Part 1 of a 2 part series on the root causes of climate change. This part introduces the question and then develops a problem-oriented way to understand climate change.

1. Modern Philosophy and
Climate Change
Prof. Adam Briggle
UNT Department of Philosophy and Religion
OLLI Spring ‘22
adam.briggle@unt.edu

2. About me
PhD in Environmental Studies
Current project = textbook –
A Field Guide to Climate Change:
Tools for the Tangle of Science Politics

3. Why philosophy and climate change?
• Isn’t this all about science (and technology)?
• No matter how powerful or sophisticated, no scientific instrument will
ever detect a ‘problem.’
• Science provides information for decisions, but “such decisions are
value judgments determined through socio-political processes, taking
into account considerations such as development, equity, and
sustainability, as well as uncertainties and risk.” - IPCC 2001

4. Course Description
• Question: What are the root causes of climate change?
• Thesis: Modern philosophical ideas and values about humans and nature.
• Implications: Do we need to abandon these ideas to solve climate change?
Or does modernity hold the solution to the problems of its own creation?
• Learning objective: To gain a richer understanding of climate change and
the big questions about how to deal with it.

5. • We are gambling that the very thing that caused climate change will also
solve it.
• What is it?
• Economic growth.
• Technoscience.
• Development.
• Progress.
• Modernity.

6. Outline
• Today:
• Asking the question…what’s causing climate change?
• Problem-oriented thinking about climate change
• Next week:
• Explore the thesis that climate change is all about modernity
• Can modernity solve the very problem that it created?

7. Climate change: What’s the problem?
• Goals
• Trends
• Conditioning Factors
• Direct
• Indirect or ROOT
• Projections
• Alternatives

9. Warming Stripes by Ed Hawkins
This is a trend in temperature

10. …to cause this?
This is also a TREND…
and a conditioning factor for the
temperature trend…
Not (yet) a problem

11. …to cause this?
This is also a trend
And a conditioning factor
For the other trends…
But not a problem
Indeed, a good thing, right?

12. • Well, this is ANTHROPOGENIC (human caused) climate change… The
Anthropocene!
• Every second, global civilization burns through 1,100 barrels of oil, 270
tons of coal, and 250,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas. Every second.
• Land use changes are adding more greenhouse gas emissions.
• This is dumping enormous amounts of heat energy into the climate system,
much of it absorbed by the oceans. It is the heat equivalent of seven
Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding in the oceans. Every second.

13. • But humans were around ca. 200,000 years before those spikes
• And not all humans contribute equally during those spikes
• So, it is a certain kind of human…a certain way of being
human…a certain culture.

14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx85qK1ztAc
Note ca. 1850 TOTAL HISTORICAL emissions were equal to about ONE HOUR of present emissions

16. • This “way of being human” is modernity.
• Yes it is about fossil fuels, industrial production and agriculture, and
big machines.
• But why those things…why did this one culture turn to them?
• What are the ideas and values embodied in the machines?
• That’s for you to ponder…we’ll turn to that next week.

17. For Now: Climate Change
• What do Americans believe?
• What is climate and what is climate change?
• What makes climate change a problem?

19. • Climate is energy, energy is change, climate is change.

20. • Climate comes from
klima: “to lean” –
climate zones
• Climate as the
interaction of Earth’s
spheres.
(we are pumping
lithosphere into
atmosphere, which is
warming the
hydrosphere…)

21. • Mark Twain: “Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.”
• Climate as long-term average weather. Like the batting average vs. the at
actual at bat.
• Phoenix is hot and dry. Things change (weather) but within more-or-less stable
parameters (climate).
• Climate change is a change in the way things change. A change in the
parameters. There is a new ‘lean’ or a new alignment, a new normal or
average.
• This can happen both through gradual shifts and new extremes…

23. Things Change
A Change in the Way
Things Change

24. What is the problem?
• Goals (where do we want to be?)
• Trends (what direction are we traveling?)
• Conditioning Factors (direct and indirect drivers of trends = diagnosis)
• Projections (what direction are we heading for in the future?)
• Alternatives (what can we do to solve problem?)

25. The Climate Problem
• The UNFCCC states that the goal is to achieve:
• stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a
level that would [1a] prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference
with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a
time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems [1b] to adapt naturally to
climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to
enable [2] economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner
(UNFCCC, Art. 2, 1992).

26. • Goals:
• Reduce the (1a) risks and (1b) impacts of anthropogenic climate change
• prevent dangerous interference (mitigation)
• adapt as needed (adaptation); and
• 2 Enable sustainable economic development
• ALMOST NO ONE TAKES DEGROWTH AS A SERIOUS OPTION
• Indeed, Geoengineering schemes are taken more seriously –
• CCS … even SRM…

27. Decoupling is the Goal!
• Have our
cake and eat
it too.
• Sweden is
the future
for all!! ??
Goals 1b and 2
Goals 1a

28. • Measure the goals in order to track trends and projections…
• 1a. Temperature targets, GHG concentrations, and carbon
budgets – especially 1.5oC and net zero by 2050
• 1b. Variable metrics for natural and human systems
Loss of life and economic intensity of damage from extreme
weather (and this has decreased, btw, due to 2…)
• 2. Usually GDP and per-capita income, also various
sustainable development goals.

33. Questions and Discussion

36. Alternatives
• Three main types
• Mitigation (decarbonization)
• Adaptation (resilience)
• Finance
• Geoengineering
• Carbon capture and sequestration
• Solar radiation management

39. • So, not all peoples are equally causal agents.
• Why do some contribute more GHG emissions than others?
• That is, what is causing that? What are the indirect drivers?
• I think it is a certain vision of the good life – a deep notion of progress
and purpose. It is that goal #2: “economic development.”
• Do we need to ‘fix’ that…or can we keep that and still achieve our
climate goals?

40. • Note that the predominant problem framing presumes that we do not
need to address/change these deeper values/indirect drivers.
• It states that the goal is decoupling – to continue economic
development but without the environmental harms.

41. January
Water forms
February
Single-celled organisms
March
Photosynthesis begins
April
Early glaciation
May
Iron and sulfur oxidized
June
Great Oxidation Event
July
Glaciation leads to mass
extinction
August
Organisms with nuclei
September
Multi-cellular life
October
Sexual reproduction
November
Cambrian explosion, plants and
animals
December
See below
Some Dates in December
Dec. 2: Tetrapods evolve (animals with four limbs)
Dec. 10 – 24: Age of dinosaurs
Dec. 25: Primates evolve
Dec. 31, 11:30 pm: Humans evolve
Dec. 31, 11:58 pm: Agriculture begins
Dec. 31, 11:59 pm and 58 seconds: Industrial Age
Key:
Earth is 4.5 billion years old,
so…
Each month = 375 million years
Each day = 12.3 million years
Each hour = 513,000 years
Each minute = 8,561 years
Each second = 142 years