Abstract
The prominent Australian earth scientist, Tim Flannery, closes his recent book Here on Earth: A New Beginning with the words “… if we do not strive to love one another, and to love our planet as much as we love ourselves, then no further progress is possible here on Earth”. This is a remarkable conclusion to his magisterial survey of the state of the planet. Climatic and other environmental changes are showing us not only the extent of human influence on the planet, but also the limits of programmatic management of this influence, whether through political, economic, technological or social engineering. A changing climate is a condition of modernity, but a condition which modernity seems uncomfortable with. Inspired by the recent “environmental turn” in the humanities—and calls from a range of environmental scholars and scientists such as Flannery—I wish to suggest a different, non-programmatic response to climate change: a reacquaintance with the ancient and religious ideas of virtue and its renaissance in the field of virtue ethics. Drawing upon work by Alasdair MacIntyre, Melissa Lane and Tom Wright, I outline an apologetic for why the cultivation of virtue is an appropriate response to the challenges of climate change.
Highlights
The prominent earth scientist, and 2007 Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery closes his recent bookHere on Earth: A New Beginning with the words “... if we do not strive to love one another, and to love our planet as much as we love ourselves, no further progress is possible here on Earth” ([1], Humanities 2014, 3 p. 281)
Drawing upon work by Alasdair MacIntyre, Melissa Lane and Tom Wright, I outline an apologetic for why the cultivation of virtue is an appropriate response to the challenges of climate change
My response here draws upon humanist values and traditions, both religious and non-religious. It recognises the limitations of modernity and recognises the multiplicities of knowledges that remain potent in the world today. It extends my horizons beyond the natural sciences and social sciences, with which I primarily worked in Why We Disagree, towards the environmental humanities, in particular the deployment of virtue ethics alongside geographical sensibility and imagination
Summary
The prominent earth scientist, and 2007 Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery closes his recent book. If a strong enough scientific consensus on the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change could be forged and sustained, the compelling force of such rationality would over-ride the differences in worldviews, beliefs, values and ideologies which characterise the human world Such a scientific consensus would bring about the needed policy solutions. From the vantage point of 2014 we can see that the credibility of such a narrative hinged on a set of circumstances peculiar to the late 1980s and early 1990s These included: (i) the belief in the ‘end of history’ and the triumph of (neo-)liberal democracy; (ii) the seeming continued marginalisation of religion in public life; and (iii) the emergence of a globalised environmental science.
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