happening.
What should we say about the status of the ecological storm? It is tempting to include it
as one of the main constituents of the perfect moral storm proper, instead of subsuming
it under the theoretical storm. I have not done so both for the sake of simplicity and
because its existence as a distinct “storm” is itself a matter of theoretical controversy.
This does not imply that it is not important or central. (I have not counted the problem of
skewed vulnerabilities separately for similar reasons. Yet it is of profound importance.)
Instead, it reflects my attempt, signaled in the Introduction, to beg as few theoretical
questions as possible in the sketching of the basic moral problem. This does not in any
way preclude those with strong ethical commitments to animals and the rest of nature
from conceiving of the ecological storm as a distinct problem that should be addressed
by any positive account that deserves our respect. (A similar point can be made about
the problem of skewed vulnerabilities.) These are simply matters to be taken up
elsewhere.54
(p.45) V. The Problem of Moral Corruption

This brings us to the last problem I wish to identify. When the global, intergenerational
and theoretical storms meet, they encourage a distinct problem for ethical action on
climate change, the problem of moral corruption. This can be illustrated if we focus for a
moment on the intergenerational storm. Acknowledging that one is engaging in
intergenerational buck-passing is morally uncomfortable, especially when the
consequences of such buck-passing may be severe, or even catastrophic, for the victims.
Presumably, this is discomfort that we would like to avoid. Given this, if the current
generation engages in buck-passing, it will welcome ways to obscure what it is doing. This
is important because it suggests that climate policy is not made or discussed in a neutral
evaluative context. The perfect moral storm clouds the debate.
One way to facilitate buck-passing is by avoiding real engagement with the issue. This
might be achieved in a wide variety of ways, many of which are familiar from other
contexts. Consider, for example:
• Distraction
• Complacency
• Selective attention
• Unreasonable doubt
• Delusion
• Pandering
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• Hypocrisy
Now, I suspect that close observers of two decades of political debate about climate
change will recognize many of these mechanisms as being in play. In their most obvious
forms, they facilitate a relatively quick evasion of the whole topic. But such strategies are
also relevant to more substantive discussions.
Of special concern from an ethical and philosophical point of view is the fact that, if the
current generation favors buck-passing, but does not want to face up to what it is doing,
it is likely to welcome any rationale that appears to justify its behavior. Hence, it may be
attracted to weak or deceptive arguments that appear to license buck-passing, and so
give them less scrutiny than it ought. A particularly deep way of doing this is thorough the
corruption of the very terms of the debate, moral and otherwise. In other words, the
perfect moral storm may work to subvert our understanding of what is at stake.
(p.46) The idea that agents may subvert moral language and arguments for their own
purposes is hardly unfamiliar in normal political life. Moreover, it is highly plausible to
think that the self-serving approach to morality has been alive and well in much of what
has passed for social and political discourse about climate change in the last twenty years
or so. Still, the presence and prevalence of the intergenerational storm reveals a new and
powerful potential for such trouble. In many normal contexts, the tendency towards the
corruption of discourse faces a strong challenge from the likely victims of immoral
behavior. But this is not the case in the intergenerational setting. Since the victims are not
yet around to defend the discourse, the potential for moral corruption is especially
high.55 This problem is exacerbated by the iteration of buck-passing, which implies that
when they are around, future people may themselves become vulnerable to moral
corruption.
In chapter 9, I try to illustrate the problem more clearly by drawing a comparison

