Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future

3. Global Warming and Virtues of Ecological Restoration

3 Global Warming and Virtues of Ecological Restoration Ronald Sandler Global Warming and Adaptation In this chapter, I explore the implications of global warming for virtues associated with ecological restoration and assisted recovery. In doing so, I begin from the premise that global warming is now part of the ecological present and future of the planet. Returning to climactic trajectories that would have obtained absent anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, if possible at all, would require massive and, in my view, illadvised technological interventions (Hegerl and Solomon 2009; Gardiner 2010 and chapter 12, this volume). Therefore, I take seriously the idea that global warming needs to inform our ecological practices and ethics as an ecological reality, not just as something to be avoided, resisted, feared, and lamented. Throughout this chapter, I will refer to foregone global warming. Foregone global warming is the amount of global warming or climactic change that we are already committed to in virtue of obtaining levels of GHGs in the atmosphere plus the most optimistic scenario for future GHG emissions, absent massive technological intervention . How much warming there might be beyond that—that is, warming associated with additional GHG emissions—is of course not foregone. The relevant features of global warming for the purposes of this chapter, as well as those in virtue of which it is on many people’s reckoning the ecological challenge of our time, are increased rate of ecological change and increased uncertainty (or unpredictability) of ecological change, in comparison to that with which human (particularly agricultural ) civilizations are accustomed. Because global warming accelerates the rate of change and exacerbates the information deficit and uncertainties about the ecological future, it makes biological and cultural adaptation to ecological changes more difficult, for both us and other species. 64 Chapter 3 As long as there has been climate, there has been climate change—and with it ecological change. As long as there have been systems involving living organisms, adaptation has been needed, and it has occurred. However, the magnitude and rate of climactic and ecological change— and the associated adaptation challenges—have not always been constant . At the core of concerns about global warming is the worry that species, ecological systems, and human societies will not be able to meet the adaptation demands of anthropogenic climate change, and that failure to do so will have high social, economic, and biological costs (IPCC 2007). The challenge of adaptation that is the product of the rate and uncertainty of ecological change is exacerbated by several factors. These include the types of ecological changes expected to be produced, such as increased incidence of extreme weather events and increased climatic variability, as well as the possibility of there being “climactic tipping points” that could result in abrupt changes in climatic and ecological trajectories. In addition, the range of possible climatic/ecological futures—for example, with respect to surface air temperatures, sea levels, species’ ranges, weather events, precipitation, air velocities, and natural resource availability—within a given time frame is broader. Moreover, the challenge of adaptation is exacerbated by several factors, such as other anthropogenic stressors on ecosystems (e.g., pollution and habitat loss) and the social inertia and myopia encouraged by many social and institutional structures (e.g., neoliberal trade agreements , transnational corporations, twenty-four-hour news media, and election cycles).1 The challenge of adaptation is thus a complex social, political, cultural , and ecological challenge. It is also the crux of the social and environmental problems associated with global warming. It is because people, populations of nonhuman species, and ecological and social systems cannot adapt quickly enough that there will be increased rates of species extinctions, instability of ecological systems (or ecosystem reconfiguration ), agricultural and natural resource insecurities, exposure to severe weather events, incidence of disease, and ecological refugees (and climate injustice) (IPCC 2007). In this chapter I argue that, when considered through the lens of the challenge of adaptation, the fact that our ecological future is accelerating away from our ecological past with increasing rapidity, and that it is increasingly unclear where it is going, has several implications for virtues associated with ecological restoration and assisted recovery: Global Warming and Virtues of Ecological Restoration 65 1. Global warming raises the salience of virtues related to openness and accommodation that are commonly associated with restoration and assisted recovery. 2. Global warming weakens the justification for historical fidelity as a virtue associated with assisted recovery. 3...