163. THE CLIMATE CRISIS CRISIS - Why The UK Government Is Failing Us

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This week’s Philosophy Unleashed presents a very simple argument:

  1. The climate crisis is the most pressing existential threat to long-term human existence of our times, as well as the cause of much continuing, and escalating, misery caused by ever-more frequent extreme weather events in the present day.

  2. If we accept that the climate is in crisis and want to save future lives and prevent more present misery, then it is clear the science tells us that we must do what we can to drastically reduce carbon emissions.

  3. Due to the scale of the problem, and the international entanglement of both global economic activity and its environmental impact, uncoordinated individual actions will not reduce global carbon emissions sufficiently.  A more widespread, collective change is needed.

  4. For jobs such as this which require mass collective organisation on a large scale, governments have traditionally been the mechanism used to achieve collectively what cannot be achieved individually.  Indeed, the ability to do such things is a core justificatory basis for the existence of governments in the first place.

  5. A government which accepts that the climate is in crisis and wants to save future lives and prevent more current misery, would therefore be one which does what it can to reduce its country’s carbon emissions.

  6. For a government to actively reverse or delay their agreed carbon emission commitments, therefore, they must either:

  • Deny (1) and/or (2)

    or

  • Accept (1) and (2) and concede that they are failing in fulfilling their justificatory purpose for existence, as laid out in (4)

7. Therefore if a citizenry do not deny (1) or (2) and want a government that fulfils its justificatory purpose, an effective and legitimate government seem obliged not to actively reverse or delay their agreed carbon emission commitments.

8. If such a government does actively reverse or delay their agreed carbon emission commitments, as Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government did in the UK last week, then there is a moral case that they ought to be replaced.

9. If no government would agree to uphold their agreed carbon emission commitments then the institution of government itself as a mechanism for achieving our collective goals needs to be called into question and alternative methods of effective social organisation employed.

To quote the wrestler CM Punk - “tell me when I’m telling lies”.

Or to put it another way - if you think this argument doesn’t work, let me know what’s wrong with it…

Author: DaN McKee (he/him)

My new book, ANARCHIST ATHEIST PUNK ROCK TEACHER, is out everywhere now on paperback and eBook. You can order it direct from the publisher or from places like Amazon. And if you want to buy it from me personally I shall be selling it at the London Anarchist Bookfair Saturday October 7th, the Peterborough Radical Bookfair Saturday October 14th, and the Manchester and Salford Anarchist Bookfair Saturday November 4th.

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