between a classic instance of moral corruption in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and
the recent climate debate. For now, let me focus on just way in which moral corruption
may be facilitated, by selective attention. Since climate change involves a complex
convergence of problems, it is easy to engage in manipulative or self-deceptive behavior
by applying one's attention to only some of the considerations that make the situation
difficult. This may happen in a variety of ways.
At the level of practical politics, such strategies are all too familiar. For example, many
political actors emphasize considerations that appear to make inaction excusable, or even
desirable (such as uncertainty, or simple economic calculations with high discount rates)
and action more difficult and contentious (such as the need for lifestyle change) at the
expense of those that seem to impose a clearer and more immediate burden (such as
scientific consensus and intergenerational buck-passing).
However, selective attention strategies may also manifest themselves more generally.
This prompts an unpleasant thought. Perhaps there is a (p.47) problem of corruption in
the standard way in which we frame the issue itself. Most prominently, perhaps the
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prevalence of the global storm model is not independent of the existence of the
intergenerational storm, but instead is encouraged by it.
In particular, perhaps it simply suits our buck-passing purposes to continue discussing

climate change primarily in geopolitical terms, assuming that states represent the
interests of their citizens in perpetuity. After all, the current generation may find such a
framing highly advantageous. On the one hand, a focus on the global storm tends to draw
attention towards various issues of global politics and scientific uncertainty (mentioned
above) that seem to problematize action, and away from issues of intergenerational
ethics, which tend to demand it. Thus, an emphasis on the global storm at the expense of
the other problems may facilitate a strategy of procrastination and delay. On the other
hand, since it usually stipulates that the relevant actors are nation-states who represent
the interests of their citizens in perpetuity, the global storm analysis has the effect of
assuming away the intergenerational aspect of the climate change problem. For one thing,
it presumes that there is no motivation problem. It is just taken for granted that current
governments and populations automatically take the interests of their successors into
account, and to the appropriate extent. For another, it suggests that failure to act will
result in a collectively self-inflicted harm (by those states to themselves), rather than in a
potentially severe injustice to innocent and vulnerable others.
As the intergenerational analysis makes clear, these last claims are too quick. First, the
current generation contributes significantly to climate change, but the effects will
predominantly fall in the future, to other people (and species). Hence, the issue of how to
understand and motivate appropriate moral concern, and especially intergenerational
concern, is right at the heart of the climate problem. Second, these are not predominantly
“self-inflicted” harms, but something significantly morally worse. This fact should also have
motivational consequences. Given these points, an undue emphasis on the global storm
obscures much of what is at stake in making climate policy, and in a way that benefits
present people.
In conclusion, the threat of moral corruption reveals another sense in which climate
change may be a “perfect” moral storm. Its complexity (p.48) may turn out to be
perfectly convenient for us, the current generation, and indeed for each successor
generation as it comes to occupy our position. For one thing, it provides each generation
with the cover under which it can seem to be taking the issue seriously – by negotiating
weak and largely substanceless global accords, for example, and then heralding them as
great achievements (see chapters 3–4)—when really it is simply exploiting its temporal
position. For another, all of this can occur without the exploiting generation actually having
to acknowledge that this is what it is doing. If it can avoid the appearance of overtly selfish
(or self-absorbed) behavior, an earlier generation can take advantage of the future
without the unpleasantness of admitting it—either to others, or, perhaps more
importantly, to itself.
Notes:
(1.) The IPCC is charged with providing member governments with state of the art
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assessments of “the science, the impacts, and the economics of—and the options for
mitigating and/or adapting to—climate change” (IPCC 2001c, p. vii). In 2007, it shared the
Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
(2.) IPCC 2001a, 2; emphasis added. See also IPCC 2007c, 19. The passage continues “to
be determined through sociopolitical processes taking into account considerations such
as development, equity, and sustainability, as well as uncertainties and risk.” Hence, the
IPCC takes a position on the way in which decisions will be made, and on some of the
relevant criteria. These are themselves value judgments (albeit not highly controversial
ones). But see also chapter 8.
(3.) IPCC 2007c, 23.
(4.) I consider an objection to this assumption in the next chapter.
(5.) World Resources Institute 2007.
(6.) Baer et al. 2007.
(7.) Shue 1993.
(8.) For introductions to the relevant literature, see Gardiner 2004b and 2010a.
Gardiner et al. 2010 collects some central papers.
(9.) One might wonder why, despite the widespread agreement that climate change
involves important ethical questions, there is relatively little public discussion of them. The
answer to this question is no doubt complex. But my thesis may constitute part of that
answer.
(10.) Junger 1999.
(11.) The term ‘ “perfect storm’ ” is in wide usage. However, it is difficult to find
definitions. An online dictionary of slang offers the following: “When three events, usually
beyond one's control, converge and create a large inconvenience for an individual. Each
event represents one of the storms that collided on the Andrea Gail in the book/movie
titled The Perfect Storm” (Urbandictionary.com, 3/25/05). More recently, Wikipedia
states: “The phrase perfect storm refers to the simultaneous occurrence of events
which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the result of their chance
combination. Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight
change in any one event contributing to the perfect storm would lessen its overall
impact” (Wikipedia, accessed 6/29/2007).
(12.) For example, Chrisoula Andreou draws our attention to the relevance of the
psychological and philosophical literature on procrastination for understanding
environmental decision making (Andreou 2006, 2007). She does not apply this analysis to
climate change specifically; but I suspect that it is relevant, and worth pursuing.
Nevertheless, the procrastination model is unlikely to be dominant in this case. It focuses
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on the challenges to decision making faced by a single, unified agent; hence, it does not
reveal, and is unlikely to account for, the practical and moral import of the fragmentations
of agency I am emphasizing.
(13.) The appropriateness of this model even to the spatial dimension requires some
further specific, but usually undefended, background assumptions about the precise
nature of the dispersion of effects and fragmentation of agency. But I pass over that issue
here.
(14.) The next few paragraphs are drawn from Gardiner 2001a.
(15.) The title and illustration are attributed to Albert Tucker, who used them to
popularize ideas developed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher in investigating global
nuclear strategy (Kuhn 2001).
(16.) But neither of us can get there as things stand. Suppose one of us thinks, “It's a
prisoner's dilemma, so we should not confess.” Then, the other person knows that we
know this. But if they think we are not going to confess, the rational thing for them to do is
to confess, since this gives them a better outcome. Remember that the previous
reasoning showed that a prisoner should confess, no matter what the other prisoner
does.
(17.) Hardin 1968, 1244; Hardin 1993, 217–18.
(18.) Note that, though the values Hardin talks about in this example are self-interested
ones, the generalized tragedy of the commons model does not mandate this. See chapter
2.
(19.) For a deeper analysis, see chapter 4.
(20.) A genuine prisoner's dilemma is literally irresolvable under standard assumptions

