On mercenary decisions: when economics trumps ethics

When considering a marriage, economics ought not figure prominently in the decision. You first decide “do I want to be with this person?” rather than “will being with this person improve my financial situation?”. Economic viability is a secondary matter, involving questions of how to pursue your goals given your fundamental relational commitments. With a marriage, it may affect how large your wedding is, or where you may live, or the choice of engagement ring. But to make it the primary question in determining your fundamental allegiances is to depressingly mercenary, and makes people wonder whether you've really understood what marriage is about. Even when you look at the other end of marriage, which is often much messier and more complex, to place economics first is to be guilty of mercenary relationships: if you leave because of "for poorer", then you're breaking your vow; if you stay only because of "for richer", then you're just as guilty of breaking your vow to love and cherish despite financial situation, even if the breach is not as obvious.

And though it is considerably more complex, there are parallels to the question of Scottish independence. Both sides (but especially the “no” camp) are acting as though the primary matter is economic: will an independent Scotland be able to afford its current way of life? But this is to confuse means and ends. The real questions in this debate relate to matters of fundamental political identity. Economics only comes into it after these matters have been solved, in order to guide the means by which goals defined by fundamental commitments are pursued. The 1707 Parliamentary Union was brought about in a situation of economic duress, with the Scottish economy on its knees following the disastrous failure of the costly Darien Scheme. It would be a shame if economics dominated or decided the debate about a potential divorce.

In the above, I haven’t said whether I would vote yes or no were I still in Scotland, though my answer to that question is no secret to those who have discussed the matter with me recently.

Impossible hope

A sermon preached at today's dawn Easter service at Reservoir Park, Paddington.

But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said."

- Matthew 28.5-6a (NRSV)

Impossible. The execution was thorough. The tomb was sealed. The dead are dead. Cellular degeneration begins when the flow of oxygen ceases. The Galilean preacher was merely the latest victim of imperial oppression. His startling claims vanished as he gave up the ghost.

Cruelly for the disciples, the world did not end on Friday, but Saturday’s sun rose on a world unchanged, indifferent to the execution of another pitiful Jew. Abandoned to the catastrophe of a failed messianic promise, the disciples are scattered sheep. Self-preservation instincts kick in as they flee and hide, bitterly awakening from their three year dream. Pilate’s wife tries to banish her nightmares with a stuff drink. Pilate breathes a sigh of relief, feeling that he somehow dodged a javelin. Joseph of Arimathéa keeps his head down after his rash act of generosity to a condemned man. The centurion can’t shake a lingering unease. Simon of Cyrene digs a few splinters from his shoulder.

The sun shuffles its westerly way and another day departs. Sabbath rest. Sabbath grief. Sabbath shock and disillusionment. Sunday dawns and a new week begins, as it always has. The globe turns and life goes on.

"Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said."

Impossible. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The human frame returns to the humus from which it came. The worm turns. The circle of life. Our atoms are recycled. The extinction of the individual into the cosmic ocean of being. Entropy is all.

"He is not here." Impossible. The world will not stand for resurrection. The finality of death is the one certainty on which we may rely. The grave’s silence reassures us that our failures, faults and fumblings will be washed away by memory’s receding tide, that our self-destructive habits, our myopic obsessions, our petty bickering and fruitless labour are ultimately ephemeral, excusable, indeed already on their way into the oblivion of time.

"He has been raised." Impossible. The wounds humanity bears, the wounds humanity inflicts, can be staunched, but not ultimately healed. All the forests bulldozed, all the rivers poisoned, the wetlands drained, the coral reefs bleached, the oceans plundered, the glaciers melted, the climate heated, all the species lost, lost, lost. These wounds, these open wounds, may one day close – whether or not human hands remain to bind them. But the scars will persist.

"Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said."

Impossible, surely.

But imagine: what if it were true? Yes, it would be an amazing biological miracle. Yes, it would mean that Pilate’s guilty verdict has been overturned by God. It would mean that the disciples who abandoned Jesus in his hour of need could have a second chance, a fresh start. It would mean that Jesus’ amazing claims to represent God in word and deed have been vindicated. It would mean that God has indeed publicly appointed Jesus as Messiah. It would mean that death’s ubiquitous triumph has been breached; its power to silence, to shorten, to sully has been compromised and the trumping threat of all tyrants has been weakened. Yes, it would mean that acts of love, of hope, of tenderness and compassion, are not merely heroic defiant gestures in the face of an uncaring universe, but instead are lisping attempts at speaking the native language of the cosmos.

"He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said."

Impossible. But if this were true, it would mean something even more exciting. If Jesus is indeed God’s Messiah, the representative not just of God to humanity, but the one in whom the future of all humanity and all of creation is revealed, and if God raised Jesus from the dead, then that is a picture, a promise, a precedent of what God intends to do with the entire creation (1 Corinthians 15.21ff). If Jesus has been raised, God promises to raise our bodies too. If Jesus has been raised, God promises to liberate the entire groaning creation from its bondage to decay, in the words of the apostle Paul (Romans 8.18ff).

But how? The details are not spelled out; the tomb is empty, the angelic message is brief, the recorded meetings with the risen Christ tantalisingly under-narrated. But the implication seems clear. If Jesus has been raised, then no longer is it possible to hope for redemption from the world, for escape, for flight from the impossible conditions of mortal life into an otherworldly bliss. If Jesus has been raised, Christian hope can no longer speak of redemption from the world, only the redemption of the world.

God did not give up on Jesus. He didn't throw his body in the rubbish and start again. And God hasn’t given up on us or on his world, despite all our problems. We don’t need to be afraid. He is not the kind of builder who walks into a house, notices the shaky foundations, the peeling paint, the broken windows, leaking pipes and says, “tear it down, start again!” God is not a demolishing developer. He is into transformative renovation, renovation of our bodies, renovation of his good, very good creation. To renovate something is to make it new. Amongst the last words spoken by God in the scriptures is the wonderful promise: “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21.5). If God raised Jesus from the dead, then God has started to keep this promise.

If God raised Jesus bodily from the dead, leaving an empty tomb and a living man who could be touched and embraced, then matter matters to God. Our bodies matter; our ecosystems matter; our art, food, sex, music, laughter all matter. God has said ‘yes’ to our embodied existence, yes to our planetary home, yes to our humanity, yes to every act of love, hope, tenderness and compassion. Yes to forests, fields, frogs and fungi. Yes to our neighbour and yes to each of us.

If we accept the angel’s word, the resurrection of Jesus does not answer all our questions, it only generates more: what does it look like to embrace life in light of following one who has been through death? How can we face our own death when Jesus has walked out the other side – not just the resuscitation of a corpse but the transformation of a life into something genuinely new? How can this message touch a society bent on self-destruction and seemingly willing to take most of life on earth down with us? The resurrection does not answer all our questions, but it says, in the deepest way possible, that such questions are worth asking. It invites us onto a dangerous path, where we are invited to follow Jesus in taking up our cross, putting aside our hopes of riches, of security, of fame, of comfort – not because these desires are too big, but because they are too small. We are instead invited to hope for nothing less than the renewal of all things. To hope: and thus to find ourselves unable to put up with an as yet un-renewed world. This hope doesn’t pacify us, distracting our gaze to some otherworld and so rendering us passive. No, we hope for the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of all things, so how can we sit idly by while our neighbours suffer? We hope for all things to receive the fullness of life that we glimpse in the risen Jesus, so how can we treat non-human life as expendable resources, as raw materials for our short-term projects? How can we remain content with the status quo when the regularity of the one immutable law – the law of death – has been shattered? The resurrection invites us into a grand experiment in resistance: resistance against the tyrants who wield the fear of death; resistance against the logic that says the only things of value are things with a price tag; resistance against the advertising lie that happiness lies in our next purchase; resistance against the comforting apathy of seeing my neighbour’s plight as someone else’s problem. The resurrection of Jesus, if we begin to suspect it might be true, invites us into the humble service of a suffering God and a groaning world.

"Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said."

What if it were true? No, no: impossible. Surely an impossible dream. Better to roll over and go back to sleep. Better to ignore old wives tales. Better to enjoy some soothing religious rituals on a Sunday from a comfortable intellectual distance. It’s safer that way.

Amen.

In place of a post on nuclear power

Since even before the disaster at Fukushima, I was planning a lengthy post (or series) considering the place of nuclear power amidst our climate and ecological crises. Towards this post, I now have thousands of words and scores of links (as I do on a number of other topics that are too large for me to find the time to address them with anything like the attention they deserve).

As it seems unlikely that I am going to publish these thoughts anytime in the immediate future (given other deadlines), it seemed like a waste if I did not at least point any thoughtful readers towards this discussion between George Monbiot and Theo Simon. Consisting of a somewhat lengthy email interchange over the last few months now published by George on his website, it is is far and away the best exploration that I have found of the some of the key ethical and political issues behind the nuclear debate, which can get often mired in the technical and economic aspects of the question (as important as they each are).

So consider this discussion a primer for the day when I get around to putting forward my own thoughts in public. For those who may be interested to know where I stand, I will simply say that I am deeply sympathetic to both authors. Now go and read the thread.

Can we destroy creation? Hubris and self-destruction

We can't destroy creation. Alpha Centuri is going to be just fine, climate change or not. We can't even destroy the planet. It's survived meteors, tectonic upheavals and ice ages. It's a pretty durable lump of rock.

Nonetheless, I frequently see people claiming that it is arrogant to think that tiny little humans are having such a large impact of the functioning of planetary-scale systems as is implied by the mainstream science of climate change, ocean acidification, soil degradation, biodiversity loss and so on. Sometimes this objection has a dose of piety injected: God is in charge of the world; we can't damage it (at least, not more than superficially or locally).

But isn't it arrogant (and historically ignorant) to think that our capacity for destruction does not extend to wiping out entire ecosystems? We have done so on colossal scales in recorded history. Vast forests have disappeared in the face of the axe and bulldozer; seemingly endless prairies have all but disappeared under the plough. Haven't we grown to seven billion and rising, spreading into every continent and visibly altering huge tracts of the earth's surface? Why would we be surprised at anthropogenic climate change or ocean acidification or biodiversity decline when we consider our collective effects in a wide range of areas? Aren't our nuclear arsenals capable of obliterating the vast majority of life on earth at a moment's notice? Haven't we fundamentally altered the appearance, behaviour and distribution of species through millennia of domestication and exploration? Haven't we sent thousands of recorded species (and likely tens or hundreds of thousands of unrecorded species) extinct? Haven't we damned and/or diverted the majority of the world's great rivers, and even (almost) dried up what was previously the fourth largest lake in the world? Haven't we flung craft into orbit that can monitor many of these changes in astonishing detail?

If human civilisations (even ones who considered themselves Christian) have risen and fallen in the past, why would we assume that ours will be immortal? And if human actions have contributed to historical collapses, why would we rule out such influence today?

If we have done all this, then if we have also dug up and burned over 300 billion tonnes of fossil hydrocarbons, might not here, as in so many other places, our capacity for altering our surroundings be manifest? If we have changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans in measurable and statistically significant ways, might not these changes have far-reaching consequences and implications for life (human and otherwise) throughout the atmosphere and oceans? If we can measure the changes in radiation that occur as a result of these alterations, if we can measure shifts in the timing of flowerings, growing seasons, hibernations and migrations, observe massive and alarmingly rapid alterations to the frozen places of the planet, notice systematic and unprecedented shifts in humidity, precipitation, temperatures over land and sea (and in the waters) and rising sea levels - if we can observe these changes occurring and have an excellent theory that accounts for all the data and which has withstood every criticism levelled against it, seen off all competing explanations and gained the acceptance of every single relevant scientific body of national or international standing in the world, then what is to be gained by withholding judgement? And if we have good reason to be deeply concerned about the already manifest and likely future consequences of the observed, modelled and projected trends, if these consequences threaten the habitability of the planet and its ability to provide sufficient food for our societies and habitat for all our fellow creatures, if our neighbours are deeply vulnerable to these changes, if the most vulnerable are also those who have done least to contribute to the problem (the poor, future generations and other species), then might not Christian discipleship embrace humble acceptance of our predicament and an earnest search for responses that express repentance, care and prudence?

Furthermore, if many of the social and personal changes required are not simply consonant with, but already actively required by, Christian discipleship due to the rejection of idolatry, greed and consumerism, if the infrastructural changes are both affordable and viable, if those most vocally opposed to these changes have a history of engaging in less than honest advocacy and have a business practice that currently kills millions of people annually, then might we not have a strong case for prophetic witness in defence of the goodness of the created order, in pursuit of justice for the suffering, in the hope of wise care for our children's future?

The Pope and the Cardinal: Hamilton on climate ethics and the Catholic Church

"Simple principles and a modicum of self-sacrifice can slice through the most difficult ethical tangles. The simple principles are known; the only thing missing is a little selflessness or even enlightened self-interest. So the big question to ask is why it has been in such short supply?

"I think there have been a number of factors at work. Let me here comment on two of the most telling, leaving aside the exercise of brute political power by fossil fuel corporations.

"First, there is the intensely materialistic nature of affluent societies like ours. In societies where consumerism reigns, people's identities become bound up in how much and what they consume. In these circumstances it becomes easy for opponents of measures to cut carbon emissions to frighten people into thinking they may have to adjust their lifestyles, or make significant sacrifices, for then it seems like a threat to their sense of self. So the psychological pressures of consumerism come into conflict with our desire to be good citizens. Each time an Australian political leader responds to the public demand to "do something" about climate change, he or she attracts resentment and is punished. Most Australians want symbolic actions that make them feel good about themselves but which have no discernible effect on their way of life.

"The second source of moral corruption is the influence of those who repudiate the science of climate change. They portray themselves as "sceptics," but they are more accurately described as deniers. A sceptic is one who carefully filters received knowledge to see which propositions stand up to independent scrutiny. But one thing we immediately notice about the contributions of climate 'sceptics' is the absence of a quizzical, thoughtful approach. Among those who debate the science of climate change they are the ones who profess to be most certain, insisting vehemently on the falsity of the claims of climate scientists and convinced of the correctness of their own opinions."

- Clive Hamilton, The church and the ethics of climate change.
H/T Peter Lockhart.

A better title for this piece might have been "The Roman Catholic church and the ethics of climate change" since, after a lengthy introduction justifying the idea that climate is a moral issue, much of the article is a comparison of the respective positions and mindsets of Sydney's Cardinal Pell and Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Pell is well known in Australia for his vociferous denial of climate science, part of a broader rejection of everything associated with environmentalism as a false religion. In stark contrast, Pope Benedict has continued the insistence of his predecessor John Paul II that how we treat God's creation and care for those most vulnerable to ecological degradation are non-negotiable elements of Christian discipleship today.

Clive Hamilton's contributions to climate ethics are always worth reading, and the other book he quotes in this article (A Perfect Moral Storm by Stephen Gardiner) is also a quality piece of work, filled with a sensitivity to our capacity to fool ourselves. All too quickly, we subvert our moral responsibilities in ways that serve our self-interest, a process that Gardiner terms "moral corruption". This is especially true in all kinds of interesting ways with regard to climate change. Such self-serving delusions come as no great surprise to anyone familiar with the holy scriptures. Gardiner's attentiveness to this tendency is the kind of sensitivity that Christian belief and practice ought to inculcate. I'm not sure of Gardiner's religious convictions or background, but his insights here are excellent.

