Global warming, ethics, and cultural criticism

Abstract

The climate is under continuous changes due to human action. This fact raises ethical questions concerning the adaptation to the predicted changes, the duty not to engage with harmful activities, and the duties of restoration. Typically, ethical issues are addressed either in terms of individual or collective responsibility. In the former case, the focus is on individuals and on her actions and omissions; in the latter case, the focus is on the collective aspect of human life that is governed and regulated through formal institutions and structures such as legislative systems and public policies. The paper aims to study the cultural implications deriving from these ethical considerations of anthropogenic climate change. These cultural aspects seem to have a life of their own and are difficult to regulate if not specifically addressed. Accordingly, I distinguish between three approaches to environmental policy: consumerist, institutionalist and cultural. The institutionalist approach puts emphasis on legal and social structures and processes governed by formal rules. The consumerist approach focuses on the individual choices and lifestyle. I claim that to get a more comprehensive picture, attention must also be paid to cultural dimensions that are not fully governed by individuals and that either should not be controlled through formal laws in a liberal-democratic society. Such cases are stemming from various aspects of the human mobility, kinship relations, symbolic activities and rituals which can be best analysed through cultural criticism that rests on (environmental) ethical concepts and ideas. It is difficult for individuals to avoid fulfilling certain social expectations that are of cultural nature. Although visiting faraway living relatives or attending religious ceremony afar from home and thus causing GHG-emissions is, in the end, an individual decision, it has a strong cultural dimension. At times, cultural ideals can be unsustainable. It seems that the cultural approach must tackle at least two fundamental problems: First, if a cultural practice is regarded as unsustainable, its criticism might not have a recipient because it is an abstract trait of a common life of some group of people. And second, there may not be standards of criticism independently of specific cultures.