about its nature. As Ken Binmore puts it in his introduction to game theory: “rational
players don't cooperate in the Prisoner's Dilemma because the conditions for rational
cooperation are absent” (Binmore 2007, 19). For relevant discussion, see Shepski 2006,
Ostrom 1990, and chapter 4.
(21.) Hardin 1968, 1247.
(22.) There is one fortunate convergence. Several writers (e.g., Shue 1999, Singer 2002)
have emphasized that the major ethical arguments all point in the same direction: that the
developed countries should bear most of the costs of the transition—including those
accruing to developing countries—at least in the early stages of mitigation and adaptation.
See, also chapter 11.
(23.) Rado Dimitrov argues that we must distinguish between different kinds of
uncertainty when we investigate the effects of scientific uncertainty on international
regime building, and that it is uncertainties about national impacts that undermines
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regime formation (Dimitrov 2003).
(24.) This consideration appears to have played a role in U.S. deliberation about climate
change, where it is often asserted that the U.S. faces lower marginal costs from climate
change than other countries. See, for example, Mendelsohn 2001, Nitze 1994, Posner
and Sunstein 2008.
(25.) Much more might be said here. I discuss some psychological aspects of political
inertia and the role these play independently of scientific uncertainty in chapter 6.
(26.) This is because they tend to be located in warmer lower latitudes, because a
greater proportion of their economies are in climate-sensitive sectors such as
agriculture, and because—being poor—they are worse placed to deal with those impacts.
See Stern 2007, 139, citing Tol et al. 2004.
(27.) Of course, it has not helped that over much of the last decade climate d iscussion has
occurred in an unfortunate geopolitical setting. International negotiations have taken place
against a backdrop of distraction, mistrust, and severe inequalities of power. For many
years, the dominant global actor and lone superpower, the United States, refused to
address climate change, and was distracted by the threat of global terrorism. Moreover,
the international community, including many of America's historical allies, distrusted its
motives, its actions, and especially its uses of moral r hetoric; so there was global discord.
This unfortunate state of affairs was especially problematic in relation to the developing
nations, whose cooperation must be secured if the climate change problem is to be
addressed. One issue was the credibility of the developed nations' commitment to solving
the climate change problem. (See the next section.) Another was the North's focus on
mitigation to the exclusion of adaptation. A third concern was the South's fear of an “abate
and switch” strategy on the part of the North. (Note that considered in isolation, these
factors do not seem sufficient to explain political inertia. After all, the climate change
problem originally became prominent during the 1990s, a decade with a much more
promising geopolitical environment.)
(28.) For more on both claims, see IPCC 2001a, 16–17.
(29.) Archer 2006, 5. “Kyr” means “thousand years.” See also Archer 2009; Archer et al.
2009.
(30.) Archer 2005.
(31.) Archer 2005; a similar remark occurs in Archer 2006, 5. The discrepancy between
the IPCC's range and Archer's is apparently caused by a terminological confusion rather
than any scientific dispute. See Archer et al. 2009.
(32.) Wigley 2005; Meehl et al. 2005; Wetherald et al., 2001.
(33.) This is exacerbated by the fact that the climate is an inherently chaotic system in any
case, and that there is no control against which its performance might be compared.
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(34.) The possibility of nonlinear effects, such as in abrupt climate change, complicates this
point, but I do not think it undermines it. See chapter 6.
(35.) Some may object to this assumption on the grounds that such benefits drive
economic growth that does benefit future generations. This issue does complicate
matters. Still, the assumptions (a) that economic growth will continue even in the face of
catastrophic climate change, and (b) that it compensates for climate risks need to be
scrutinized. See chapters 6 and 8.
(36.) Generational overlap complicates the picture in some ways, but I do not think that it
resolves the basic problem. See Gardiner 2009a and chapter 5.
(37.) For the reasons for focusing on this form, see chapter 5.
(38.) Thus, the situation violates Axelrod's two conditions for resolution: there can be no
reciprocity, and the future does not cast the relevant shadow over the parties.
(39.) For more on these issues, see Gardiner 2009a; Gosseries 2009.
(40.) The point can be made clearer by looking at the preference structures which
underlie the tragic situation. We might imagine that the intergenerational problem begins
with a prisoner's dilemma structure:
1. 1st preference: I pollute, previous generation don't.

