When discussing the most important issues facing America, climate change is generally in the middle to the bottom percentile. But climate change is the most important issue facing the world, and it cannot be overstated. This will be less like a news article and more like an op-ed, personal piece and I apologize to everyone and I hope you bear through this because it is important.
Today was the last Philosophy of Ethics class I had for this semester. From the beginning of the course, we started asking questions of happiness and morality and what is right or wrong and what exactly constitutes happiness. Predictably, the course started with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It then transitioned into Christian philosophers like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, before it touched on the concept of utilitarianism, the views of David Hume, Kant and Hegel. My professor, saved Karl Marx for last. (Continue to bear with me)
Hegel argued that freedom, that Kant says is the ultimate end of humans, is useless if it is not enforced. If we want to be moral, we have to be rational but if there is nothing forcing us to be rational (such as laws), we can simply choose to be immoral. So our freedom should expand into institutions we call, civil society, that makes sure we are moral. Institutions change. We transitioned from ancient society to feudalism and then to capitalism. That’s when the rant, from a philosophy professor started.
He started by saying capitalism assumes two things that are provably false — that we have an unlimited input of energy to gain unlimited wealth and happiness, and that the world is a garbage dump, a sarcastic remark. He then goes on to say that, since the Industrial revolution, we have increased productivity with no concern to the laws of nature that Hegel emphasizes. Hegel says the philosophy of nature is crucial because nature sustains life, life leads to the pursuit of freedom that leads to happiness, which is the ultimate goal. Capitalism was supposed to be what made us free, and thus happy. Yet, ironically it is that same institution, in its pursuit to make us free have destroyed the very thing that is supposed to sustain us and give us the home to practice our freedom and experience happiness. He then went on to list some facts about carbon dioxide and previous mass extinctions as examples and said that studying ethics and studying economics without focusing on climate change and the destruction of the earth is counterproductive to the goal the course has and everything he taught us about right and wrong and about morality and happiness means nothing if we cannot apply that thought to nature, and more specifically climate change.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected a philosophy class to end on that note, with that tone of urgency. The ICPP report have all but confirmed that we are the point of no return. At 1000 ppm of carbon dioxide, it is proven that human beings begin to lose their cognitive ability. We are projected to reach 600-700 ppm just in the next 50-60 years. The Arctic, in the next year or two, predictably, for the first time in human history, will be without ice in September. The cold winters climate change deniers like our President like to bring up? That is the result of diminish ice cover in the Arctic that lessens the temperature differential in the arctic with other regions. This results in weaker jet streams which results in more extreme weathers (Droughts and fires in California, colder winters in the East).
We have been here before. We know previous mass extinctions also happened from high carbon dioxide numbers in the atmosphere that disrupted the natural cycle of the earth, caused ocean acidification and resulted in catastrophes that we cannot come back from. We were supposed to be getting into an Ice Age. The planet should be cooler, but we have altered nature in never-before seen levels and the planetary cycle is not where it needs to be.
Make better choices. As Trump continues to kill environmental regulations, vote for environmental ‘radicals’. Vote, not just for Congress and President and Governor, but for your assembly. Vote, not just for establishment capitalists. Communism has killed many, it cannot be denied. Communism is not the answer. But there has been to an answer that is not capitalism, or unregulated capitalism. I write this as a 21 year old who sees his peers simply not care enough and his elders keep voting for people who keep existing establishments in place and are complicit in the damage we commit to the world. Climate change is the single biggest issue facing us, not immigration.