Hamilton takes Gardiner's observations but wants to deny that they form any kind of convenient excuse. While the details of responding well to climate change are incredibly complex, the basic outline of who is responsible to take the lead in addressing it has already been clearly drawn by international negotiations. Therefore, our collective paralysis cannot be blamed purely on the complexity of the ethical disputes. And here, Gardiner's insights into moral corruption are highly appropriate.

What both Hamilton and Gardiner lack is a compelling account of how we are to deal with our moral corruption (though, to be sure, they both have insights to offer on this as well), let alone how to live amongst a morally corrupt people.

Two cheers for coercion, and other stories

Coercion: Do we ever think coercion might be a good thing? Brad contemplates what a cheating athlete can teach us about the place of law in public life.

Magic economics: The economy is a Pied Piper - a delightful and insightful image from Gillian.

Debate vs argument: What's the difference? And what difference does it make to recognise the distinction?

Peak coal: John celebrates the 140th anniversary of the death of William Stanley Jevons, an English writer who foresaw the end of British coal-expansion from way back in 1865 (and who also gave his name to the Jevons paradox). Jevons was aware that relying on finite resources brought a false complacency to social questions by enabling the deferral of questions of distributive justice. If we expect the economy to keep growing, then we can skirt of over gross inequality, trusting that a rising tide will lift all boats. If we accept that the global economy faces certain physical limits within timeframes of human interest, then the deferral of questions of distributive justice can no longer be maintained. In short, faced with limits to growth, there is a certain sense in which it becomes incumbent upon us to make wealth history (which is also the name of this excellent blog, in which Jeremy wrestles with the economic and social implications of this insight).

Mortality: Ben Myers is dying.

Chalk wars: Chalk it up to the suppression of dissent; increasingly, people are being arrested for chalking pavements, at least in the Land of the Free™. The Edinburgh Festival would go out of business if this attitude were introduced over here. And Arthur Stace (a.k.a. Mr Eternity) would have gone to gaol.
H/T Gordon for the final observation.

Twenty questions: The questions that the US press ought to asking of those who oppose climate action. These questions, from climate ethicist Donald Brown, would make for some interesting discussion starters for groups wanting to wrestle with some of the ethical implications of climate change.

Growth myths: Herman Daly walks us through eight fallacies about economic growth. A very useful and insightful summary of some of Daly's contributions to these discussions.

Last words: The final unpublished letter from eco-author Ernest Callenbach, discovered after his death. His top tips? Hope, offer mutual support, gain practical skills, organise, learn to live with contradictions.

Climate intro: The basics of climate science. It's worth posting pieces like this from time to time, since I am constantly reminding just how common it is for otherwise intelligent people to have some basic misunderstandings (myself included!).

Compliance: You never know you're in prison until you try the door. Glenn Greenwald reflects on why oppression and tyranny are often invisible when close to home.

Dodging tax: a £13 trillion issue

If avoidance is legal, how can it be wrong?
There is an important legal distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance. The former means practices that reduce the tax one contributes and which are actually illegal; the latter means practices that reduce the tax one contributes, which are technically legal, but morally dubious, even repulsive. There is an important moral distinction between tax avoidance and proper use of provisions within tax law that attempt to make tax fairer. It is important to keep these distinctions clear.

Some question whether this latter distinction is meaningful. Mitt Romney, for instance, insists that he has paid every cent that he is legally obliged to pay, and not a cent more. This is a common refrain from very rich individuals and massive corporations. Their claims amounts to: I have not broken the law of the land. That may well be a true claim, but it is not the point of the accusation that one has engaged in morally repugnant, even if technically legal, tax avoidance.

Such a legally watertight claim has a certain intuitive ring to it. Why would I not claim deductions for which the law has made provision? Presumably, such provisions were made in order to avoid a potential injustice from which I might otherwise suffer and so my use of them could even be argued to be a moral good, allowing me to dispose of my income to bless others in ways the government could not dream of and for which the government has already planned ahead of time. And put this way, I agree, such moves can indeed be a blessing.

But that there exists legitimate use does not ensure that no abuse is possible. Alcohol has a legitimate use as a good blessing of God, yet there is such a thing as getting drunk. And while the state may legitimately take interest in placing limits of certain forms of drunkenness (such as driving a vehicle while having a blood alcohol limit above a given determinate figure), it will not necessarily legislate against getting drunk and then making a fool of oneself or being rude and obnoxious to one's family while intoxicated. So we can affirm legitimate use while noting illegal extremes and yet still desire to speak of legal - yet morally dubious, even repulsive - drunkenness.

And as with drunkenness, it is not always easy to pick the precise point where a cheery dram with companions becomes drunken offensiveness, and the distinction may not even always be purely a matter of quantity. But when inebriated revellers stagger down the street at three in the morning yelling abuse at each other and waking everyone within earshot (to pick a hypothetical example), then it doesn't take a finely tuned moral compass to determine something is awry.

Likewise, when an individual or corporation is hiding sums larger than most people will make in a lifetime from the taxman's view by pretending to have some business connexion to a microstate whose primary export is being a known tax haven, then speaking of such practices in a very different moral tone to the teacher who claims a deduction for the purchase classroom materials is no great leap of moral imagination.

And when it is revealed that it is likely that at least £13,000,000,000,000 is hidden in such havens (or more than the combined GDP of Japan and the USA), then moral outrage from the teacher who faces worsening conditions due to budget constraints is neither illogical nor untoward.

Someone who said because the law is not interested in the difference between a relaxed pint over dinner and passing out in a pool of one's own vomitus therefore there is no relevant moral distinction to be drawn would be gently reminded that the point of political authority is not to legislate every morally relevant occasion. Neither should we have any qualms about being willing to distinguish between legitimate tax deductions and the egregious abuse of legal loopholes to avoid sharing the burden and privilege of serving the common good through contributing one's fair share.

Play, property and friendship

I generally try to avoid blogging about our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter A, since (a) all parents find their own progeny to be far more interesting than most people find someone else's, (b) I don't really want to populate the internet with embarrassing stories from her childhood and (c) my wife already does a fair bit of it over here. But today I am making an exception to recount an incident that occurred recently, which is actually mainly about the (anonymous) mother of another child.

A and I were having a delightful time playing at a favourite local playground (the images show the view from this park, albeit last Autumn). We were approached by another little girl, who turned out to be a three year old called E. Little E was delightful: friendly, confident, inquisitive, communicative, sensitive, respectful - in short the very model of what I would hope A is like at that age. Being slightly older, she was able to initiate and demonstrate many of the fundamental skills required for building a friendship. A was quickly besotted and having a great time gladly sharing her toys with her new buddy. E would occasionally run back to her mother to get another biscuit while A was eating some grapes out of a container.

E then suggested that she and A might go for a walk to play in another part of the playground. There followed a brief negotiation where E offered to carry some of the items that A often likes to take with her at the moment (a small bag and a tiny basket). A declined and said she'd prefer to hold them herself. E then offered to carry A's container of grapes in order to facilitate the move. This was gladly accepted and off they went, A only pausing momentarily to turn and wave goodbye to me. I let them go, confident that they would still only be metres away and in sight of perhaps a dozen other parents, while thinking that it might be good for A to have a little space to observe the new relational skills without me looking her shoulder.

Ten seconds later, I heard angry shouting.

It took another couple of moments for me to realise that the shouting was directed at E. Her mother was very loudly berating her for purloining another child's property, telling her to "return the grapes at once" and to apologise for taking them.

