Social Theory and Practice
Vol. 45, No. 3 (July 2019): 471–499
DOI: 10.5840/soctheorpract201992768
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
Ross Mittiga
Abstract: Many feel a sense of aversion and tragedy about proposals for engineering
the climate. Precautionary concerns only partly explain these feelings. For a fuller
understanding, we need a thicker conception of the values and ends of political
society than “neutralitarian” political theories offer. To this end, I examine how
Buddhist and Greek notions of temperance, justice, and freedom bear on the question
of geo-engineering. My intention is not to pronounce on whether geo-engineering is
morally “right” or “wrong,” but to highlight reasons for thinking it unattractive in a
broader sense, thereby strengthening the case for exhausting conventional emissionsreductions options.
Keywords: geo-engineering, climate change, virtue ethics, temperance, justice,
freedom, liberalism
[I]s it not cavalier to assume that the only issue that arises with climate change is
whether to employ a ‘quick’ and ‘cheap’ technological fix?
—Stephen Gardiner (2011: 348)
Environmentalism for the last forty years has maintained as one of its key tenets
the idea that humans must change their ways and learn to live within the ecological
parameters presented to them. In contrast, climate engineering is a way to modify
earth’s parameters so that humans do not need to change.
—Christopher Preston (2011: 465)
1. Introduction
On June 14, 2016, the FDA approved use of a new device for combating
obesity called the “AspireAssist.” In a televised segment on the device, an
ABC News anchor claimed that it “could hold the key to consequence-free
indulgence.”1 This is because the AspireAssist does not require diet or exercise
to work. Rather, it helps patients lose weight by mechanically dumping the
pre-digested contents of their stomachs into the toilet twenty to thirty minutes
after eating—a process that some critics call “assisted bulimia,” and that the
news anchor described as “cringe-inducing.”2
1.
2.
Neporent 2013.
Neporent 2013.
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Ross Mittiga
472
Why would someone consider a device promising consequence-free indulgence cringe-worthy? If it has the potential to save lives, improve welfare,
and is generally safe (or at least safer than morbid obesity), what objection
could there be to it?
A standard concern is that the mere existence of the AspireAssist could
discourage conventional responses to weight gain, particularly diet and exercise. This is bad because diet and exercise are safer, less costly, and more conducive to health than the AspireAssist, if less convenient. Yet, even granting
the comparative advantage of diet and exercise under normal conditions, few
would deny that drastic measures like the AspireAssist are justified at the point
that over-eating or obesity seriously threatens health. In other words, considerations of precaution and cost only count against the AspireAssist for so long,
and, in the context of a health emergency, may even count for it.
There are, however, reasons beyond cost and risk why one might think the
AspireAssist problematic. For instance, regardless of its life-saving or welfare-improving potential, one might worry that the device follows from, and
threatens to sustain, the same excessive appetites that gave rise to the need
for the device in the first place. The AspireAssist does not require changing
unhealthy appetites or outlooks; instead, it allows for their preservation by removing a particularly visible and deleterious downstream effect (weight gain).
(Perhaps for this reason, a year into the American pilot study, approximately
70 percent of patients asked to keep the AspireAssist installed indefinitely.3)
If obesity is an individual health crisis, we might say that anthropogenic
climate change is a planetary one. Of the seventeen hottest years ever recorded, sixteen have occurred since 2000.4 And with this, sea-levels are rising,
weather is becoming more extreme, drought and flooding are destabilizing
agriculture (especially in poor and developing countries), and disease-bearing
mosquitoes are expanding their range (as the recent proliferation of the Zika
virus evinces).5 This is culminating in a global climate crisis, which threatens
millions of human lives, mass extinctions, and political instability.
We have long known ways to prevent this crisis. The planetary equivalents
of diet and exercise include, e.g., transitioning our energy system away from
fossil fuels and toward solar and wind, replacing gas-powered vehicles with
electric cars, significantly reducing our consumption of animal products (especially meat and dairy), and reducing the use of plastic goods. We can refer
to these activities as “abatement measures,” as all of them involve reducing
the greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions that drive climate change. Like diet and
exercise, abatement measures can be hard work, and implementing them fully
3.
4.
5.
Neporent 2013.
As of 2018 (NASA 2017).
Inside Climate News n.d.
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
473
would cost many powerful people a lot of money. Largely for these reasons, in
the twenty-five years since the Rio Earth Summit made climate action an international priority, emissions have not decreased but rather have significantly
increased.
Because we have done so little to abate climate change for so long, and
because abatement measures take time to affect the climate system,6 we are
rapidly approaching a point at which reducing emissions will be insufficient
for preventing climate catastrophe. Thus, scientists have begun investigating
“emergency back-stop” solutions for cooling the earth: viz., climatic equivalents of the AspireAssist.
These schemes are often grouped under the broad umbrella of geo-engineering (or “climate engineering”).7 According to one influential conception, geo-engineering pertains to all “deliberate large-scale interventions in
the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming.”8 Although
scientists have discussed many possible geo-engineering schemes, the most
prominent proposal involves mimicking a volcanic eruption by injecting sulfate aerosols directly into the stratosphere. Stratospheric sulfate injection (SSI)
promises to quickly and inexpensively cool the planet. (In this essay, all references to “geo-engineering” should be taken to refer to SSI, in particular.)
Yet, SSI comes with some serious risks and costs (as I discuss below). For
this reason, most scholars agree that it should be deployed “out of despair
only.”9 Yet, should we reach that moment of despair—when traditional abatement measures are no longer adequate for preventing temperature increases
that imperil many human lives (or perhaps familiar environmental values10)—
virtually everyone agrees that geo-engineering would be morally justified and
perhaps even required.
This article offers no exception: should the risks of geo-engineering be
outweighed by the risks of climate catastrophe, and should no other options
remain, it seems clear that SSI would be morally justified. But, as with the
AspireAssist, this conclusion should not mark the end of our evaluative reflections. For even if we are confident that it is right to deploy geo-engineering
under certain (exigent) circumstances, we might still question whether deployment is ethically justified (i.e., whether it is good to do).11
This kind of ethical reflection, I argue, is necessary for understanding the
deep unease many feel about geo-engineering quite apart from its relative
costs, benefits, and risks. It also helps clarify why reasonable people might
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
See, e.g., Hausfather 2010.
For a helpful critique of this term, see Heyward 2013.
Royal Society 2009.
Schellnhuber 2011: 20277–78; See also Hamilton 2013: 49 and note.
Preston 2011: 473.
We might also wonder whether it is aesthetically justified, though I set that point aside here.
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accept the moral necessity of geo-engineering under particular circumstances,
yet nonetheless think such a necessity tragic.
