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The ethics of climate change denial

B. Gremmen Wageningen University & University of Oxford, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen, the Netherlands; bart.gremmen@wur.nl

Abstract
For almost 30 years there has been a scientific debate on climate change. Most of the participants agree that consensus has been reached that there is enough evidence of human causation of recent observed warming, even if this is not a completely settled matter. This body of evidence, it is claimed by the majority of scientists and politicians, is needed to understand how to protect the world from potential harms. However, there remains a minority of scientists and politicians who claim that there is no evidence for the human causation of global warming. This minority, the so-called climate change deniers, believes that policies to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases will have a devastating effect on jobs and the overall economy. In their attacks on these views of the climate change deniers, the majority not only blames them for an outright distortion of climate change science, but also claim that disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily morally reprehensible. Their argument is that climate change denial will lead to non-action in reducing climate changes threat and will cause severe consequences for the poorest people in the world. In their view climate change deniers put the human species at risk. In this paper I will analyze and evaluate the claim of the majority that climate change denial is an ethical issue, and not only a scientific matter. Keywords: disinformation campaign, harming, moral debate

Introduction
For almost 30 years there has been a scientific debate on climate change. The majority of the participants agree that consensus has been reached that there is enough evidence, even if this is not a completely settled matter, to underpin two claims: our climate has become warmer on a global scale, and humans have caused this global warming. Although the term climate change strictly speaking refers to changes in climate brought about by any cause, it usually refers to anthropogenic climate change: a change in climate brought about by humans (Hulme, 2010). This body of scientific evidence, it is claimed by the majority of scientists and politicians alike, is needed to understand how to protect the world from potential harms. In their view these human-caused harms include the disastrous consequences of floods, loss of biodiversity, shortage of water, rising sea levels, and heat waves. However, there remains a minority of scientists and politicians who claim that there is no evidence for the human causation of global warming. They believe that policies to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases will have a devastating effect on jobs and the overall economy. Also climate change policies would cost too much, would hurt consumers, and hamper economic growth. These assertions of the minority have consistently been challenged and refuted by the majority, the climate change supporters. In their attacks on these views of the minority, what they call the climate change deniers, they not only blame them for an outright distortion of climate change science, but also claim that disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily morally reprehensible. Their argument is that climate change denial will lead to non-action in reducing climate changes threat and will cause severe consequences for the poorest people in the world. In their view the human species is at risk. In this paper I will analyze and evaluate the claim that climate change denial is an ethical issue, and not only a scientific matter.

T. Potthast and S. Meisch (eds.), Climate change and sustainable development: Ethical perspectives on land use and food production, DOI 10.3920/978-90-8686-753-0_11, Wageningen Academic Publishers 2012

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Two debates on climate change

In the beginning of the debate on climate change the focus has been on the scientific claims of the natural sciences. Climate change was framed as an overly physical phenomenon (Hulme, 2010). In 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created. By examining technical literature it aims to assess the scientific evidence for climate change. The IPCC consists of three working groups: on the physical basis of climate change, on the possible impact of climate change and on mitigation strategies. These working groups produced a lot of data and models. In about twenty five years the work of the IPCC has articulated the consensus view: a consensus about the fact that the planet is warming, that this warming is largely human caused, and that under business-as-usual we are headed to potentially catastrophic impacts for humans and the natural resources on which life depends. (Brown, 2011) The reports of the IPCC are considered to be authoritative by people working on climate change (Garvey, 2008) and are used to explain and predict all kinds of negative effects of global warming caused by humans. More and more the climate change debate has developed from a scientific debate into a moral debate. The ethics of climate change has become popular subject in the last fifteen years (See Jamieson, 2001; Shue, 2001; Singer, 2004). Why is climate change an ethical problem? According to Brown ...climate change must be understood at its core as an ethical problem because; (1) it is a problem caused by some people in one part of the world that are hurting and threatening people who are often far away and poor, (2) the harms to these victims are potentially catastrophic, and (3) the victims cant protect themselves by petitioning their governments- they must hope that those causing the problem will see that their ethical duties to the victims requires them to drastically lower their greenhouse gas emissions (Brown, 2011). Departing from the so-called consensus view, ethicists focus on the harmful effects of global warming. The high-greenhouse gas emitters are hurting poor people in developing countries who are low-greenhouse gas emitters or are emitting no greenhouse gas at all (Garvey, 2008). The ethics of climate change is about the moral demand of climate change, for example the polluter pays principle, rights of future people, repairing damage, etc. There is also literature on the moral status of climate change denial. My suggestion is to distinguish in the philosophical literature between the ethics of climate change and the moral status of climate change denial.