I ran to clear up the confusion. E's mother was dragging her by the hand to find the owner of the stolen goods while, unnoticed, A trailed after them looking very confused. E was sobbing loudly and A was on the verge of doing likewise.

I tried to explain as briefly as I could, highlighting just how exemplary E's behaviour had been and that the grapes were freely shared, not pilfered. The mother, realising her mistake, turned to comfort E, though without apologising to her. I tried to help A understand what had happened. When E's mother went off chasing an even younger child moments later, E stayed and was able to articulate that her mother had misunderstood and that her anger was clearly unjustified.

Ten minutes later, the two girls were very happily playing again and E's mother expressed her embarrassment and regret to me. Whether she apologised to E I am unsure, though in her defence I do suspect that the incident was out of character, not least due to how well adjusted and emotionally intelligent E appeared throughout the whole episode, indicating the likelihood of some emotionally intelligent parenting. So the following point is not really about this mother in particular, but uses this morning as an attempt to illustrate something broader.

First, it is worth noting that at one level, both E's mother and I were motivated by concern for the other's child. She didn't want A to have had her goods stolen and I didn't want E falsely accused. At a deeper level, we were presumably also both even more concerned about our own child's moral formation. She didn't want to raise a thief. I didn't want my child to think twice about sharing her blessings with others.

So what then differed? Our vision of the world in which these moral concerns were expressed. Now obviously, I was privy to the earlier interaction in which A had freely accepted E's offer to carry the grapes while E's mother was not and so I had a better idea of how to "read" the sight of E carrying food that didn't belong to her. But I wonder whether there might not be more to the difference than this.

The experience lead me to reflect upon our culture's obsession with private property. Why would this mother (who as far as I can tell, was otherwise sane and sensitive) react so explosively to seeing her child holding an unfamiliar object? The outburst may perhaps have had its origins elsewhere: frustration at the younger sibling or at some other unrelated situation which found its unjust expression against E. But the fact that the trigger for this display was an apparent breach of ownership rights concerning a tiny handful of slightly soggy grapes could also suggest that the policing of the concept and practices of exclusive property is very important for E's mother, so important that she would trample all over a nascent friendship to enforce them. Property is an important ethical concept, but it is possible to get a little too excited about it and lose sight of the bigger picture.

A bet you're not allowed to make

What chance do we have? Are we going to make it? Are we doomed to a future of worsening outcomes and increasing ecological hostility? How do we face a dark horizon and keep going?

Bill McKibben was recently asked, in an interview with Yale Environment 360:* "what gives you any reason, any optimism at this point, that it is going to get dealt with?"

The "it" in question is the worsening climatic outlook as decade follows decade with very minimal action on a cumulative problem that gets more difficult, threatening and intractable as time passes. McKibben's answer:

"Well, I’m not all convinced it is going to get dealt with. You know, you wrote that we seem to be on kind of a suicide mission as a civilization. And that case is easier to make than the case that we’re going to figure out how to deal with it. So I don’t know. I’m very hopeful that in the last few years we’ve finally built a big global movement that gets bigger all the time that didn’t exist before. And I’m hopeful that we’re getting closer to the nub of the problem. [...]

If you were a betting person, I’m afraid you’d be wise to bet that we might not pull this out. But I just don’t think it’s a bet you’re allowed to make. I think the only thing that a morally awake person can do when the worst thing that ever happened is happening is try and figure out how to change the odds — with not any guarantee that it’s all going to come out OK. Because it may not. I mean it clearly isn’t going to come out 100 percent OK. We’ve already had big losses and they will get worse. Whether or not we can stop short of complete catastrophe, we’ll find out. And we won’t find out in a hundred years, we’ll find out rather more quickly than that. Our lifetimes will be more than long enough to see whether or not we actually grabbed hold of this problem or not.

I guess the only other thing is just that this, what’s the alternative? [laugh] Existential despair just seems like a kind of poor strategy in many ways."

This puts in a nutshell an attitude I've been trying to articulate for some time. A reasonable evaluation of our likely chances of avoiding very serious negative consequences would rate them as slim at best. Damage is already apparent; considerably worse is already built in due to the inertia of the climate system; catastrophically worse appears highly likely as the result of political, economic, infrastructural and cultural inertia. When "success" now means reducing a threat from catastrophic to very bad, and the chances of achieving even that are slight, then things might seem hopeless. But in the face of such a scenario, the attempt to "change the odds" is really the only morally defensible position. This does not mean to "change the odds" that my family and I might somehow escape unscathed, or even that life as we presently know it might somehow continue, but to change the odds that our planet will remain more or less suitable for flourishing human society and more than human life, to diminish the extent to which the possibilities of human (and more than human) wellbeing are permanently constricted by the effects of our present actions.

Now, one can disagree with the scientific, political or moral assumptions behind this line of reasoning - and I'm quite happy to have those discussions - but if we are indeed in such a position, then finding reasons to continue with creative persistance will only become ever more important on the path ahead.
*The full interview also touched upon the XL tar sands pipeline, the influence of money on politics and the strategies of ecological activism. It's worth a look as I think McKibben has many interesting things to say. H/T Lou.

Apathy is not an option

"No one who believes in a God that loves all people should be able to sit by as the wealthy harm the poor on a massive scale."

- John Torrey, Why Religious People Must Speak Up About Climate Change,
Huffington Post, 21st March 2012.

This piece clearly articulates one of the key ethical drives behind caring about climate change. Given that it is the wealthy who are by and large responsible and the poor who are most vulnerable, it represents a form of global injustice. We could add to this that it represents intergeneration injustice, another way in which those who have done little or nothing to contribute to the problem are left with facing the worst consequences.

Beyond injustice, we can also speak of respect for the Creator in respecting creation, our delight in the created order, our debts to and dependence upon the rest of the community of creation, love for our neighbour, prudence in the face of catastrophic harms and the rejection of idolatrous consumerism. There are many avenues into considering why Christians ought to care about our climate crisis (and ecological crises more generally). This Catholic article argues that it is part of a consistent ethic of life. With the potential for conflicts widely acknowledged to be exacerbated by climate change, then those who wish to be blessed as peacemakers should care too. Even those who believe that careful stewardship of economic resources is a high priority must acknowledge that credible climate damages outstrip many of the suggested mitigation strategies.

In short, if the earth is indeed warming, if our actions are the primary driver and if severe negative consequences are likely to continue to mount, then Christian discipleship does not leave room for climate apathy. Each of these claims is well established and the burden of proof lies with those who dissent from them. Christian discipleship also entails intellectual honesty. Honest scepticism is willing to update its beliefs in light of new evidence. If you do find yourself outside the scientific mainstream on this matter, then it may be worth being extra careful in reflecting on why and whether you choose to remain there.

There is more to climate change than these ethical considerations. Theological ethics does not specify in advance the best path of response for our policy, infrastructure or behaviour (though it may give us principles in evaluating proposals, such as being suspicious of the lures of wealth, paying extra attention to the plight of the most vulnerable and so on). For those already concerned, then becoming better educated on this very complex topic is an important next step. But apathy or indifference are not faithful options.

Carbon offsetting: de rigueur or distraction?

A few friends have asked me for advice about voluntary carbon offsetting. Here is an edited and somewhat extended version of what I wrote to one earlier today. I freely admit that my understanding of all the finer points of this field remains somewhat shallow and so I am very open to correction, questions and further discussion (as I am on all my posts).

Voluntary carbon offsetting is the practice of paying money to organisations that seek to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions (usually at a set price per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent) as a way of reducing our personal climate impact. Voluntary offsets are somewhat distinct from offsets in compliance carbon schemes (such as national or regional carbon markets). The latter probably require their own discussion at some stage.