Before developing this ethical critique below, I examine (in section 2) the
geo-engineering debate so far,12 which is almost entirely tendered in the currency of costs, benefits, and risks. I claim that this narrow focus is (i) endemic
to neutralitarian political thought; and (ii) incapable of fully explaining what
is problematic about geo-engineering. Then, in section 3, I argue that, like
the AspireAssist, a key part of the problem with geo-engineering is that it
follows from (collective) intemperance. For geo-engineering only becomes
necessary in a world in which our addictions to fossil fuels, animal agriculture,
and cheap goods are so extreme, and go unchecked for so long, that they cannot but precipitate catastrophe. Moreover, I claim that, like the AspireAssist,
geo-engineering does not “cure” these underlying addictions—rather, as a palliative, it threatens to sustain them by relieving one of their worst downstream
effects (global warming).
Two clarificatory remarks are necessary. First, it is worth stressing that
my intention in this essay is not to deny that, at some point, geo-engineering
may become necessary for saving lives and thus would represent a morally
right course of action. Rather, I am simply arguing that other considerations
or values—beyond those central to public judgments of right or wrong—must
be taken into account if we are to understand why many people feel averse
to geo-engineering and would continue to do so even if it became the most
cost-effective and least risky option available. Second, throughout the essay
I (implicitly) rely on a distinction between morality (which I take to cover
questions of right and wrong, ought and ought not) and ethics (which I take to
cover questions of good and bad, virtue and vice, should and should not). This
distinction is of course artificial, but it should help distinguish my critique of
geo-engineering from the prevailing moralist critique, as I show below.
2. The (Moral) Debate over Geo-engineering
According to Alan Robock, “the oldest and most persistent argument against
geoengineering”13 concerns its potential to undermine abatement efforts. Specifically, critics worry that merely acknowledging the possibility of geo-engineering could (and perhaps already has begun to) stymie support for combat-
12. Note that there are several axes of debate—concerning the science, public policy, and morality of geo-engineering. Thus, any reference to the geo-engineering debate is a simplification. I believe, however, that this simplification is warranted for our purposes, given that
most discussions of geo-engineering focus heavily on potential costs, risks, and benefits.
13. Robock 2008: 17. See also Schneider 2001 and Cicerone 2006.
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
475
ting global warming in conventional ways—i.e., by reducing the sources of
GHG emissions and enhancing carbon sinks.14
Examples of this objection—which we can call the “moral hazard objection”—are manifold.15 Robock himself argues that “[i]f humans perceive an
easy technological fix to global warming that allows for ‘business as usual,’
gathering the national . . . and international will to change consumption patterns and energy infrastructure will be even more difficult.”16 Similarly, Stephen Gardiner claims that “[m]any people worry that substantial research on
geoengineering will itself encourage political inertia on mitigation, and so help
to . . . [make the need for] deployment . . . a self-fulfilling prophecy.”17 Dale
Jamieson argues “that talk about geoengineering has already to some extent
dampened our willingness to reduce emissions.”18 In short, just as one might
argue that the very possibility of liposuction or a device like the AspireAssist
stymies support for dieting and exercising, so too do many climate scholars
believe that the mere possibility of geo-engineering threatens a strong commitment to abatement.19
One initial response to this objection is: so what? What does it matter if
abatement is displaced by geo-engineering? Why does preferring the latter to
the former constitute a “moral hazard”?
The most common response is that, under present circumstances, abatement measures are less costly and less risky than geo-engineering. I examine
each of these points in turn.
2.1 Costs and Benefits
The first argument against geo-engineering is that, currently, abatement appears to be a less costly option. Of course, the estimated economic costs of
deploying geo-engineering are surprisingly low.20 According to Crutzen, “a
continuous deployment” of stratospheric sulfate aerosols could be achieved
“for a total price of US $25–$50 billion, or about $25–$50 per capita in the
affluent world.”21 Examining a range of SSI delivery schemes, Robock et al.
14. Robock 2008; Robock et al. 2009: 1; Jamieson 2013: 533–34; Gardiner 2011: 356 et passim; Crutzen 2006: 211–12.
15. What I am calling the “moral-hazard objection” is alternatively described as the “trade-off
argument” (see Baatz 2016). I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
16. Robock 2008: 17. In a later piece, Robock et al. 2009 argue similarly that “[i]f geo-engineering is seen as a potential low-cost and easy ‘solution’ to the problem, the public backing toward a mitigation agreement . . . may be eroded” (1).
17. Gardiner 2011: 356.
18. Emphasis added; Jamieson 2013: 534.
19. Keith 2010: 498.
20. Jamieson 2013: 534; Nordhaus 1992: 1317.
21. Crutzen 2006: 213.
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find that some would cost as little as $225 million per year.22 In comparison,
many believe that effective abatement measures would cost about 1 percent of
global GDP—or roughly $780 billion per year.23 This appears to undercut the
cost objection to geo-engineering—but, for several reasons, this conclusion
would be too hasty.
First, when we account for the significant co-benefits of emissions reductions (e.g., the prevention of millions of premature deaths and pollution-related illnesses like asthma) and the efficiency gains that would come with greater
public investment in reduced-emissions technologies (e.g., clean energy),
abatement costs are likely to be far lower than the $780 billion figure quoted
above.24 In fact, on some estimates, the monetary value of co-benefits and efficiency gains would be great enough to cover all (or nearly all) of the present
costs of abatement. According to a recent OECD report, reducing GHG emissions by 50 percent by 2050 would generate health-related co-benefits equal
to “between 0.7% of GDP in the European Union to 4.5% in China in 2050.”25
Another study finds that, by 2030, relatively modest global abatement efforts
could save “US$100–600 billion per year in air pollution control and energy
security expenditures.”26
Abatement also offers less-easily-quantifiable benefits. Perhaps most notably, investing in energy efficiency upgrades and renewable energy infrastructure could “achieve something that geoengineering approaches do not even
care to consider: . . . a sustainable global energy supply system that (i) can
virtually exist forever, and (ii) offers more equitable opportunities for the developing world than the fossil-nuclear complex.”27 In other words, abatement
policies, particularly those that aim at developing green infrastructure, promise abundant energy from sources open to all: i.e., the sun and the wind. Thus,
in abatement, unlike geo-engineering, there is the potential of a more ecologically responsible and egalitarian mode of development.28
Moreover, geo-engineering cost estimates are often speculative and incomplete. Deployment schemes for geo-engineering have not yet been fully worked
out, let alone rigorously tested. This helps to explain the large discrepancies in
22. Though this excludes an initial start-up cost of about $1 billion (Robock et al. 2009: 3).
23. In 2015 dollars. See Stern 2007: 258–62. For similar estimates, see Stern 2010; Weitzman
2007: 720; Nordhaus 2008: 90.
24. Stern 2007: 247, 273; Stern 2010: 48; Schellnhuber 2011: 20278.
25. Pearce et al. 2006: 7.
26. McCollum et al. 2013; cited in West et al. 2013. Pearce et al. (2006: 6) also emphasize the
potential cost-saving “synergies between climate change and local air pollution” policies.