From scientific mistakes to morally reprehensible behavior

Over the years majority of climate change supporters have several times changed the way they attacked the minority of climate change deniers in the debate on climate change as a whole. At the start of the debate the climate change supporters only attacked the climate change deniers on their scientific merits and stated that their claim, that there is no evidence that warming is caused by CO2, is simply false. It was a debate on the meaning of the scientific uncertainty both sides agreed upon. Later on, the climate change supporters referred to the evidence in literally thousands of pages of published studies by experts and they claimed that the burden of proof has shifted towards the climate change deniers who had to provide better arguments than the experts. More recently the climate change deniers were not only blamed for an outright distortion of climate change science, but also claimed that disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily morally reprehensible. This change can be seen in the title of the 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gores campaign to educate the public about climate change. The film considers the knowledge generated by climate science to be true and criticizes the climate change deniers that their interests prevent them to accept this truth.
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In 2011 Al Gore even suggested that people today need to stand up against of climate change deniers in the same way people stood up to racist comments during the civil rights movement. Gore agrees that explaining the science beyond climate change may be more difficult than confronting racism, but says the moral component is the same. In the same interview, Gore says Powerful polluters ... see it as a useful strategy to try to convince the public that the scientists are liars and that theyre greedy and theyre making stuff up. All in the service of their overarching strategy of creating enough doubt to persuade people that there shouldnt be any sense of urgency about addressing this crisis (www.politico.com/ news/stories/0811/60890.htlm#ixzz1iWCJyqNF). Gore also thinks that people who doubt climate science are the same ones who helped tobacco companies over four decades question the dangers of cigarette smoking. The above examples show a shift from a scientific debate to a moral debate outside science. Scientific uncertainty of both the majority and the minority has first, by the majority, been replaced by the scientific mistakes of the minority of climate change deniers. In a next phase by the unwillingness of the minority to accept the truth, and finally the majority claims that climate change denial of the minority has become a morally reprehensible climate change disinformation campaign.

An ethical critique of the climate change disinformation campaign

At an event at COP-17 in Durban, South Africa on November 29th 2011, a group of philosophers and scientists, belonging to the majority, developed an ethical and moral critique of the climate change disinformation campaign. The members stress that they are not attacking scientific skepticism or the unalienable rights of individuals to free speech. Their aim is to ethically review the tactics of the climate change disinformation campaign and they hope their readers will agree that these are not acceptable ways of acting skeptically or responsibly but often malicious, morally unacceptable disinformation tactics that are deeply irresponsible. (Brown, 2011) Also this group links the climate change disinformation campaign to the fight against government regulation of tobacco in the 1980s. The tactics honed in that fight are used again and have included: lying, focus on the unknown while ignoring the known, specious claims of bad science, creation of front groups, creating misleading lists of climate skeptics, think thank campaigns, Public Relations Led Campaigns to Convince the Public That There is No Scientific Basis for Climate Science, Astroturf Groups, and Cyber-Bullying Scientists and Journalists. The group concludes that people engaged in disinformation campaigns do not play by certain rules of science and propose to the replace this troublesome behavior by a kind of reasonable skepticism. In my view only the first three tactics mentioned are about the rules of science. The first tactic, lying, is described as making untrue claims, for example, that there is no evidence of human causation of climate change. This critique is beside the point because in order for someone to lie, she needs to know the truth. Climate change deniers are able to make false claims but while doing this they dont need to know the truth. It is just matter of scientific debate about the independency lines of evidence, the strength of correlations, the fit of model predictions to actual data, etc. The second tactic, focusing on an unknown while ignoring the known, cannot just be rejected as cherry-picking the evidence. If the unknown is important enough, it could be wise to focus on it. The third tactic, specious claims of bad science, is about the characterization of matters that are not fully proven as bad science. I agree that insisting on absolute proof will create a burden of proof that cant be met. However, there may be a reasonable debate about the degrees of proof. The other six tactics may be characterized as kinds of social tactics often used by pressure groups and NGOs. Although most of them are morally questionable, they do not belong in an analysis of the ethics of climate change. Attacking the tactics of the climate change disinformation campaign is not

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only problematic, but also fails to analyze the main argument of the climate change supporters: climate change denial is harmful.