Voluntary offsetting is most commonly associated with flying, since modern jet-powered aviation is, per hour, the most climate-destructive activity open to the average citizen of the wealthy world.* I plan on posting some thoughts on the impacts and ethics of flying at some point in the future, though let me say here that I don't think that flying is an unequivocal moral evil never to be permitted under any circumstances. I do think that it represents one of the more difficult questions facing contemporary cultural assumptions and habits, not least because, unlike many other activities, few easily substituted alternatives exist.** It also represents, for those who fly more than once in a blue moon, the most obvious point at which significant carbon reductions can quickly be made.
*It may be surpassed by political careers that attempt to thwart responsible climate action, certain kinds of investment banking, or owning factories that produce extreme greenhouse gases such as HFCs, but such activities are not generally available to most people. The main contender for this title, procreation, is a special case since it involves the creation of a new agent.
**Airships anyone?

Some companies or events also choose to pay for carbon offsetting in order to be able to claim that their activities are "carbon neutral" or "zero carbon". Most corporate claims to phrases such as these will be based at least partially in offsetting, since most human economic activities are associated with a carbon footprint of greater or lesser size.

There is a lot of debate around carbon offsetting, some of it around the relative merits of different kinds of offsetting and some about the ethics of offsetting at all.

The tactics of offsetting: evaluating different schemes
Let us first consider the various kinds of offsetting programmes. It is worth noting at the outset that no options are perfect (indeed, some may be only slightly better than nothing, or even worse than nothing), so it remains the case that the only real way of being carbon neutral is avoiding the carbon-intensive activity in the first place. I don't have specific company recommendations (though am happy to receive recommendations in the comments), but I will offer a few thoughts. There are three basic kinds of offsetting:

• Forestry schemes (i.e. tree-planting): The idea here is simple. Trees are made (mostly) of carbon that has been sucked out of the atmosphere, so as trees grow, they reduce atmospheric carbon concentrations. More trees means less atmospheric carbon. Well-managed forestry also has a host of other benefits, from supporting biodiversity and local employment to regulating and enhancing local rainfall. I would also include various soil management schemes here. In the past, some forestry schemes had very poor planning or oversight, meaning trees were planted in inappropriate conditions and without ongoing management and thus quickly died, representing a worse than useless investment. There is generally better accreditation today (or so I am told, though I'm not any kind of expert on offsetting accreditation), which is good, since any planting scheme needs to put appropriate species in suitable locations, rather than just plonking anything anywhere. Nonetheless, from a climate perspective, the benefits from tree planting are generally deferred for decades and are highly vulnerable to future changes. If the forest is cut down, or dries/dies out due to climate change, then the benefit is lost. So a tonne of carbon stored in a forest (or potentially stored in a forest in a few decades) is not the equivalent of a tonne of carbon left safely underground as unused fossil fuel, though it is still better than a tonne of carbon floating in the atmosphere and upper ocean. Technically, the carbon is not removed from the active carbon cycle, just placed in a slightly slower part of it.

• Development schemes (e.g. supplying renewable energy to developing nations, or supporting energy efficiency programmes): These have many of the same benefits and drawbacks of other forms of international development. While the most popular renewable energy schemes often don't actually reduce current emissions (e.g. building a wind turbine for a settlement without electricity actually adds to short-term emissions), they do represent an investment in improving human flourishing (at least potentially, depending on many other factors) in a way that (hopefully) avoids future emissions (compared to a future in which the same development occurred with fossil fuel power). Probably the best kinds of scheme here focus on long term infrastructure investments with ongoing and self-reinforcing benefits. It is not clear to me that the developed world doesn't owe this kind of assistance to the developing world in any case, and so while voluntary support for good projects is worthwhile, I don't see that it equates in any kind of morally useful way with offsetting one's damaging activities elsewhere.

• Permit retirement: These are probably less well-known than other schemes. The idea is for the offsetting organisation to use your money to purchase emission permits in open compliance markets (like the EU carbon market) and then retire them from use, preventing their use by other polluters and so shrinking the total pool of potential carbon use in that market. Though somewhat more abstract than the other options, the benefits are immediate and measurable - as long as the scheme as a whole is working effectively, which is another very complex question for another day (see here for an accessible animated critique of carbon markets).

In general, I would be very hesitant about schemes offered by airlines themselves, who have a vested interest in picking projects with very low prices in order to bolster the idea that the negative impacts of air travel are small. Many airlines have a poor or mediocre track record on selecting quality offsetting schemes. If you are paying only cents or a couple of dollars per tonne of CO2e abatement, then you may well be supporting something that isn't very effective.

The strategy of offsetting: should we be doing it at all?
Second, and more importantly, lying behind questions concerning the relative pros and cons of various offsetting tactics is a more serious strategic debate about the desirability of offsetting altogether in light of its effects on moral culture. On the one hand, offsetting encourages carbon emitters to become familiar with their footprint and take some kind of financial responsibility for it. Yet on the other hand, given that all offsetting options have drawbacks sufficient to render an offset tonne not equivalent to a tonne not emitted in the first place, then the practice of offsetting represents a potential moral hazard insofar as it hides this reality by implying a climatic and moral equivalence between them.

For me, the key question is this: does supporting a culture of offsetting distract members of wealthy nations from the more important tasks of actually reducing our personal footprint and supporting responsible climate politics internationally and in our own backyard?* While I think that offsetting can do some real good and represents a retrieval ethic (trying to salvage something good out of a harmful situation), offsets come a long way down the priority list and if they become anything other than peripheral to our climate strategy then they risk becoming another distracting tokenism from the real challenges. Offsets are not necessary a token effort if people are also facing the hard questions of reducing their personal footprint and supporting responsible politics. But much of the discourse around offsets treats them as get out of gaol free cards, justifying the activity for which the offsets were sought in the first place.
*By responsible, I mean political discourse and policies that take our scientific and ethical situation seriously. This likely means radical changes to our practices (or incremental changes that work in large increments!) in order to minimise radical changes in our climate and biosphere. I know of no major parties in the Anglosphere that hold positions I would consider responsible on this matter. I don't want radical policies; I want deeply conservative policies that aim to conserve the global climate in a recognisable form for our children and grandchildren.

Some have therefore compared offsets to medieval indulgences: a price paid for a clean conscience, which often functions to justify the acts committed in the first place. If my carbon-guilt can be washed away for a small fee later (or even preemptively), then my carbon-intensive assumptions can continue unchallenged.

In sum, I think that probably the best course of action is to reduce one's own footprint as far and fast as possible, to support responsible climate politics, to support thoughtful international development, and then to "sin" boldly (in Luther's phrase) without supporting a culture of modern day indulgences. Nonetheless, I'm not totally opposed to offsetting by those who do so in good faith, via a reputable and accredited organisation. However, this should be done simply as part of one's charitable giving to worthwhile causes rather than in any attempt to assuage guilt or achieve boastful self-righteousness through "carbon neutrality".

Finally, here are some links to other discussions of carbon offsetting that I've found useful (this list may grow in future, especially if people suggest relevant links in the comments).

• Dark Optimism. Building the moral case against offsets, with cartoons.
• African land grabs and carbon offsets. Stephen Leahy outlines one of the dangers of rich countries relying too much on paying poor countries to offset their emissions.
• Cheat Neutral. A thought-provoking spoof on voluntary offsets. It is worth noting that adultery does not equate directly with carbon emissions, which are a cumulative, rather than absolute, evil.

Dried up, drowned out

Climate change is a moral issue.