27. Schellnhuber 2011: 20278.
28. Of course, this will only be the case if green-energy technology is available and accessible
to all, which—despite long-term efforts aimed at expanding international green-energy
financing and assistance—is not the case today. I thank an anonymous reviewer for making
this point.
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
477
cost estimates (e.g., Crutzen’s $25–50 billion/year vs. Robock et al.’s $225
million/year). Moreover, geo-engineering will result in many negative externalities that are difficult to estimate precisely, at least in advance. For instance,
releasing sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere will further deplete atmospheric
ozone, “prolonging the end of the Antarctic ozone hole by several decades and
producing [new] ozone holes in the Arctic.”29 This will result in higher rates of
skin cancer and other health problems. Geo-engineering will also decrease the
effectiveness of solar panels, and could induce unseasonal drought (particularly
in Asia and Africa), causing potentially significant agricultural disruptions.30
Moreover, geo-engineering fails to prevent ocean acidification, which (along
with over-fishing) may soon cause serious problems for the approximately
three billion people who depend on seafood for their diets or livelihoods.31
Other costs associated with geo-engineering completely defy quantification, and so are routinely omitted from economistic comparisons with abatement. For example, many climate scientists predict that geo-engineering will
visibly whiten the sky, resulting in “no more blue skies.”32 How should we
quantify the loss of blue skies? By loss in worker productivity? Geo-engineering will also obviate expensive terrestrial telescopes by creating a permanent cloud of pollution above the earth, seriously disrupting astronomical
research.33 How can we assess the loss of these portholes to the universe? By
the decrease in the number of astronomy publications?
None of these considerations definitively establish that abatement will remain less costly than geo-engineering in the long run. Even if we were confident that abatement was the least expensive option right now, technological and
climatic developments could quickly upend this calculus. Some already claim
that geo-engineering represents the most cost-effective option. According to
William Nordhaus’s imaginative estimates, for instance, developing “nonintrusive climatic engineering” would have “a net value of around $17 trillion in
present value because it would allow the globe to avoid most of the damages
from climate change.”34 Nordhaus of course concedes that no such geo-engineering technologies exist today; yet, he asserts that geoengineering remains
“the only economically competitive technology to offset global warming.”35
Whether or not Nordhaus is correct, his view suggests that cost-effectiveness
may one day—if it does not already—provide just as strong a justification for
deploying geo-engineering as it ostensibly provides now against it.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
Robock et al. 2009: 2.
Robock et al. 2009: 1.
World Wildlife Fund n.d.
Robock et al. 2009: 2. See also, Robock 2008.
Robock et al. 2009: 2.
Nordhaus 2008: 77, 19; see also Nordhaus and Boyer 2000: 126–27, 132, 176.
Nordhaus 2008: 78.
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2.2 Risk
Another common argument against geo-engineering is that it is far riskier than
abatement. We generally understand abatement and know what to expect from
it. But with geo-engineering, the universe of potential risks is vast. In particular, many worry about the unexpected or unintentional consequences of
deployment. This concern typically takes one of three forms.
Some fear that geo-engineering’s likely negative effects will be of a far
greater magnitude than predicted: e.g., that it will have greater-than-anticipated effects on the Asian monsoon season, devastating agricultural yields for
billions of people.36 Preparing for these kinds of worst-case scenarios is, of
course, very difficult if not impossible.37
Others worry about geo-engineering’s unintended but possible consequences. What if the technology becomes weaponized,38 or is wielded by the
powerful in some other fashion to subjugate the weak?39 Alternatively, what
if international conflict, economic depression, or political instability causes an
abrupt cessation of geo-engineering, precipitating a rapid (perhaps catastrophic) bounce-back in global temperatures?40 (Given that most geo-engineering
schemes require continuous deployment, this is a plausible concern.) Sudden
temperature changes would likely have more severe effects on global agriculture and political stability than the kind of warming that would occur without
geo-engineering.
Finally, noting our climate system’s tremendous complexity, some stress
that geo-engineering is extremely liable to human error and wholly unforeseen
consequences.41 Such “unknown unknowns”42 must, by definition, be omitted
from cost-benefit analyses conducted prior to deployment. Consequently, the
costs of geo-engineering may far exceed initial expectations.
These risks lead Hans Joachim Schellnhuber to conclude that “the (moderately) affordable” geo-engineering schemes, including SSI, “are no good.”43
36. Jamieson 2013: 531; Robock 2008: 15.
37. For material, psychological, and political reasons. For discussion of these, see Posner
2004; Bostrom and Cirkovic 2008; Sunstein 2009.
38. This is a real concern—during the Vietnam War, for instance, the US would release atmospheric chemicals aimed at inducing rain to swamp enemy supply lines and disrupt antiwar
protests led by Buddhist monks. (Hence the U.N. Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques.) Robock 2008:
17, citing Fleming 2007: 46–60.
39. Gardiner 2013.
40. Robock 2008: 17.
41. See, e.g., Robock 2008: 17; Victor et al. 2009: 72; Crutzen 2006: 213.
42. National Environment Research Council 2010: 25.
43. Schellnhuber 2011: 20278.
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
479
In other words, despite being relatively “inexpensive,” economically, the risks
of geo-engineering are grave enough to justify setting it aside.
As with cost, however, risk may prove an insufficient objection to geo-engineering in the long run. For, as others have argued, at a certain point (perhaps
before the end of this century), the relevant comparison will not be between
abatement and geo-engineering (as two distinct strategies for dealing with climate change), but between that geo-engineering and climate catastrophe. This,
again, is because the effects of abatement are realized at a significant timedelay. Once GHGs are released into the atmosphere, many remain there for
decades, some even for millennia.44 Thus, even if we were to reduce emissions
to the point of carbon neutrality tomorrow, we would still experience climate
changes for many years to come. And, of course, we are nowhere near carbon
neutrality currently. Quite the opposite: every day we commit ourselves (and
future generations) to more and more warming,45 making it increasingly likely
that we will cross a critical threshold or “tipping point,” after which point climate catastrophe will become unavoidable through abatement alone.
In contrast to abatement, the effects of geo-engineering are realized very
quickly—i.e., within about six months.46 According to Paul Crutzen, this
makes geo-engineering an attractive “escape route against strongly increasing
temperatures,” as when the “climate heats up by more than 2°C globally or
when the rates of temperatures increase by more than 0.2°C/decade.”47 Others
have similarly hailed geo-engineering as an important “emergency,” “backstop,” or “fail-safe” mechanism—a way of protecting ourselves from the most
dangerous effects of climate change after the point abatement alone becomes
inadequate.48 As Launder and Thompson note, while geo-engineering interventions may themselves “be risky, the time may well come when they are
accepted as less risky than doing nothing.”49
Of course, regarding geo-engineering as the “lesser of two evils” (visà-vis climate catastrophe) has attracted its own criticisms. Jamieson, for instance, asks: “How do we know when we are experiencing a climate emergency?” and “who has the authority” to declare it?50 Stephen Gardiner argues,
more broadly, that focusing on emergency-deployment scenarios tends to ob-
44. Hausfather 2010.
45. Barring “negative emissions,” feasible mechanisms for which are so far still hypothetical
(Hansen et al. 2016).
