Hard Choices: Climate Change in Canada

12 What Can Individuals Do?

A mong the world’s developed countries, Canada has the highest levels of consumption per capita, and it will have difficulty meeting its Kyoto Protocol target. As Weaver points out in chapter 2, lifestyle changes are needed if Canada and the world are to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and thus allow the Earth system to equilibrate with higher levels of greenhouse gases and warmer overall temperatures. Lifestyle changes are also required from Canadians if global or intergenerational equity (justice) is to be achieved. As Lonergan argues in chapter 3, Canada needs to reduce its CO2 output and increase its carbon sinks to meet its Kyoto target, but also to do justice to future generations and to people in developing countries. Equity requires that Canadians reduce their per capita emissions so as to allow room for developing countries to expand theirs until there is what Lonergan calls “global convergence.” Although some of this reduction in CO2 emissions can be obtained by “technological mitigation” (as McLean shows in chap. 6), lifestyle change will still be required from Canadians if intergenerational and global equity is to be reached.This chapter explores various ways in which Canadians can change their current heavy consumption lifestyle patterns. We will first look at an ethical framework for knowing “what ought to be done” and then explore resources in religious traditions for doing what is right and good. An Ethical Framework for Knowing What Ought to Be Done Most Canadians think of themselves as following an ethical approach to life. What response from us to the challenge of climate change would be ethi233 12 5 What Can Individuals Do? Harold Coward cally right? One ethical argument for lifestyle change can be made by examining the consequences of our current consumption patterns for people living in our own family, city, or country; for people in other countries (e.g., especially in developing countries); for future generations (e.g., our children and grandchildren); and for the environment valued for itself (e.g., earth, air, water, plants, and animals having value along with humans). For Canadians as individuals, corporations, or governments, the decisions we make as we attempt to deal with the challenge of global climate change (chap. 2), its human implications (chap. 3), and the economic factors involved (chap. 7) can be either ethically right or ethically wrong (Hurka, 1993, p. 23). Hurka points out that ethics need to be distinguished from opinion. Surveys to determine what people think is right or wrong about climate change, for example, describe opinions rather than ethics. Too often governments make decisions based upon polls of people’s opinions rather than a careful study of the ethical issues involved. Ethics is about values apart from people’s opinions. Ethics assumes that some beliefs about right and wrong may be incorrect, and the study of ethics attempts to discover which ones are correct. In short, there is right and wrong above what people think is right and wrong—beyond people’s opinion. Ethical decisions require that we combine the scientific, social, and economic facts relating to the threat of global climate change with general ethical principles that indicate right and wrong in all areas and thus lead to specific policy recommendations. We can, of course, argue over which ethical principles should be employed in such an analysis, and the employment of different principles could lead to different ethical conclusions and different policy recommendations. This difficulty can be dealt with by selecting ethical principles which are not radical or speculative but are widely accepted. In this way, the policy proposals developed by an ethical analysis can be convincing to most people. Using “an analysis of consequences of actions” as an approach allows us to move from areas of least controversy and broad agreement (e.g., impact on one’s own family and country) to areas where the policy conclusions are more radical and the agreement less general (e.g., impact on the environment). General policy decisions in response to the challenge of climate change can favour either adaptation, or avoidance.With adaptation, we keep burning fossil fuels, let global temperatures rise, and make whatever changes this requires: move people from environmentally damaged areas, build sea walls, and so on. With avoidance or mitigation, we make every effort to stop warming from occurring, by reducing our use of fossil fuels, by using mitigating technology (chap. 6), and by making lifestyle changes. As we shall see, ethical 234 Hard Choices [3.139.97...