New Logic of Climate Change

The Northeast region of the United States just experienced a late autumn hurricane. This is not common.

Nonetheless, we cannot make the following claim: climate change caused Hurricane Sandy.

Why?

We must remember the following:

If we are to make a causal claim amidst an inability to locate the mechanics of a particular claim about a singular incident, we embolden those who seek to disagree with the logic of the general mechanics.

Those who seek to deny or downplay the role of climate change will seize upon these claims as circumstantial and reaching (which they are). Then, in a deceptive but discursively effective maneuver, these climate-change know-nothings will go further by denying the ability to know this kind of causation even as a mere correlation. If they are even bolder, they will suggest that because correlation cannot be known perhaps the phenomenon (climate change) cannot itself be important.

This logic is incorrect. There is no reason to deduce from the inability to directly infer causation a lack of correlative significance let alone dismiss the phenomenon as unimportant altogether. Nonetheless, logic is a slippery thing because it works its magic not in its own terms but in the much less scrutinized sphere of public discourse. This kind of logic with its skeptical overtones is easy to succumb to.

Those who seek to highlight the role of climate change ought not to waste their intellectual capital implying questionable causations but rather highlighting what I call the poor logic of inaction.

Climate change know-nothings believe that once they have dismissed the phenomenon, they can then insist that action towards addressing climate change is at best silly and at worst disruptive of other processes. This is seen in the Republican insistence that efforts to combat climate harm the economy. Of course, this narrow-minded understanding of the terrain of the economy asserts a kind of ontological primacy to the job market. It fails to recognize that the economy consists of man’s relationship to other things. The pillar of this relationship is his relationship to the environment in which he inhabits. The ontological primacy belongs to climate change, not 12 million jobs. The short-term harmful political implications of recognizing this as the truth doesn’t make it less true.

Anyway, it is this logic of dismissal and therefore justified inaction that should be attacked by those who propose that we do something about climate change.

We must argue that whether climate change is here or not, extreme weather (a late October hurricane most definitely qualifies as this) requires a pro-active attempt to deal with it. This pro-active attempt consists of the wide variety of tactics, consisting of alternative, preventative, and coping measures that we use to address the possible sources, and consequences of climate change.

Notice here that I do not insist on acceptance of climate change as a first principle. Obviuosly, my goal here is not to enshrine a ridiculous “right to decide” on the issue of climate change. Frankly, this right doesn’t exist. It’s absurd that so large a climate change denying contingent not only exists but has access to levers of power. Nonetheless, if we use belief in climate change as a first principle, then we empower the logic of inaction. We say, if you don’t believe in it then you aren’t obliged to do anything about it. In insisting not on climate change acceptance but extreme weather responsiveness as a first principle, we would be far more effective in addressing the enormous problems that a new global weather system will wreak on our species.

This shift that I am proposing amounts to a popular discursive shift. In my estimation, it is absolutely crucial.