46. Crutzen 2006: 216.
47. Crutzen 2006: 216.
48. Nordhaus 2008; Goodell 2010; Victor et al. 2009. For criticism, see Gardiner 2011; Jamieson 2013: 531–32.
49. Launder and Thompson 2009: xv; cited in Preston 2011: 466.
50. Jamieson 2013: 531.
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scure the extreme moral corruption that would give rise to geo-engineering.51
These criticisms require more attention than they have been afforded so far.
Yet, few among even the staunchest critics deny that geo-engineering would
be morally justified if other options are unavailable and climate catastrophe is
imminent.52 Hence Christopher Preston argues that, even granting Gardiner’s
claim that merely pursuing geo-engineering research constitutes a “tarnishing
evil,”53 “one might still insist . . . that this tarnishing evil may not be as bad
as the evil of subjecting millions of people to increased drought, disease and
food shortages caused by unabated anthropogenic climate change.”54 According to Preston, geo-engineering becomes the lesser evil precisely when “severe
warming poses a devastating threat to the human population and to familiar
environmental values.”55
Whether or not we endorse Preston’s or Crutzen’s thresholds for what
counts as a climate emergency, the basic point remains the same: although
geo-engineering undeniably presents grave risks, should we reach the point
that abatement measures can no longer prevent dangerous climate change,
these risks may pale next to those of inaction.
To be clear, I am not claiming that this justifies undertaking geo-engineering research now (though it may). Rather, I am simply arguing that, should
feasible geo-engineering technology exist at a future time when climate catastrophe (however defined) is imminent and otherwise unavoidable, the riskbased objection to deployment would no longer hold much weight.
2.3 Neutralitarian Reasoning
To summarize then, if Robock et al. are right in asserting that the “decision to
implement geoengineering . . . require[s] a comparison of its benefits, dangers,
and costs to those of other responses to global warming,”56 there may, for now,
be a solid moral case against deployment.57 However, if conditions change and
51. Gardiner 2011: chap. 10. See also, Shue 1978; Gardiner 2013.
52. Jamieson 1996 may be an exception.
53. Gardiner’s discussion of evil is an example of how some have moved beyond the neutralitarian confines of standard geo-engineering debates, although it falls short of a fully developed ethical objection like that which I am defending here. I thank an anonymous reviewer
for this point.
54. Preston 2011: 467–68. For his part, Gardiner seems to concede this point (2011: 357f.).
55. By “familiar environmental values,” Preston has in mind, e.g., the preservation of species
or ecosystems, which are threatened by warming.
Preston 2011: 473.
56. Robock et al. 2009: 1.
57. N.B.: Other, seemingly non-moral objections to geo-engineering exist that I have not surveyed here—e.g., those concerning how deployment might be governed. I call these objections non-moral because they routinely take an interrogative rather than an argumentative
form, e.g., “How will deployment be governed?” rather than “Deployment cannot be gov-
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
481
climate catastrophe becomes imminent (and unavoidable via abatement and
adaptation alone), then geo-engineering may become justified and even morally necessary. In other words, the cost and risk objections to geo-engineering
are temporally contingent; should geo-engineering ultimately prove necessary
to save lives, the same criteria would provide the moral case for deployment.
But are cost and risk all that distinguish abatement from geo-engineering? Are there no other reasons for preferring abatement to geo-engineering,
or at least for thinking geo-engineering deeply problematic (even if morally
necessary)?
I argue below that there are. But before getting to this, it is worth briefly
inquiring into why geo-engineering debates often exclude all considerations
but those of cost, benefit, and risk. I think this has much to do with the commitment to neutralitarian reasoning in contemporary moral-political thought
(especially among liberal thinkers following John Rawls). As Tal Brewer explains, this commitment entails that, when debating core political issues, we
“seek reasons whose force we can expect other citizens to recognize, despite
the fact that they do not share our parochial interests and can reasonably disagree with our fully elaborated conception of the good.”58 The relative costs,
benefits, and risks of geo-engineering count as public reasons in this sense,
because they impact everyone, regardless of their other values or ends.59 Most
other considerations fail this test. We could not, for instance, permissibly reject
geo-engineering on the grounds that it fails to protect certain eco-systems that
some regard as intrinsically valuable but that others think are worthless. (As
David Miller argues, “from the perspective of social justice,” any attempt to
protect an ecosystem for its own sake is “on a par with the claim that church
C is the true church, since it is a claim with which others may reasonably
disagree.”60) By prescinding considerations related to particular conceptions
of the good life, the commitment to neutralitarianism significantly limits the
range of reasons that can count for or against any response to climate change
in the public calculus.
This narrowing of evaluative reflection obscures the full range of concerns
many (if not most) people share with respect to geo-engineering. It also makes
it difficult to explain why, at the point of climate catastrophe, reasonable people might accept the need to engineer the climate but nonetheless find such
erned well because . . .” These kinds of objections are weak, as, in principle at least, they
could be answered. The “Oxford Principles” for geo-engineering offer a tentative step in
that direction (Rayner et al. 2013), as do Jamieson’s (2013) reflections on these questions.
58. Brewer 2002: 108.
59. Of course, this is a very brief discussion of a substantial subject, but for the sake of space I
cannot pursue the point further here.
60. Miller 1999: 300n33. Cf. Rawls 1999: 249–51; Rawls 2005: 214, 246; Rawls 2001:
152n26.
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an outcome tragic. To clarify the ethical stakes of geo-engineering we need to
look beyond the confines of public reason.
This is not to deny that factors like cost, benefit, and risk can illuminate
much of what is right (or wrong) with geo-engineering; rather, it is to suggest
that rightness and wrongness are not exhaustive of what is at stake, normatively speaking. Most of us also care about what is good (and bad), beautiful (and repulsive), particularly with respect to environmental issues. Such
considerations are deeply relevant to the geo-engineering question, and (more
generally) for understanding the situation we have put ourselves in with respect to the climate.
Yet, because these ethical and aesthetic values lie beyond the neutralitarian confines of the moral debate over geo-engineering, they are routinely
neglected.61 While there are good reasons for such omissions—chiefly, the desire to ensure fair deliberation in pluralistic communities—in what follows, I
consider one ethical reason for resisting geo-engineering (or, again, for thinking it tragic should exigency make such an intervention morally necessary).
While this discussion is likely to be controversial precisely because it does not
originate from a position of neutrality about “the good,” the ethical reason I
present is, I argue, widely shared across cultures and time. Thus, even if the
following discussion fails the test of public reason in its strictest application,
I hope it nonetheless illuminates more of what matters for many people with
respect to geo-engineering.