The lifestyles of (most of) the richest 10% or so of the globe comprise the vast majority of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. This includes anyone with an annual income above about £10,000. These extra emissions are raising CO₂ levels, thereby creating a dangerous, potentially catastrophic, legacy for countless generations to come. Carbon dioxide continues to affect climate for thousands of years. Our actions are significantly decreasing the habitability of the planet for humans and presently existing ecosystems. The ones who suffer the most are those who have done least to contribute: the poor, the young and unborn, and other species. Given that we've known about this issue for decades, there is really little excuse for continuing to pass the buck to those who come after or indulging in delay while we hope for a techno-fix to appear. The basic atmospheric chemistry was grasped in the 19th century; since the 1950s we've suspected a problem; since the 1970s we've had a pretty good idea that it was likely a problem; since the 1980s we've had solid evidence; since the 1990s, alarming evidence; and over the last decade the outlook has only grown bleaker.

We enjoy unnecessary luxuries at the cost of others' suffering, livelihoods and lives. That's a moral problem. Another way is possible. Let us embrace it with joy.

An excellent (and brief) theology of climate change

"Reading the Bible in the context of climate change gives a vision of hope in God’s faithfulness to creation, a call to practise love and justice to our human and other than-human neighbours, and a warning of God’s judgement of those who fail to do so. In this context, closing our ears to the voices of those most vulnerable to climate change would be nothing less than giving up our claim to be disciples of Christ."

- "Hope in God's future: Christian discipleship in the context of climate change".

This 2009 report from the Joint Public Issues Team of the UK Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches is probably the best brief theological treatment of climate change I have seen. I particularly appreciate its insightful discussion of hope in §2.2, as well as its handling of neighbour love in §2.4-5.

Regarding the former, the report affirms that God's faithfulness is greater than humanity's brokenness. Ultimately, there is nothing we can do to thwart God's redeeming purposes for his creatures. The wording in the report is carefully chosen, as I discovered when I pressed one of the authors in conversation. While the panel agreed that human failure has the capacity to cause us and the other creatures on our planet very serious and lasting harm, there was disagreement over this harm extended as far as the possibility of total self-destruction. Either way, when relating human responsibility and destructive capacity to divine promises of faithfulness, if the result is something other than a grace-filled sending into service of God and neighbour, then we're doing it wrong. Any theology that results in either frenetic desperation or apathetic passivity is thereby seriously deficient.

Regarding neighbourly love, the report very helpfully (though not uncontroversially) uses the category of neighbour to include a number of groups containing many members we have not met (and most likely never will prior to the resurrection). First, it includes our brothers and sisters in distant lands (Africa and Pacific island nations are highlighted), who are already being negatively affected by changing climates and sea levels, and for whom the future seems to hold the threat of far worse. Second, we are also neighbours to future generations, the young and as yet unborn. These begin with but extend well beyond our own children. In this context, our children are the symbol and most immediate instantiation of our obligations to the future, but our horizon must be lifted beyond one or two generations since our actions today will have major consequences for centuries and even millennia to come. Third, the report welcomes the community of creation as our neighbours and so implies that the sphere of our moral life extends beyond the human. Section §2.5 has a very useful summary of scriptural teaching concerning other creatures and whether we are comfortable with the application of the term "neighbour" or not, the underlying claim of their bearing moral significance ought to be entirely uncontroversial.

With these considerations in mind, the more one learns about the science of climate change, the more the commands to love our neighbour and seek justice invite us to see our present behaviour (personally and socially) as a gross violation of the responsibility to care for those in whom our Father delights.

The document emphasises the necessity of repentance in response to climate change. This is undoubtedly correct, yet let us remember that our climate predicament is not rooted in only greed and apathy, but also in a tragic failure of vision. In embracing an economy based on the combustion of fossil fuels, we exhibited a form of ignorance. We can debate the relative innocence of this ignorance in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, but it has been increasingly clear for at least five decades that our failure of foresight is culpable. Carbon-intensive energy production has shaped our habits, assumptions and aspirations in just a few short years to the point where living without them has become unthinkable. But unless we learn to think anew then they will make our planet unliveable.

Let me end with another sobering quote worth pondering.

"In encountering biblical warnings about the consequences of failing to love and deal justly with those in need, it is hard to escape the conclusion that in continuing to emit carbon at rates that threaten our neighbours, present and future, human and other than human, we are bringing God’s judgement upon us. Even here we should not despair: that God judges rather than abandons us is a sign of God’s grace and continuing love for us. But in our encounter with God’s word in the context of climate change we should be clear that, while we have grounds for hope in the future God will bring if we act in accordance with God’s love for all creation, we also have grounds for fear of God’s judgement if we continue to fail to respond to the urgent needs of our neighbour."

The difficulties of climate ethics: space

Human societies have faced many threats throughout history: wars, epidemics, natural disasters, mass migrations, famines, revolutions and more. Very few of these threats were truly global in scope. Climate change is one of them (along with the ongoing potential for nuclear holocaust, pandemics and the climatic effects of the very largest volcanic eruptions). Climate damage embraces not simply human society, but the entire biosphere, since our actions are altering the basic chemistry of atmosphere and oceans.

Not only are the consequences global, but the causes are also widely distributed, making the coordination of responses complex. Unilateral actions by a single society considered in isolation are unlikely to have a significant direct impact on the danger represented by rising global average temperatures and the associated disruptions this brings. Responsibility for changing atmospheric chemistry is unevenly distributed, with some nations possessing a much larger per capita carbon footprint than others. And the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and active carbon cycle (much of it for thousands or even tens of thousands of years) means that historical emissions further complicate the picture.

The necessity of international cooperation to address a serious threat is nothing particularly novel, though the mixing of atmospheric gases means that mitigation efforts by some subset of the globe brings no added climatic benefits to those bearing the costs of such action. Thus, the threat of freeloading is high. Every country hopes that other countries will do the heavy lifting.
This is the second in a series briefly outlining some of the distinctive features of climate change that makes ethical reflection upon our predicament more difficult. The first post can be found here.

The difficulties of climate ethics: time

"[There is] a pronounced temporal dispersion of causes and effects. In the case of climate change, this is caused mainly by the long atmospheric lifetime of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and by the fact that some of the basic physical systems influenced by the greenhouse effect (such as oceans) are subject to profound inertia, so that changes play out over centuries and even millennia. This is important because it suggests that whereas fossil fuel emissions have immediate and tangible benefits for present people, many of the most serious costs are likely to be substantially deferred to future generations."

- Stephen Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm:
The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 123.

This time lag is critical to grasping climate change (and, to a greater or lesser extent, many other ecological issues). Many people don't realise that the changes we are already experiencing (Arctic summer sea ice volume down by over 70%, shifts in timing of the seasons, more frequent heatwaves and intense precipitation events in some regions, poleward shift of ecosystems, thawing permafrost, rising sea levels and so on) are not the result of present greenhouse gas concentrations. We are merely reaping the start of the harvest of seeds sown decades ago. It will be decades more before the effects of today's levels begin to be visible, and centuries or even millennia before their full impact is known.

This temporal lag means that climate change occupies an intermediate position amongst future threats, too close to be safely ignored and too distant to avoid being perpetually trumped by the myopic focus on today's problem caused by the media and political cycle. Dangerous climate change is far more immediate than say, the heat death of the universe or even the death of our Sun (or the preceding gradual increase in solar radiation that will likely destroy all life on earth well before either of these), and yet not immediate enough to enter the horizon of political decision-making. That this is so can be seen in the frequent attempts to find proximate hooks of one disaster or another on which to hang the climate threat. Yet these are doomed to be of only ambiguous use since any single disaster always has multiple causes and climate change is about a shift in statistical distributions, rather than being the sole unambiguous "cause" of any given event. In this intermediate position, climate change is uncomfortably dangerous enough to be of real concern and yet always comfortably far enough away to ignore for one more day, lowering the chance that will anticipate with prudence such (slightly) distant futures.

