How can our individual actions move the needle on a massive, complex, and systemic problem like climate change? How should we act in order to make the necessary impact? How *must* we act?
What is our personal obligation to maximize the extent to which we're part of the solution, and minimize the extent to which we're part of the problem? How do we determine that obligation? Is it really an obligation, or is it something else, something softer and harder to define?
Catastrophe Ethics, by Travis Rieder, isn't a book of answers. It's not even specifically a book about climate change, although the climate crisis is used as the canonical example of something he refers to as The Problem: the challenges that each of us experience in our daily lives as we try to get our arms around our personal responsibility for systemic and societal-level issues. Rieder explores The Problem through the lens of a number of different moral, philosophical, and ethical frameworks and perspectives. Although he teases the reader a bit in the beginning, it soon becomes clear that there are no easy or universal answers available.
As a bit of framing, Rieder walks through a series of trolley problems and discusses how they could be solved by applying various ethical frameworks including consequentialism (the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by its outcome), deontology (right or wrong is determined by motivation, not consequence), and general utilitarianism, which suggests that the "right" behavior is the one that maximizes overall happiness. Although these traditional ethical frameworks are common ways for us to instinctively reason about how we should act, they are sadly unhelpful and counterproductive when applied to something with the scope and nuance of The Problem.
Although climate change is the recurring example, Rieder discusses other instances of The Problem as a means to search for other applicable ethical theory. The rights and treatment of non-human animals, abortion (cleverly re-framed as the obligation to continue gestation), the public health response to the COVID pandemic, and the proper response to the inherent privilege of whiteness and maleness are all discussed in a level of detail that is satisfying and useful without being overbearing.
An interesting concept that is explored is the continuum of "obligated", "permitted", "prohibited" and the space and nuance between these morally hard stances. For example, it is interesting to consider how some actions can be socially permissible while also being morally wrong. What is the framework for making and justifying such a distinction? In circumstances where we can't rely on duty and obligation to tell us how to act, what role should "reasons" play in shaping our behaviors? What is the moral weight of one reason compared to another?
A great strength of Catastrophe Ethics is that it provides a number of jumping off points for one to think about The Problem and figure out how to "solve" it in the context of their own life. The author gives many of his own examples about the conclusions he's drawn and the actions he's taken, but it's clear that the reader is meant to do their own homework in this regard. Although some may be disappointed that an answer key is not provided, this isn't a test that can be passed, and the value is found in the studying itself.
~nullish
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