3. An Ethical Argument against Geo-engineering
I noted previously that the most common objection to geo-engineering is that it
threatens to derail abatement efforts. This is the moral hazard objection—moral because abatement is, today, still the less costly and risky option, and therefore the right one. Yet, I also noted that cost and risk objections are temporally
contingent—if our failure to undertake abatement persists long enough, geoengineering may become morally justified (as it will become less costly and
less risky than climate catastrophe).
61. This is not to say that all liberal thinkers are neutralitarians, or that all neutralitarians are
oblivious to ethical or aesthetic values and their relevance to politics. Ronald Dworkin,
for instance, argues that a recognition of intrinsic value (or at least the intrinsic value of a
human life) can guide political decision-making outside of an appeal to basic liberal moral
values like rights, interests, or duties (see Dworkin 2011: 11–15). Similarly, in his later
work, Rawls permits the use of religious arguments that express clear, widely shared moral
views in the domain of public reason (Rawls 2005: 464 and note). It nevertheless remains
true that most of these thinkers believe excluding non-moral factors or values from public
debate over fundamental issues is necessary for preserving a fair and impartial (typically,
liberal) politics.
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In this section, I reframe the moral hazard objection by arguing that, to the
extent geo-engineering undermines the public commitment to abatement, it is
not just a moral but an ethical hazard. Geo-engineering is an ethical hazard
because it follows from, and threatens to sustain, the vice of intemperance.
Notably, this objection to geo-engineering is not temporally contingent: if conditions change, and geo-engineering becomes morally justified, we may still
think it ethically problematic because of its relationship to intemperance.
Focusing on intemperance might strike some as an odd or even antiquated
way of criticizing geo-engineering (or a world that must resort to it). First of
all, what does it mean to say geo-engineering follows from and threatens to
sustain intemperance? Moreover, even if we grant that point, who cares, especially if our primary interest is in promoting welfare?62
I begin this section by elaborating the link between geo-engineering and
intemperance. I then argue that we should care about this ethical hazard for
two important political reasons: intemperance is a source of unfreedom and
injustice. This opens up several objections, which I address in turn.
3.1 The Relationship between Geo-engineering and Intemperance
3.1.1 What Is Temperance and Intemperance?
Perhaps a better term than temperance is the more encompassing Greek word
sophrosune, which is alternatively translated as temperance, moderation, or
self-restraint. For Aristotle, sophrosune is best understood as a middle state
between extreme indulgence in certain pleasures and “insensibility” to pleasure, the latter of which he claims is exceedingly rare and ostensibly inhuman.63 Of course, sophrosune is a virtue not just among the Greeks; something
similar is lauded by Buddhists, Hindus,64 (especially pre-modern) Christians,65
and Jews.66 (This is not to deny the important differences among how different cultures and belief-systems understand temperance, or the relative importance they place on it, but to suggest the possibility of common ground.)
For instance, in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Buddha praises the
temperate life much in the same way as Aristotle later does: i.e., as a “middle
62. Notably, many economists and political theorists measure improvements in welfare precisely by increased consumption.
63. Aristotle 2009: 1119a1–21.
64. See, e.g., the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, verse 5.2.3, which praises the virtue of damah,
or self-restraint.
65. See, e.g., Galatians, 5:22–23; 2 Peter 1:5–7; Philippians 4:12.
66. Consider, e.g., Proverbs 25:16, 20:13, 23:1–3.
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way,” albeit one between addiction to sensual indulgence and devotion to selfmortification and extreme asceticism.67
Importantly, for Aristotle, temperance is not merely “continence”
(enkrasia)—i.e., a state characterized by a reluctant or even painful observance of temperate behavior;68 rather, the temperate person “finds no intense
pleasure in any [bodily sensations], suffers no pain at their absence, and has no
appetite for them, or only moderate appetite, not to the wrong degree or at the
wrong time.”69 In other words, the temperate person’s desires, not just her actions, are appropriately mild and oriented to the good; she thus feels no “pain
at the absence of what is pleasant, or at refraining from it.”70
Intemperance, on the other hand, typically refers to just one of the two
“vicious” poles: specifically, excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures and
material gratification.71 At the individual level, intemperance manifests in
“insatiable” desires for food, sex, or the consumption of certain (sometimes
trivial) goods.72 Consequently, intemperance is closely related to pleonexia—
a rapacious grasping for more than one’s fair share or what one needs for a
healthy life.73 (I return to this point in section 3.2.1.) We are intemperate when
we eat past the point of being full, or drink to the point of heedlessness.74 In
this sense, intemperance can be understood as corruption-by-augmentation of
our natural appetites, which exist to prompt us to “fill[] a lack.”75
Intemperance is also characterized by an over-valuation of pleasure or
pleasurable goods. According to Aristotle, the intemperate person “has an appetite for all pleasant things, or rather for the most pleasant of them, and his
appetite leads him to choose these at the cost of the other things”76—i.e., at the
cost of a virtuous life’s goods. This may sound strange: would not the person
who consumes pleasurable goods all the time live a pleasant life? Aristotle
thinks not: “appetite involves pain,” thus, the intemperate person suffers “both
67. See Bhikkhu 1993. Others, especially Damien Keown (1992), have noted the substantive
overlap between Buddhist and Aristotelian virtue ethics. Cf. Charles Goodman (2015) for
some points of disagreement.
68. An enkratic person is someone who acts the right way, but longs to do otherwise. In other
words, his desires are out-of-sync with what reason tells him it is right and good to do.
69. Aristotle 2009: 1119a10–21; see also, 1118b30–35.
70. Aristotle 2009: 1118b30–35.
71. Aristotle 2009: 1118b15–25, 1118a15–19, 1118a30–b4.
72. Aristotle 2009: 1119b8–14, 1118a15–19, 1118a30–b4, 1119a1–5, a20–21.
73. Lane 2012: 32ff.
74. Aristotle 2009: 1118b15–21.
75. Aristotle 2009: 1118b17–18. Notably, Karl Marx emphasizes this point, and argues further
that such corruption is an essential component of capitalism: “Excess and intemperance
come to be its true norm” (Marx 1988: 116). On this, see O’Neill 1993: 203n12.
76. Aristotle 2009: 1119a1–3; see also 1119a20–21.
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when he fails to get something and when he has an appetite for it.”77 In the first
poem of the Atthakavagga (or Book of Eights), the Buddha expresses a similar
view:
When desire for sensual pleasure // Is fulfilled // One will surely be delighted.
. . . //But if this pleasure fades away, // The person with this desire . . . // Is pained
as if pierced by an arrow // . . . Through greed for . . . lots of sensual pleasures //
One’s weakness overpowers; // Crushed by many troubles, // Suffering pours in
// As water into a leaking boat.78
For both Aristotle and the Buddha, then, intemperance manifests in rapacious
and ultimately painful desires for pleasure-bearing goods and activities—
desires that reflect confusion about, or over-valuation of, those goods and
activities.