Individually, we are frequently poor at responding to such delayed feedback. The causes of obesity, heart disease, lung disease, alcoholism and all kinds of other long term health problems are increasingly well-known and connected to various behaviours that are often deemed quite pleasant in the short term. Yet, despite the long term ill-effects frequently being catastrophic for our health, we continue to indulge.

And that is just for problems where the effects are on my own life a few decades in the future. But when we turn to issues where the worst effects are felt by others, separated from me by time, space, social distance and even species, then my ability to refrain from indulging in short-term pleasures becomes even more difficult.

And when we turn from individual responses to collective responses, yet another layer of complexity is added and the potential to pass the buck becomes even higher. And when these collective responses are required not only at communal, social and national levels, but also critically amongst all nations of any economic size, then the barriers can appear insurmountable. More on these issues in the days ahead as I begin this series looking at some of the reasons why climate change is a particularly knotty ethical issue.
As one illustration of the temporal lag, a new publication from NASA claims that, based on paleoclimate records, each degree Celsius of global temperature rise will, in the long run, be associated with something like a twenty metre sea level rise. For those who don't understand why it matters whether we rise two or three or four degrees, here is one example to clarify our thoughts. This is not saying that such rises will be immediate, but that we are committing our descendants to a very, very different world.

Beyond personal inconvenience: climate as a moral issue

"Much of what passes for even the most progressive discussion of climate change these days is devoted to persuading us that dealing with the problem will not be costly in terms of our current lifestyles, and so is compatible with ways of living that many take to be in their best interests. This is comforting talk, and I am hopeful that it may turn out to be substantially true. Still, it seems to me that this is the wrong discussion to be having. Our reasons for acting on climate change are not (or at least not primarily) that doing so will be good (or at least not bad) for us; they are deeper and more morally serious than that. In my view, seeing this should make it easier for us to act. To dither when one might prevent moderate harm to oneself by taking modest precautionary action is folly to be sure, but its moral import is limited. By contrast, to engage in willful self-deception and moral corruption when the lives of future generations, the world's poor, and even the basic fabric of life on the planet is at stake is a much more serious business. We should wake up to that fact, and demand more of our institutions, our leaders, and ourselves."

- Stephen Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm: The ethical tragedy of climate change (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 10-11.

Much of the public discussion of climate policy (and most notably that surrounding the Australian government's proposal to put a very modest price on carbon) has focused upon the costs and benefits of action from the perspective of the commentator and those like him or her. Australia shouldn't hold back our coal-fired extractive economy (so the argument goes) when doing so will have virtually no appreciable difference in the global scheme of things, given the scale of Australia's contribution to the problem. Quite apart from the fallacies involved in thinking that Australian contributions are irrelevant (a post for another day), such thinking only considers the implications for us in Australia, during this generation, and for human society. Since the burden and threat of a more chaotic climate falls disproportionately on the poor, the young and unborn, and other species - three groups with the least political voice and almost zero responsibility for causing the issue in the first place - then our actions which contribute to that ought to be evaluated in a moral context, not merely an economic calculation of personal (or even national) costs and benefits. Doing so requires a degree of moral imagination, of seeing how our habitual actions are affecting those beyond the boundaries of our everyday vision, whose distance from us is measured in space, time or DNA.

Once such a vision has been engaged, then we immediately confronted with a question we cannot avoid. Are we really okay with asking those without a voice or responsibility to face the greatest dangers for the sake of our illusory dream of endless economic growth? Until we recognise climate change as a deeply moral issue that raises confronting questions about our identity and common humanity (and even of our membership with the broader community of life on earth), then we are merely playing a game. The game may have stakes conceived in either political or economic terms, but it is a game that comes at huge cost to others.

Economics and ethics: does everything have a price?

Fox News is not usually considered to be a great source of ethical insight. So when a friend sent me an article titled almost everything we're taught is wrong, I was dubious. The piece argues that child labour, price gouging, ticket scalping, selling kidneys and blackmail are all deemed morally reprehensibly and illegal in many countries, but when we consider them from an economic point of view, we see that each ought to be considered socially beneficial.

Child labour in poorer nations contributes to the economy and keeps children from prostitution. Price gouging during an emergency reduces hoarding and gives an incentive to distant vendors to supply what is missing, even if this means travelling long distances. Ticket scalping provides a service that adds value, namely, allowing those prepared to pay extra to avoid the time they would have spent waiting in a queue. Making the sale of kidneys legal would save lives by increasing the supply. And if blackmail were legal, then there would be more reason for people to behave; in asking for money to not exercise free speech, the blackmailer is engaging in a form of "private law enforcement" by putting a price on not gossiping.

Each of these arguments needs to be addressed on its merits. Child labour: I agree that simply banning it is insufficient, but any ethical analysis worth its salt is not going to be content with mere legislation. The same argument could well be used against the abolition of slavery: what are the slaves going to do once they are freed? It is worth looking more broadly at what forces have created an economic situation in which the alternative to child labour is child prostitution.

Price gouging doesn't mean prices rising when there is shortage, but dramatic and extortionate price rises during a crisis. Should prices rise in an emergency? Yes, but not too much for essentials, since access to the means to stay alive ought not be contingent upon wealth. Far better for essentials to be rationed.

The argument for ticket scalpers I actually have some degree of sympathy for, though where ticket sales are online, then there is no waiting in line.

The sale of bodily tissues is problematic for multiple reasons. First, it commodifies one of the sites that ought to be most resistant to the logic of the market, one's own body. Second, if people are able to sell irreplaceable bodily organs, then why not their freedom? Thus there is a economic justification for slavery here. Third, if there is a legal price for kidneys, then the price is going to be high and this is almost inevitably going to mean that a black market will develop, incentivising criminal and coercive surgery. The antipathy to the sale of human tissue actually arises partly from Edinburgh history, where in the eighteenth century there was a black market in fresh cadavers for the famous medical school, and it lead to a very famous case of serial murder, which, incidentally, occurred just a few metres from where I sleep.

Blackmail has the same problem; making it legal would incentivise further and worse criminal behaviour. We only need to look at what happened to News of the World (and probably other UK tabloids) when gossip became commodified to see the dangers of encouraging breaches of privacy for profit.

The fundamental failure of the article appears in its opening lines. Economics is not a substitute for ethics. Any society that treats them as commensurate is inviting the thoroughgoing colonisation of all human relationships by market forces and the logic of commercial transactions. Christians of all people have the most reason to be suspicious of this, since we are taught that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6.10) and that our lives are ransomed not with silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1.18). Not everything can be translated into a single numerical language.

A Christian voice on climate in Australia

This piece from John McIntyre, Anglican Bishop of Gippsland, is an example of a genre that appears only very occasionally: an Australian Christian speaking directly about the ethics of climate change in the mainstream media. Does anyone have other examples? Please provide a link in the comments.

Corporate failure: more than a few bad apples

With all the current discussion about News International and its parent company News Corp, many pixels are being devoted to a discussion of just how things went so wrong. After a string of recent revelations, the claim, maintained by News executives for years, that it was one (or then a few) bad apple(s) in an otherwise honest company now appears as either deluded, deceitful or the result of seriously deficient oversight. Since it is nearly always better to assume incompetence rather than conspiracy, at best Tuesday's parliamentary inquiry revealed a string of failed leaders - spanning media editors, senior corporate executives, police and politicians - who remained dangerously out of touch with what was going on around them. At worst, collusion, corruption and cover up on an industrial scale dwarf the significance of the original criminal data acquisition. Whatever the true nature of the rot, it goes beyond a couple of apples, whether at the top or bottom of the pile.

