Worldchanging

WORLDCHANGING

2012

A new politics of the common good isn't only about finding more scrupulous politicians. It also requires a more demanding idea of what it means to be a citizen, and it requires a more robust public discourse - one that engages more directly with moral and even spiritual questions.

Michael Sandel 2009

Sandel’s ‘new politics of the common good’ savours more than a little of the old Catholic commitment to the common weal. My A level history teacher was a Catholic brother and he constantly emphasised that the origin of the word commonwealth is ‘common weal’, meaning ‘common good’. I think he was attempting to bring the socialist revolutionaries in the class back within the Catholic fold. Theory and practice do indeed go together as Marx taught. But isn’t there an inscription in St Peter’s, Rome, which refers to ‘the praxis of the apostles’?

Sandel’s conception of an active citizenship certainly harks back to the world of ancient Greece. In the public realm of ancient Greece, questions that citizens asked of politics were questions that they asked of themselves. In this respect, politics is the organised, animated collective will of the individuals constituting themselves as a citizen body. The time has come for individuals to step forward as citizens. If we cannot rely on government and experts, we need to compose a new public realm out of our own efforts as citizens. And it will be a commonwealth in a real sense, a public realm concerned with the common good, not the vested interests of this or that section of the body politic. And it will be based on a communality forged within the associational space of civil society.

The climate scientists are doing as much as they can do. We have reached the limits of science. Deniers point to the fact that science works at the level of uncertainty, not certainty. This is correct. Science is not about proclaiming eternal truths but an ongoing process of forming hypotheses and theories, observing, experimenting, testing, reporting back from the frontiers of knowledge. This is now being used to disarm and disempower scientific knowledge at the level of politics. In January 2007, a group of leading scientists, including astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, announced that the hands of the 'Doomsday Clock' - a creation of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists - would be moved forward. It was now 'five minutes to midnight,' the scientists claimed. A statement read by the board of directors of the Bulletin read that 'global warming poses a dire threat to human civilization that is second only to nuclear weapons.' Hawking himself has declared that global warming is the greatest threat to civilisation we face.

It’s impossible to silence a voice like Hawking’s. So, instead, we get an attempt to downgrade the significance of Hawking’s public utterances. Dan Gardner in Risk (2009) attempts to deflate the power of the statement. ‘Thanks to the prestige of the scientists involved, this statement garnered headlines around the world. But it was politics, not science.’ (Gardner 2009 ch 7).

This is disingenuous. As though science lacks practical significance and political implications, as though the pronouncements of a scientist who has earned a sound reputation lacks authority. Gardner’s strict, narrow, legalistic demarcation amounts to the political disarmament of science and the silencing of the political voice of scientists. If Hawking’s cannot speak of the political implications of science, then who can?

Gardner’s approach is a deliberate attempt to denude science of political and moral significance. It is a crude attempt to exploit the philosophical convention that one cannot derive an ‘ought-to-be’ from an ‘is’. If that convention is true, it begs the question from what is an ‘ought-to-be’ derived. If we cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, then we have no option but to make it up. But how, then, are we to be able to decide between the myriad views offered? On this reasoning, the view of Stephen Hawking will be on exactly the same level as, say, Dan Gardner. We would be doomed to a world of irreducible subjective opinion, with no way of deciding right and wrong, good and bad. Power will decide. Right will depend on might.

What is the value or point of science if any attempt to act on it is dismissed as politics, of no greater significance than the other myriad opinions proffered in that bear-pit of political opinion and contestation?

Gardner’s attempt to disable the political and moral voice of science and the scientists can be rejected. Einstein also spoke on political and moral issues. That doesn’t make Einstein’s political and moral views science and it doesn’t make them correct. Strictly speaking, in the very narrowest of terms, Gardner is correct. But this reasoning is thin and brittle in that it fails to appreciate how knowledge and experience is connected up on a seamless web. Surely, a scientist is well-placed to speak on the moral and political implications of science. And, as citizens, we are entitled to hear and evaluate what a scientist says politically and morally. Politics governs the human world. Human beings are political-social animals who settle their affairs through politics. And the question is: Should politics be scientifically informed or not? If science doesn’t inform politics, then what should? Religion? Race? Gender? Class interest? What is the role of reason in politics? Does it even have a role?