An aggregation of intemperate individuals makes an intemperate group.
At the collective level, intemperance manifests as unnecessary and ecologically irresponsible over-consumption.79 It occurs whenever a group eats,
drinks, breeds, and/or consumes resources beyond the limits of the ecosystem
in which that group is embedded, ultimately harming themselves and the other
beings and elements within that ecosystem.80
Collective intemperance is not just a human vice. In “Thinking Like A
Mountain,” Aldo Leopold recounts his experience extirpating wolves so that
there would be more deer to shoot: “I thought that because fewer wolves meant
more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise.”81 His and his fellows’ efforts worked, for a time: as the wolves were killed off, the deer population exploded. Unanticipated ecological consequences soon followed, however. Spared natural predators, the deer exhibited their own kind of collective
intemperance, both in eating and breeding. Before long “every edible bush and
seedling” was reduced “to anaemic desuetude, and then to death,” and “every
edible tree defoliated.” Having exhausted their sustenance, the deer population
soon collapsed, “dead of its own too-much.”82 The point here is that the collective intemperance of the hunters, which unleashed that of their prey (the deer),
devastated an entire ecosystem. (On Leopold’s estimation, the harm would
take at least “two or three . . . decades” to repair.)
77. Aristotle 2009: 1119a3–5; see also 1118b30–35.
78. Fronsdal 2016: 41–42.
79. The topic of intemperance and over-consumption is well explored in the environmental
virtue ethics literature. See, e.g., Barry 1999, esp. chap. 5; Cafaro 2001; Hursthouse 2015;
O’Neill 1993.
80. Aristotle stresses that intemperance runs counter to “health and fitness” in the individual
(1119a17–21; 1119b8–14). Notably, Barry (1999: 180) argues that attentiveness to the individual and ecological ill-effects of mass consumption forms a non-standard line of green
critique, not just in Aristotle but also in Arendt, Fromm, and Marcuse.
81. Leopold 1989: 130.
82. Leopold 1989: 132.
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The collective intemperance of human beings differs from that of deer in at
least one key respect, however. For the deer, wolves served as a natural barrier
to excessive consumption. It was only once that barrier had been removed that
the deer ate and bred to the point of intemperance and collapse. In contrast,
because of technology and modern agriculture, ecology’s ordinary checks and
balances—predators, disease, exposure—have little impact on human populations and behavior. The only effective barrier to our collective over-consumption—and, by extension, our only long-term security against collapse—is temperance, cultivated through practice and sustained by socialization. In other
words, for us, temperance cannot be externally imposed; it must be internally
won and socially reinforced. Unlike the deer whose pleonetic appetites are
ever present (if not always gratifiable), human appetites can be moderated or
channeled to good ends through training and habituation.83
The value of temperance (and the dangers of intemperance) has been well
understood among Western ethicists for much of the last two millennia. Alongside the oft-cited “Know Thyself” inscription at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi
was another: “Nothing in Excess.”84 Yet, Melissa Lane argues that the commitment to temperance began to wane in the eighteenth century, as certain political philosophers like Adam Smith came to regard the emergence of pleonetic
desires—especially those for material accumulation and wealth—as a way of
dampening the violent passions of religious fanaticism while creating employment for the increasingly dispossessed poor.85 To be clear, as Lane notes, these
philosophers were not arguing that “greed is good” or that the intemperate life
was somehow praiseworthy. Rather, they simply felt that the danger pleonetic
desires posed to individual virtue was outweighed by the social advantages
stimulating such desires could engender: “[S]ociety as a whole could benefit
from the greed for luxury . . . [as] consumption would stimulate production and
so provide employment for the poor.”86 In other words, the social advantages
of intemperance were considered substantial enough to excuse individual vice.
More than two hundred years later, the effects of this gamble are everywhere present. While Westerners have not relapsed into large-scale religious
83. According to Aristotle (2009), at least (1119b5–15; 1998: 1267a1–15).
84. Lane 2012: 33.
85. On this point, Lane cites Albert O. Hirschman’s (1977) famous discussion of the historical
shift from a focus on “the passions to the interests” (Lane 2012: 34 and note 10). Which
philosophers she has in mind is less clear, though she goes on to discuss Adam Smith (Lane
2012: 35). Lane is careful to stress, however, that Smith—and, we might add, Bernard
Mandeville, to whom this shift is most commonly attributed—seemed to believe that individual happiness involved resisting pleonetic desires, even if “society as a whole” stood
to gain from indulging them. For further discussion of this point, see Broussois 2015 and
Tolonen 2013. I thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to clarify this.
86. Lane 2012: 35.
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
487
wars,87 our passions for sectarian violence have not diminished (a point to
which the nationalist wars of the twentieth century and the race-based terrorism of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries can attest). In the
meanwhile, human beings—particularly the most affluent—have learned to
consume virtually everything in excess. This is reflected in the basic idioms of
modern consumerism: we “binge-watch” television, “feast” at “all-you-caneat” buffets, treat ourselves to “shopping sprees,” etc. The cumulative effects
of these unbridled desires are perhaps nowhere more apparent than with respect to the environmental degradation of the last fifty years. In the words of
Pope Francis: “The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has
so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes.”88 Fittingly, he attributes these
societal problems to “today’s self-centered culture of instant gratification”89
and argues that “[o]nly by cultivating sound virtues will people be able to
make a selfless ecological commitment” to rehabilitating the earth.90
3.1.2 Geo-engineering and Intemperance
We can now ask: how exactly does geo-engineering follow from and threaten
to sustain intemperance?
To answer the first part of this question, we need only consider the massive amount of GHG emissions that are produced by contemporary appetites
for dirty energy, animal products (particularly meat and dairy), quick and easy
travel (especially by plane), air conditioning, and cheap consumer goods.
Often these goods and activities are entirely frivolous; as Gardiner aptly describes, climate change is significantly driven by our desires for “relatively
modest” pleasures like “the joy of wearing t-shirts indoors in winter.”91 In
other words, the pleonetic desires of the global affluent, whose collective intemperance is apparent both in the climatic effects of their over-consumption
and in the irrational over-valuation of certain pleasures that such consumption
reflects, is fueling the environmental crisis. The willingness to indulge these
desires, often despite some level of awareness of the harm entailed by doing
so, is characteristic of intemperance.92
87. Of course, religious-motivated violence has endured in many countries—e.g., Ireland
throughout the twentieth century—and may well be on the rise again.
88. Francis 2015: 119–20.
89. Francis 2015: 120.
90. Francis 2015: 154.
91. Gardiner 2013: 30.
92. One might object here that my critique appears to overlook the fact that rich countries and
consumers are not solely responsible for dangerous climate change. Rather, a large portion
of global emissions originate in poor countries, as the natural by-product of development
initiatives aimed at attaining minimally decent standards-of-living—initiatives, that is,
which are not products of intemperance. Evidence of this is that many of the highest-emit-
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If this is right, then a full response to the problem of climate change must
involve moderating excessive appetites—viz., cultivating greater temperance.