When confronted with misdeeds on this scale, a common reaction (which I notice in my own instincts) is to seek to put a face on the problem, a single individual who can be held ultimately responsible. We want the buck to stop somewhere. The legal pursuit of the questions of who knew what when is important and such investigations are likely to take some time. In the meantime, an impatient public desires visible signs of justice. If we cannot get convictions just yet, we will settle for resignations.

We so desperately want to be able to find someone to blame, some focus for our fury at the damage caused by a system of corruption in which media, police and politicians were too close and saw their own good in terms of a small circle than the national interest they claimed to be representing. We want to know that our violated trust is being taken seriously. Resignations serve as symbolic steps in this direction; they speak to a collective desire to start again and are a metaphor of what it looks like for an organisation to repent.

But there are deeper questions at stake. Individuals did indeed commit crimes and moral failures (either of commission or omission). Many participated in looking the other way, being willfully blind to what was going on because it was more convenient to maintain deniability (or perhaps they continue to mislead political authorities). But to leave the analysis at the level of individuals fails to take account of the dynamics that can exist at a supra-individual level. The whole can often be greater than the sum of the parts. If the only lessons we take away from this saga involve the need for greater personal integrity, we miss the opportunity to ask how the very structures might have served to sideline, subvert or dilute integrity.

There are individual failures, but also failures of structure, failures of collective imagination. They are failures of systems that are based on seeking the wrong kinds of inclusion, systems that punish those who speak up while rewarding those who conform without questioning the quality of what is shared. Whether a for-profit corporation can simulatenously claim to be serving its shareholders and the common good is an interesting question, as is whether a political system in which an MP is required to win more votes than any other candidate every five years encourages a myopic and image-driven politics.

When a corporation is accountable to its shareholders' interests and those interests are understood in narrow financial terms (as they usually are), then the only place that ethical considerations enter into it is the impulse to avoid anything unethical insofar as it hurts the bottom line. Therefore, the recent fall in News Corp shares is the real crime Rupert and his various officers have committed.

But of course that way madness lies, and the reaction of the public to this scandal is partly media-driven hysteria (the very same hysteria that News have used to successfully to drive sales) and partly genuine moral outrage that speaks to a standard other than the bottom line. There is more to living well than making a profit and there is more to a flourishing nation (or world) than a growing GDP. Therefore, there must be more to a healthy company than a rising share price. Let us resist the colonisation of our ethical thought by cost-benefit risk analysis that seeks to put a price on everything. The language of money cannot adequately translate the full complexity and richness of our moral existence and to rely on it to do so is to abdicate our responsibility for pursuing good and shunning evil.

Amidst the repeated failure of not just scattered individuals but of our most trusted social institutions - of corporations and parliaments, banks and police, sensationalist newspapers and a reading public that buys them - it may be worth considering again the apostle Paul's exhortation to his readers in Rome, who were at the heart of a vast empire with powerful cultural incentives to fit in: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds (Romans 12.2 NRSV). This is addressed not simply to the individual believers, but to the church as a whole. It is an invitation to a way of corporate existence based on the good news of God's mercies (verse 1). The church, of course, is not immune from moral failure. Yet the good news here is an invitation to discover anew a source of belonging that does not require us to narrow our moral vision lest we stick out, but which gives us permission to find fresh ways of thinking and seeing amidst a culture that has lost its way. The church has no monopoly on wisdom, has not cornered the market in corporate governance or collective integrity. Yet in its practices of humility, confession, forgiveness and love of neighbour to the glory of God, in its memory of Jesus accepting the outcast and breaking bread with the traitor, in its grasp of the promise of a Spirit who leads into both honesty and new begingings, it has something that is genuinely different and worth rediscovering and sharing by each generation.

Joined-up Life: A Christian account of how ethics works

"[Jesus] wreaked the best kind of havoc wherever he went. He upset everyone’s moral categories all the time. To the law-stickler he said, go and discover some compassion (Luke 14.3-5). To the equal-rights activist he said, challenge your inner greed (Luke 12.13-15). To those who valued self-fulfillment he said, learn some faithfulness (Matthew 19.3-6); and to the seeker after self-improvement he said, learn from kindness (Matthew 19.16-21). To the goal-oriented security-seeker he said, lose yourself in Gods abundant creation (Luke 12. 22-34). To those wanting righteous judgement on others he said, stop it (Luke 9.52-55). To evaders of righteous judgement he said, wake up (Luke 13.1-4). For those deserving righteous judgement he prayed, forgive them (Luke 23.34).

"He upset moral categories everywhere, yet he inhabited the most joined-up life imaginable. So Christians orient themselves to he cosmos ‘in him’. Anything less – any adherence to some other code, set of values, consequences, principle or philosophy – would relegate Jesus merely to becoming a fellow traveller within that code or philosophy. That would be a horrendous error, because we would then miss all the signals that he’s the human who knew how to be human. We would miss the opportunity for him to induct us into true humanity."

- Andrew Cameron, Joined-up Life: A Christian account of how ethics works
(Nottingham: IVP, 2011), 315.

Having recently got my hands on a copy of Andrew Cameron’s new book, I have rediscovered in its pages many of the reasons why I found him to be an insightful, careful, refreshing and stimulating teacher at college.

This text is a very useful and readable introduction to what is usually called ethics (though perhaps can simply be called "navigating life"): what it is, how it works, how it has been approached in the past and what Jesus has to do with it. The book is divided in forty-seven bite-sized chapters that can stand alone for those who wish to dip in, or which can also be read consecutively in a picture that gradually comes together.

These chapters are grouped into seven sections. In the first, Cameron walks us through basic ethical approaches, which he summarises as rules, rights, values and results. Each has something to contribute, but each fails to provide a comprehensive framework for finding our way in life.

The second section explores a number of ways in which our moral map is more complex than it may at first appear; our social context, our own desires, human frailty and the complexity of a world filled with myriad good things combine to refuse easy answers. Ethics is not obvious and we need help if we are not to get lost amidst it all.

The third section turns to the centre that holds together and surpasses rules, rights, values and results: the human life of Jesus. Tracing his story, Cameron argues that here we find a life that hangs together, a cohesive and compelling life, a joined-up life amidst the complexity and fragmentation of our world. This doesn't mean easy answers, but it does give a central point of reference to all our ethical thinking and practice.

Fourth comes five fundamental poles of reference to guide us amidst the intricacy and confusion: the character of God, created order, divine commands, Christian hope and community shaped by Jesus. None are sufficient, but each contributes to our navigation through life's twists and turns.

The final three sections turn again to the specifics of our lives, illustrating and applying the theological orientation developed in sections three and four to the complex situations outlined in section two. Since I have only dipped into these sections so far, I won't attempt to say much more about them here.

The great strength of this book is precisely its refusal to discover or establish a single unifying framework or concept by which to live our lives other than the person of Jesus and his life. The irreducible complexity of the moral challenges we face (and this doesn't just mean the familiar "hard cases" trotted out in every introductory ethics course but also them variegated patterns and texture of daily life) elude analysis based on a single interpretive key. Jesus is what holds it together, but this doesn't require the reduction of every problem, question or opportunity for action to a predetermined framework.

Readers may find points of disagreement with Cameron's suggested applications and expeditions into the jungle of life, though also hidden treasures. And disagreement itself becomes less threatening when we acknowledge the sheer breadth of goods we are trying to keep our eyes on.

Honest and humble in tone, this book invites us to face the reality of our inability to find a perfect path through our days. We are not given a map with a birds-eye view, simply a companion to share the journey.