Harming by denying?
The starting point of many ethicists of climate change is the harm of the negative effects of global warming (Garvey, 2008). The outcome of their analysis often is that the high-greenhouse gas emitters are morally wrong. Especially the poor people in the developing world are considered to be the victims. If the high-emitters would switch to low-greenhouse gas emissions, there still would be the matter of repairing the damage and compensating their victims. However, in the case of the climate change deniers things are more complicated. The first complication is the possibility of 5 kinds of climate change deniers. In theory it would be possible to deny climate change all together. This kind of climate change denial is too rare to take seriously into consideration. The denial of global warming is the second kind of climate change denial. Only in the beginning of the climate change debate people were defending this position. A third position is the denial that global warming has negative aspects. A fourth position is the denial that humans are the main cause of global warming. The final, fifth position is the denial that anthropogenic climate change has negative effects. Are all of these kinds of denial morally the same? I think that the fourth position is the most important, however people who agree with this position may develop strategies to mitigate the negative effects of global warming. Are they morally wrong in doing this? The second complication is about the framing by the majority of the minority as climate change deniers. This is a one-sided, negative framing of opponents. In a scientific debate the different opponents often represent different theories of hypothesis. By referring to a certain position in the climate change debate as denial, already a moral verdict has been proclaimed. The third complication is about linking denying and harming. Is there any harm in denying that the earth is round? Form a scientific perspective it is just a scientific debate. Even when there exist pictures showing a round earth from space, a ship-owner could still believe that the earth is flat and she could deny her captain to sail too far from the coast. This could potentially harm the interests of a lot of people. Likewise, denying climate change could harm people if global warming is true and the people in charge would prevent the development of strategies to mitigate the negative effects or repair the damage. It is possible that climate change denial will lead to non-action in reducing climate changes threat and will cause severe consequences for the poorest people in the world. However, it is not the climate change denier who is morally responsible but the people in a democracy who decide not to act upon her claim.

Conclusion
For almost 30 years there has been a scientific debate on climate change. The majority of the participants, the climate change supporters, agree that consensus has been reached about anthropogenic global warming. A minority of scientists and politicians, the climate change deniers, claim that there is no evidence for the human causation of global warming. Parallel to a scientific debate between supporters and deniers, also a moral debate about climate change evolved. The ethics of climate change is about the moral demand of climate change, but also work has been done on the ethics of climate change denial. In this paper I propose to distinguish in the philosophical literature between the ethics of climate change and the moral status of climate change denial. My suggestion is to focus on the more interesting ethics of climate change. The moral status of climate change denial is problematic because an ethical critique of the climate change disinformation campaign is difficult and the main argument of the climate change supporters, that climate change denial is harmful, has three complications.
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References
Brown, D.A. (2011). An Ethical Analysis of the Climate Change Disinformation Campaign: Is This A New Kind of Assault on Humanity? https://blogs.psu.edu/mt4/mt-tb.cgi/309657. Garvey, J. (2008). The Ethics of Climate Change. Right and Wrong in a Warming World. Continuum, London, United Kingdom, 179 pp. Hulme, M. (2010). Four Meanings of Climate Change. In: Skrimshire, S. (ed.) Future Ethics. Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination. Continuum, London, United Kingdom. Jamieson, D. (ed.) (2001). A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Blackwell, Oxford, United Kingdom. Shue, H. (2001) Climate. In: Jamieson, D. (ed.) A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Blackwell, Oxford, United Kingdom. Singer, P. (2004). One World. Yale University Press, London, United Kingdom.

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