There is already some traction for this idea in the policy literature.93 The IPCC,
for one, repeatedly emphasizes the need for behavioral and “lifestyle” changes, particularly among the global affluent: “Emissions can be substantially
lowered through changes in consumption patterns . . . and dietary change and
reduction in food wastes.”94 As Crutzen laments, however, international efforts
in this direction have, so far, been “grossly disappointing,” making successful
abatement appear increasingly like “a pious wish.”95
The interest in geo-engineering derives foremost from (researchers’ increasing acceptance of) our collective failure to cultivate temperance. For in
facing a crisis precipitated by intemperance, two options are available. The
first is to moderate excessive appetites through practice and concerted effort,
until the pain of desire is no longer salient. The second is to attend narrowly
to the downstream effects of intemperance—to treat the wounds of excess,
without worrying about the disease that brought them to bear. Geo-engineering
falls into this second category. In Jamieson’s words, geo-engineering is an attempt “to manipulate nature in order to make it conform to our desires rather
than shaping our desires in response to nature.”96
Once this superficial fix is made available, an important impetus to cultivate temperance is lost. For if our only major concern vis-à-vis twentyfirst-century collective intemperance is its problematic tendency to warm the
planet, geo-engineering offers an appealing solution. Recall the analogy to the
AspireAssist. Why do the hard work of dieting and exercising when a low-cost
solution to weight-gain—the most directly harmful effect of dietary intemperance—exists, which does not require limiting one’s appetites? Likewise, why
do the hard work of abatement when a lower-cost solution to warming—the
most anthropically harmful effect of climate-related intemperance—exists that
93.
94.
95.
96.
ting countries are also poor and developing, like China, India, and Brazil. There are problems with this objection, however. Most critically, as recent work on “consumption-based
emissions accounting” shows (see, e.g., Peters and Hertwich 2008; Davis and Caldeira
2010; Steininger et al. 2014; Mittiga 2018), many of the emissions standardly attributed to
poor and developing countries are generated in the production of goods that are ultimately
consumed by the global rich. This “off-shoring” of emissions obscures the fact that the
desire for abundant cheap goods in wealthy countries remains a key driver of the climate
crisis.
Likewise among some climate ethicists. Jamieson (2007: 181), for instance, argues that
“[t]emperance could be rehabilitated as a green virtue that emphasizes the importance of
reducing consumption.”
IPCC, AR5, WG3, p. 20; see also, IPCC, AR5, WG3, sections 6.8, 7.9, 8.3.5, 8.9, 9.3, 10.4,
11.4, 12.4–7, 15.3–5; and IPCC, AR5, WG1, TS, p. 57.
Crutzen 2006: 217.
Jamieson 2013: 534.
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
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allows society’s appetites to remain unchecked? In short, geo-engineering, like
the AspireAssist, promises to dissolve the causal link between intemperate appetites and their most serious harmful effects; in this way, it threatens to sustain intemperance.
Yet, geo-engineering can only ever be a partial response to climate change.
Just as, in many cases, reducing the fever may save the patient without curing
the disease, deploying geo-engineering may save lives by cooling the planet
without solving the underlying problem (intemperance) that gave rise to the
need for such a solution in the first place. Geo-engineering, then, only appears
like a plausible solution to the problem of climate change if we deflate that
problem to its more superficial effects. It is only a partial, external fix for what
is ultimately an internal behavioral issue brought on by constant social inducements to burn, eat, travel, and buy more and more.
3.2 The Good of Temperance and the Bad of Intemperance
Of course, if geo-engineering can even partially sever the link between the
practice of collective intemperance and its most harmful (external) effects,
the question naturally arises: why care about cultivating temperance? In other
words, if geo-engineering removes the instrumental justification for temperance, what impetus remains for being temperate?
In response, we should begin by noting again that geo-engineering can
only attend to some of the external effects of our collective, climatic intemperance—specifically, global warming. Other important problems will remain or
continue to worsen (e.g., ocean acidification). Geo-engineering will also cause
its own problems, perhaps necessitating further interventions. This is all to say
that geo-engineering fails to completely erase the instrumental justification for
cultivating temperance.
Nevertheless, by slowing or reversing warming, geo-engineering does
present a way to attenuate one of the most harmful effects of climate change
for humans over the medium term. Thus, we should consider other reasons
for cultivating temperance. In what follows, I identify two internal goods of
temperance, and two corresponding bads of intemperance. I can only limn
these goods and bads here. I hope, however, that this provisional argument is
able to give some sense of why we should care about temperance apart from
its potential to stall global warming.
3.2.1 Justice and Injustice
One bad of intemperance concerns its relation to injustice. Aristotle argues that
whenever human beings “have a desire for more than the necessities, they will
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seek to remedy it by committing injustice.”97 The operant form of injustice
is that of pleonexia. When guided by pleonetic desires, people tend to take
what is not theirs. Buddhist doctrine also strongly cautions against the vice of
pleonexia. Of the five precepts or virtues [pañca-sīla] defined in the Mahayana
tradition, the second involves abstaining from taking what is not freely given.98
The potential need for geo-engineering follows very directly from a situation wherein some have used or are using much more than their fair share
of the “atmospheric commons.”99 To understand this point, imagine that each
generation has a “greenhouse gas budget”—measured in emission flows—that
it can spend without jeopardizing the safety of future generations.100 On any
reasonable measure, current generations—particularly, the affluent within current generations—have emitted far beyond their allowance. Consequently, the
world is warming, and future generations will not be able to emit much (if any)
GHGs if they are to avoid further harm. Geo-engineering arises as a response
to this budgetary over-reach: a way of borrowing on the already exhausted
credit of future generations. Geo-engineering does nothing to reign in the desires that give rise to this over-reach; rather, it threatens to sustain them, in
part, by providing current generations the solace of thinking that at least some
of the harm stemming from their consumption can be mitigated.101
In this sense, geo-engineering is a handmaiden to injustice: it provides
current generations moral cover for continuing to emit more than their fair
share. Indeed, geo-engineering is no more a remedy to injustice than would
be a company compensating some victims of its pollution while nonetheless
continuing to pollute. Justice, more fully conceived, would also require ending the practice that gives rise to the problem. According to Aristotle, the only
way to extirpate the injustice that follows from pleonetic desires is to cultivate
temperance.102 Only with self-control and moderated appetites will people stop
grasping for more than their fair share.
3.2.2 Freedom and Unfreedom
There are not just other-regarding reasons—like those of justice—to cultivate
temperance. Temperance can also plausibly be understood as a condition of
97. Aristotle 1998: 1267a1–15.
98. Bhikkhu 1997.
99. Caney 2009; Singer 2010, esp. 192–93. See also Gardiner 2004: 583ff.; Caney 2012; Caney
2005: 770; Neumayer 2000; Jamieson 2001; and Baer 2002.