2. 2nd preference: Neither I nor previous generation pollutes.
3. 3rd preference: I pollute, previous generation pollutes.
4. 4th preference: I don't pollute, previous generation pollutes.
5. But for the first generation capable of serious overpollution, this becomes simply:
6. 1st preference: I pollute
7. 2nd preference: I don't pollute.
8. So, this fixes the third option for the next generation, and so on for subsequent
generations.
(41.) This may be because they see themselves as the first generation, or the second
generation given that the first failed to cooperate, or (as the Fairy Story in chapter 5
suggests) as a mid-sequence generation that does not care about intergenerational
cooperation, and is happy simply to take advantage of its temporal position.
(42.) Marland et al., 2008.
(43.) Hansen 2006, 9.
(44.) Eilperin 2008, emphasis added. Numbers for 2009 are likely to be substantially
lower because of the global economic crisis. But, by itself, this gives no reason to think
that underlying trends will change.
(45.) I owe this suggestion to Henry Shue. (I leave aside here the non-identity problem.
Page 23 of 24
date: 22 June 2015
For more on this, see chapter 5.)
(46.) O'Neill and Oppenheimer 2002; Lenton et al. 2008.
(47.) Traxler 2002, 107.
(48.) For a related case, see Shue 2005, 275–6.
(49.) Broome 1992, 19; emphasis added.
(50.) Broome 1992, 18–19.
(51.) In the last few years, the situation has shifted from one of complete silence. But a
much fuller engagement is needed.
(52.) Such worries are at the heart of much green political theory and environmental
ethics. See, for example, Shrader-Frechette 2002, Schlosberg 2007.
(53.) Unfortunately, I no longer have either the article or the reference. (If others do,
I would be glad to know.) Still, I hope that this does not undermine the example: the point
would hold even if I were talking about a merely hypothetical economist.
(54.) For suggestions that climate change poses problems for conventional environmental
ethics, see Palmer 2011.
(55.) The same issue arises in the kick the dog scenario. The potential for moral
corruption is also high in the global storm when the victims are contemporaries but
spatially distant and relatively close to powerless.
Page 24 of 24
date: 22 June 2015