My point is that when a scientist like Stephen Hawking makes a scientific statement which possesses political implications, then we should take note. Whilst we should not rely on scientific authority alone, our cognitive resources are limited. We act at all times with imperfect knowledge. It is impossible for us to know everything and give reasons for everything we do. We have limited time and our brains can hold and process only so much information. In other words, human beings as social beings must act on authority, rely on habit and custom, and learn to identify and listen to those whom they trust, those who have earned that trust. Stephen Hawking has earned that trust. His view commands weight and authority because of his achievements as a scientist. Gardner writes of ‘the prestige of the scientists involved’. That prestige has been earned the hard way, in proper science, where fact and evidence count. That is why we trust the view of a Stephen Hawking over that of, say, a TV pundit or newspaper columnist or some semi-clever author who peddles pseudo-philosophy in order to deny and suppress the voice of reason.

So when Stephen Hawking claims that global warming is the biggest threat to civilisation, many of us take note of the words of a great astrophysicist, and are inclined to believe him. He has authority, his words command respect. The man has earned his spurs in proper science. When the likes of Peter Hitchens, Anne Widdecombe, Neil Hamilton, Richard Littlejohn, and Christopher Booker describe global warming as a con, we pay them less respect, simply because they lack anything like the scientific credibility of Hawking. What are their credentials? It’s a simple question. Few of us are experts in science. We need to make a judgment based on authority and trust. To simply state that when Hawking makes a statement on global warming he speaks as a politician and not as a scientist is plainly inadequate. That puts Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest scientists in history, on the same level as Johnny Ball, with his two O levels, in geography and mathematics, and a career delivering basic introductions to science to children. Of course, as individual members of an amorphous electorate, all votes are of equal merit and measure. I would agree that the world of practical reason, ethics and politics, is inclusive and embraces us all as citizens, moral beings. But in forming a judgement on certain issues, some voices count for more than others. This attempt to maintain a sharp distinction between science and politics is a clear attempt to silence the scientific voice and swallow it up in the political swamp.

And apart from anything else, it is not even clear that pointing to the dangers of global warming is politics rather than science. It depends how it is done. To point to greenhouse gas emissions fuelling climate change and causing droughts, floods, heatwaves, crop failures, adverse weather, the rise of insect borne diseases etc is to engage in science. Maybe Gardner thinks that to say that these things are bad and undesirable is an unwarranted ethical statement illicitly added to dry scientific fact. Clearly, this argument, which crops up regularly in the arguments of the climate change deniers, is an attempt to denigrate the hard earned authority of the scientists. When Stephen Hawking states that global warming is the greatest threat facing civilisation, it is wise to listen, take note and act. If Hawking moved from that statement to making a case for specific environmental policies, regulations and taxes, then that would certainly be politics and we would have every right to argue with him at the level of politics. But that is not what Hawking has done in pointing to global warming as the greatest threat facing civilisation. Would Dan Gardner like to suggest what Hawking’s political motives are and show how Hawking’s claims on global warming depart from the latest and the best climate science? Pointing to the potential impacts of climate change is science in that the arguments are firmly based in research, fact and evidence.

But, of course, we should not rely on scientific authority. Scientific knowledge does not necessarily dispense moral truth and political correctness, perish the thought. The way in which we act on knowledge is, ultimately, political and moral. The responsibility belongs to us as citizens to resolve the question of how we choose to live our lives. That’s all part of Plato’s call for the examined life and reveals the aspect of philosophy as ethos, a way of life.

So I propose a dialogic and not a didactic model. I am arguing for an ongoing dialogue between experts and people. The way of wisdom and prudential judgement is open to all. Change is more than a matter of technics and knowledge is more than scientific reason. It is our responsibility as citizens to act in light of expertise, not subordinate our judgement and transfer responsibility to expertise. One should not place excessive demands on the science alone, but leave something over for politics and ethics, and the major part for the agents themselves. I affirm the radical indeterminacy of the future, in that the future is in our own hands.

At the last Earth Summit in Rio, actress Lucy Lawless, Xena the warrior princess, came away saying that ‘governments are rubbish, we’re on our own.’ She overstates. There is a role for government, insofar as we, the citizens, join together as an active sovereign body and constitute governmental power and purpose. It’s possible. But if the choice is between governments run by timorous politicians and subject to corporate capture and Xena the Warrior Princess, I’m with Xena every time.

Lucy Lawless, actress and now Greenpeace activist

Building a green infrastructure is more than technics. It doesn’t just involve energy regimes and architecture. It is a question of culture and psychology. Climate change is a moral and political as much as a technical problem. It is based on an eco-praxis which involves individuals in changing their circumstances and changing themselves in the process of bringing about the ecological society. This is to develop a concept of eco-citizenship. People who build something together will use it, value it, and look after it together. It is about reclaiming and recreating the commons. Worldchanging is a teamsport, and there’s a place on the team for everyone. In changing the world, we change ourselves. In making the world a better place, we become better people.

