Climate Crisis and the Tragedy of the Commons: a Matter of Racism?

In 1968, American ecologist and philosopher Garret Hardin (1915-2003) published a famous article, “The tragedy of the commons”, in which he argued the necessity of controlling the world population’s growth since “a finite world can support only a finite population” (p. 1243). Hardin pointed out that, in a pasture open to all, where every single herdsman can do whatever he wants, a rational behaviour based on self-interest will lead him to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons: in such a deregulated context, the marginal utility of an additional animal is always positive because while gain (profit) is private, loss (overgrazing) is shared with the entire community. In the long term, such a trend can lead to resources’ exhaustion and, ultimately, to disaster.

Over the last 50 years, Hardin’s paper has been widely cited by scholars of different disciplines, from ecology to political science. But in a recent article published by Scientific American, an assistant professor of environmental politics at the University of California vehemently states that it is time to reject Hardin’s misleading ideas. After acknowledging Hardin’s impact on modern environmentalism, Matto Mildenberger attacks him in a not-so-fair manner. Instead of proposing a series of solid, convincing, arguments, he starts by labeling Hardin as racist, white nationalist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamophobe. The only source quoted to back such compliments is the Southern Poverty Law Center, dedicated to “fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society”.

Ambassadors of “Progress”: the Rosy Agenda of Steven Pinker

[I]f you want a description of our age, here is one: the civilization of means without ends.
Richard Livingstone, On Education (1956)

We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!
Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854)

The most recent best-seller by cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now (2018), is not only Bill Gates’ new “favourite book of all times”. It is also full of facts. Facts, numbers, percentages, charts – all employed “to restate the ideals of the Enlightenment in the language and concepts of 21^st century” (p. 5). After examining a wide set of “variables” – such as freedom, health, peace, safety, democracy, equal rights, literacy, knowledge, intelligence and happiness – Pinker explains that these variables “can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress” (p. 51).
As simple as that: “progress” can be embedded into a formula as if it represented a measurable, observable variable of the physical world. Since all these parameters have increased over time, the conclusion is, indeed, a wonderful piece of news (you may have overlooked it). The Enlightenment “has worked – perhaps, the greatest story seldom told. And because this triumph is so unsung, the underlying ideals of reason, science and humanism are unappreciated as well” (p. 6).

“Climate Change” or “Climate Crisis”?

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Do the expressions “global warming” and “climate change” refer to the very same thing? In other words: can they be used as synonyms? The answer is no – not really.
As clearly explained on the NASA website,

Global warming refers to the upward temperature trend across the entire Earth since the early 20th century, and most notably since the late 1970s, due to the increase in fossil fuel emissions since the industrial revolution. Worldwide since 1880, the average surface temperature has gone up by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), relative to the mid-20th-century baseline (of 1951-1980).

Climate change refers to a broad range of global phenomena created predominantly by burning fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomena include the increased temperature trends described by global warming, but also encompass changes such as sea level rise; ice mass loss in Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic and mountain glaciers worldwide; shifts in flower/plant blooming; and extreme weather events.

Should We Teach All Students to Think like Scientists?

Issues such as climate change illustrate that scientists, even if armed with overwhelming evidence, are at times powerless to change minds or motivate action. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, people in the U.S., one of the countries that emits the most carbon, were among the least concerned about the potential impact of climate change. (…) For many, knowledge about the natural world is superseded by personal beliefs. (…) It is imperative for the next generation of leaders in science to be aware of the psychological, social and cultural factors that affect how people understand and use information. (…)
Scientists cannot work in silos and expect to improve the world, particularly when false narratives have become entrenched in communities. This is especially true in tackling issues such as public trust in vaccines, a topic that is flooded with misleading information, despite a lack of legitimate scientific evidence supporting the view that they are unsafe.

It is very easy to agree with these observations by social psychologist Peter Salovey, current President of Yale University – and, in general, I do agree with him. Referring to climate change, Salovey properly points out that, at least in the US, the public do not seem to be very concerned about it. The reasons of such attitude, instead of being sought (only) in the lack of science literacy and technical reasoning ability, should be also identified in the power of personal beliefs, that can lead people to frame issues in ways which conflict with scientific evidence.

On Thin Ice. Weaponizing the Right to Free Speech to Mislead Public Opinion

For its remarkable degree of complexity and multivalence (Jamieson, 2014; Marshall, 2014), climate change represents a serious challenge also from a legal perspective. If, on the one side, “global warming litigation represents familiar legal territory”, on the other “it involves threats of widespread injuries that are uncertain in timing, scope, and intensity” while inculpating “corporations, individual citizens, and governments from all countries, and results from human activities fundamental to modern society” (Pidot, 2006, p. 1).

When it comes to consider a law case such as that involving Canadian climate scientist (and now politician) Andrew Weaver, complexity and multivalence become evident as soon as one understands the slippery ground on which cases like this are usually built.

Framing the Monster: The Infinite Faces of Climate Change

Fritz Lang’s masterpiece M (1931) tells the story of a child murderer who becomes the pray of a keen, restless manhunt. Set in the 1920s, the movie depicts a German town where citizens, instead of reacting to the mysterious disappearing of some children, ignore the menace looming over them. It is not by coincidence that the little girl we see in the opening sequence is coming back from school alone: she is playing with a ball, then meets the “monster” and disappears – while her mother is waiting for her at home.

In a society incapable of protecting its younger members (and, therefore, its future), only two types of actors take concrete action: the police and the mob. While the former is risking its reputation (several months of investigation have led nowhere), the latter is being damaged by the never-ending round-ups carried out to catch the killer. Policemen and mobsters know very well that, if they do not act immediately, they will suffer dire consequences. What happens, then? On the one side, a new commissioner takes over the investigation and finds out an effective (and much more efficient) way to solve the case; on the other side, criminals decide to enlist beggars to chase the murderer while watching over children in the streets. Overall, the measures adopted are so effective that both sides end up discovering the identity of the killer quite quickly – and at the very same time.