100. The idea of a greenhouse gas budget is Simon Caney’s (2012), though I use it somewhat
differently here.
101. Keith et al. 2010; Gardiner 2011; Jamieson 2013: 533f.
102. Perhaps better put, Aristotle (1998: 1267a1–15) believes that the cure rests in cultivating
temperance and redirecting one’s remaining desires toward the kinds of pleasures that are
unaccompanied by pain (namely, those of philosophy).
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
491
personal freedom. Consider the following. Intemperance is fueled by pleonetic
desires—i.e., desires for material gratification and pleasure in excess of one’s
needs or fair share. In thrall to these desires, a delay or denial of satisfaction is
painful or uncomfortable. To allay this pain, we may do things that we believe
to be wrong or bad (or, in milder cases of intemperance, we may do what is
right or good but only reluctantly).103 For this reason, Aristotle repeatedly construes intemperance as a kind of “slavishness.”104 In the grips of intemperate
desires, our rational faculty, which Aristotle most closely associates with our
personhood, becomes subordinated to our appetites, which are sub-human.105
On this view, intemperate actions do not follow from a rational will to the good
but from a non- or irrational will to indulge our desires, whatever the cost (in
way of health or virtue), and however trivial the benefit (recall Gardiner’s tshirt-in-winter example). When we act intemperately, we act against our better
judgment, almost as if we are without a choice.
Buddhist thought similarly links enslavement to unchecked appetites and
freedom or liberation [moksha] to the mastery of desire, though for slightly
different reasons. So long as we are guided solely by our appetites, we will
subsist in ignorance and fail to address the sources of our suffering. Escaping samsara—the painful cycle of life, death, and rebirth—requires throwing
off the yoke of desires for sensory pleasures; only in this do we achieve the
liberation of nirvana.106 Thus, the Theranamo Sutra ends: “Not enslaved by
anything, // It is possible to put aside all craving, // Resulting in a life of peace
and joy.”107 In short, intemperance sustains cravings that overwhelm us, and
that keep us locked in a cycle of suffering and subjection.
Many of the global affluent’s pleonetic desires are deeply implicated in the
climate crisis. To take just one example, the average American consumes about
381g of meat and 756g of eggs and dairy every day. In comparison, the average Indian consumes just 29g of meat and 235g of eggs and dairy per day.108
There are no health-based justifications for this difference; in fact, excessive
consumption of animal products is known to cause heart disease, (especially
colorectal) cancer, diabetes, obesity, and other serious illnesses.109 Nor is this
difference completely reducible to wealth:110 the average person in the United
Kingdom and in Germany each consumes only 283g of meat per day, despite
103. The difference here is between akrasia and enkrasia.
104. Aristotle 2009: 1118b15–22, 1118a25–b6.
105. Which is why Aristotle refers to intemperate behavior as counter-rational or irrational. See,
e.g., Aristotle 2009: 1119b8–14.
106. Fronsdal 1998: 164–74; Williams 2002; Samuel 2008.
107. Hanh 2012: 231.
108. National Geographic n.d.
109. Bouvard et al. 2015.
110. Though meat consumption does track wealth, as the example of China attests.
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having similar per-capita incomes as the US.111 Simply put, Americans have
excessive appetites for meat and dairy—appetites which contribute enormously to climate change and their own dishealth.112
While it may be wrong to say that, in every case, excessive appetites express a kind of unfreedom, it is striking how often the US’s very non-Buddhist,
non-Aristotelian culture attributes over-consumption to addiction, cravings, or
compulsive eating habits—viz., internal, behavioral tendencies compounded
by biochemical cues and social/commercial reinforcement. This strongly suggests a kind of unfreedom—a slavery to unhealthy desires. By contrast, a temperate person (or society) is not bound by compulsion and addiction,113 and is
in this sense free from painful and persistent desires for ever more.
4. Conclusion
The moral debate over geo-engineering so far has largely revolved around
its potential costs, benefits, and risks in comparison to those of conventional
abatement measures.
Proponents argue that we could engineer the climate at a fraction of the
cost of abatement. Others doubt this, emphasizing the many co-benefits of
abatement, the non-quantifiable costs of geo-engineering (like the loss of blue
skies), and the serious hazards associated with a large-scale intervention into a
system as complex as earth’s climate.
Yet, even among the staunchest critics of geo-engineering, few reject the
conclusion that, if faced with catastrophe, engineering the climate to lower
temperatures would be morally justified. Without disputing this, I argue that
normative frameworks that focus narrowly on costs, benefits, and risks fail
to elucidate fully the reservations many (if not most) people have about geoengineering. Clarifying these reservations requires thinking outside of what
is merely right or wrong. Taking this approach, one key issue with geo-engineering is that it follows from, and threatens to sustain, excessive appetites for
environmentally destructive forms of consumption. Geo-engineering promises
to sever the connection between collective intemperance and its most obvious
harmful effect for humans: global warming. Yet, even if preventing warming were all that mattered for us environmentally, there are goods and bads
internal to temperance and intemperance, respectively, that count against geoengineering: politically, intemperance engenders unfreedom and injustice.
111. National Geographic n.d.
112. Most estimates attribute between 11 and 18 percent of all emissions to animal agriculture—
a figure exceeding cumulative transportation-related emissions. See, e.g., Steinfeld et al.
2006: xxi; Wellesley et al. 2015: vii.
113. Aristotle 2009: 1118b30–35, 1119a12–20.
What’s the Problem with Geo-engineering?
493
Unlike cost- and risk-based objections to geo-engineering, these ethical
issues are not temporally contingent. Even if geo-engineering were to become
the most cost-effective and least risky option, all things considered—as may
be the case at the point of imminent climate catastrophe—reasonable people might still regard geo-engineering as tragic, precisely because it follows
from, and helps to sustain, collective intemperance (and thus unfreedom and
injustice).
If this is right, then we cannot fully evaluate geo-engineering, or any response to geo-engineering, solely in relation to its costs, benefits, and risks.
We must also consider whether it is ethically justified—including, as I have
argued here, whether it promotes temperance or intemperance. In the case of
geo-engineering, this kind of reflection provides yet another reason to demand
immediate and aggressive abatement efforts.
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
ross.mittiga@uc.cl
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2017 Western Political Science Association
and American Political Science Association meetings. I thank the discussants, panel chairs, copanelists, and audience members—especially Les Thiele, Tim Luke, Stephen Gardiner, Steve
Vanderheiden, Peter Cannavo, Yogi Hendlin, Jenn Lawrence, and Michael Lipscomb—for their
comments on those occasions. I am also grateful to Colin Bird, Tal Brewer, Sonam Kachru,
George Klosko, Jen Rubenstein, and Stephen White for their valuable feedback and suggestions.
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