The question concerns the way we live our lives. As we build, so shall we live. Sustainable living refers to civilisation building. I am talking about building a civilisation of sustainable living, not just equipping a failing civilisation with clean energy. The green fixes currently being proposed by our eco-engineers – geoengineering, GM food, biotechnology, nuclear – are just beside the point in that they do nothing to change the direction we are on.

In the article Economic growth and climate change are like a runaway train, ecologist Alastair Mclntosh dismisses the current interest in techno-fixing. ‘Green fixes seek to reconcile economy with ecology. But the harsh truth is that many don't add up when ripped from their contexts of honest-to-God simplicity and forced to serve industrial frenzy.’ That subordination to money-making, of course, explains the popularity of the technological fix. My view is that if you are driving over the edge of the cliff, the priority is to question the road you are on and change direction. The many different ways of driving are a secondary consideration. The most important thing is to steer away from the edge. And that’s a question of a way of life, not merely of technics. The ‘how’ and the ‘why’ questions go together.

All over the world, people are engaged in a myriad of activities. This points to the emergence of a grassroots eco-praxis furnishing the basis of sustainable living in the future. Such activity is more than a matter of technology, but refers more profoundly to a way of life.

There is a danger of over-reliance on technology. Technology, alone and as such, is neither problem nor the solution. Technology is merely an extension of what we are, it magnifies our character. If we are selfish, stupid and destructive, technology will be a faithful mirror. The more powerful the technology, the more beneficial or destructive its effects, depending upon the social relations within which it are set. To the extent that we venerate our machine gods, we are in danger of being orphaned by our technology. Drawn further out of our ecological and biological matrix, we become more and more dependent on an increasingly pervasive but ethically indifferent technology. Left to its own dynamics, technological innovation destroys places and people. We need to remember that the most important of the new and emerging productive forces are the people themselves.

My main point is that popular consent is central to any notion of sustainability. Top-down initiatives via governments and experts risk opening a democratic deficit that ensures that any solution lacks organic roots. Top-down solutions via governments and experts could cause a lot of public expense, fail to resolve the problems and open up a democratic deficit. One of the biggest problems of the modern world is that too much change happens above the heads of the people. To repeat, there is no sustainability without popular consent.

Clearly, I refer here to a concept of government as based upon the active consent of the governed. Without this notion of active sovereignty, experts and politicians will be inclined to go it alone, over the heads of the people.

My point breaks through any technological, economic and ecological determinism so as to envisage a possible future as something more than the present enlarged. The green fixes proposed by the eco-engineers can, at best, only be part of the solution, the mere mechanics of a much broader undertaking. Some are proposing nuclear energy as forming an integral component of the low carbon solution. Nuclear has many pitfalls. If bodies like the IPCC, IEA etc are right, then we have a window of opportunity of just five years to avoid transgressing the threshold which makes a 2C temperature increase unavoidable. Nuclear energy cannot be delivered in time. And even if it could, energy infrastructures are a secondary consideration. Most of all, we need a change in the way of life.

There are a range of technologies which can generate electricity with low carbon emissions, along with hydroelectric, solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, wave, tidal, ground source and CCS. These could all be a part of the transition to the low carbon economy. However, I am agnostic with respect to the energy mix. My main point is that all proposed energy infrastructures and engineering solutions will fall short unless they are accompanied by a change in human behaviour. Now that may well be a dream, but scientist Stephen Emmott is currently arguing that it is the only way of avoiding catastrophic global warming.

I shall make no predictions here, but instead affirm the radical indeterminacy of the future and counsel that we evaluate all proposed solutions with prudence, aiming to build consensus around a model of sustainable living which is capable of securing human well-being within planetary boundaries.

The greatest utopianism of all is to invest all one’s energies into creating the blueprint of the economy of the future society to the neglect not only of the material potentiality of its operation but also of the political agency capable of giving practical effect to the blueprint.

The gap in our lives is not so much that between science and morality, as that between the soaring technological imagination and the inert institutional imagination.

And behind that inert institutional imagination lies the inert imagination of the people, clinging hard to outmoded and failing institutions and practices.

I would therefore appeal to expertise but above all to people as active, informed citizens capable of constituting their own public life. It’s called culture and we’re going to need a lot more of it in the difficult times to come.

Ultimately, the need for new modes of thought, action and organisation is something that is expressed and finally addressed from below, from amongst the people themselves who, in demanding more of politics, start to ask more of themselves as citizens.