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A Perfect Moral Storm

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online

A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate

Print publication date: 2011

A Perfect Moral Storm

Abstract and Keywords

We are heading substantially—and rapidly—in the wrong direction.

—Dieter Helm (Helm 2008, 214)

for future generations, the moral objections to such an approach would be

Let us say that a perfect storm is an event constituted by an unusual convergence of

(p.24) II. The Global Storm

1. The Basic Storm

The second characteristic is fragmentation of agency. Climate change is not caused by a

A prisoner's dilemma is a situation with a certain structure.14 In the standard example,

1st Preference: I confess, the other criminal doesn't. (Go free)

This situation is usually expressed with a diagram of the following sort:

B don't confess B confess

(PD1) It is collectively rational to cooperate: each agent prefers the

power, through selling emissions-intensive resources—will resist such action. Second,

III. The Intergenerational Storm

1. The Basic Storm

Temporal dispersion creates a number of problems. First, as is widely noted, the

It is useful to compare the pure intergenerational problem to the more traditional

(PIP1) Almost every generation prefers the outcome produced by

(p.39) 2. Exacerbating Factors

IV. The Theoretical Storm

Unlike many concerned with environmental issues, Broome is a defender of CBA in

(p.45) V. The Problem of Moral Corruption

In chapter 9, I try to illustrate the problem more clearly by drawing a comparison

In particular, perhaps it simply suits our buck-passing purposes to continue discussing

(3.) IPCC 2007c, 23.

(4.) I consider an objection to this assumption in the next chapter.

(5.) World Resources Institute 2007.

(6.) Baer et al. 2007.

(7.) Shue 1993.

(10.) Junger 1999.

(17.) Hardin 1968, 1244; Hardin 1993, 217–18.

(19.) For a deeper analysis, see chapter 4.

(20.) A genuine prisoner's dilemma is literally irresolvable under standard ​assumptions

(21.) Hardin 1968, 1247.

regime formation (Dimitrov 2003).

(28.) For more on both claims, see IPCC 2001a, 16–17.

(30.) Archer 2005.

(32.) Wigley 2005; Meehl et al. 2005; Wetherald et al., 2001.

1. 1st preference: I pollute, previous generation don't.

(42.) Marland et al., 2008.

(43.) Hansen 2006, 9.

For more on this, see chapter 5.)

(46.) O'Neill and Oppenheimer 2002; Lenton et al. 2008.

(47.) Traxler 2002, 107.

(48.) For a related case, see Shue 2005, 275–6.

(49.) Broome 1992, 19; emphasis added.

(50.) Broome 1992, 18–19.

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(20.) A genuine prisoner's dilemma is literally irresolvable under standard assumptions