Contribution
It moves the ethics of climate change from what a just policy would be to why making any policy is hard. Gardiner sets the standard model, a tragedy of the commons between states, beside a second collective-action problem between generations, and argues that the second dominates. The paper’s own thesis is that, even if the hard ethical questions were answered, “we might still find it difficult to act”, because the storm “makes us extremely vulnerable to moral corruption” (p. 398).
Key insight
The intergenerational problem cannot be solved the way a commons problem is. Between states, “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon” can make cooperation individually rational. Between generations it cannot, because “the parties do not coexist” (p. 405). Spatially scattered agents “may actually become unified”; temporally scattered agents “cannot actually become unified, and so may at best only act as if they were a single agent” (p. 404). What is left is the will of each generation, and that is what corruption works on.
Assumptions
- Generations as agents with interests. The Pure Intergenerational Problem treats each generation as one agent that prefers its own outcome. Overlap of generations is set aside; it “complicates the picture” but does not, Gardiner says, resolve the problem (note 26).
- States are biased toward the present. The intergenerational storm appears when one drops the global model’s assumption that countries represent their citizens “in perpetuity” (p. 404).
- The climate science of 2001–2005. The IPCC’s 2001 synthesis and Archer (2005) on the lifetime of carbon dioxide.
- The paper is a sketch. It does not discuss the theoretical storm’s problems “in any detail” (p. 407), and lists the corruption strategies without analysing most of them.
Key results
- Three characteristics, two readings (pp. 399, 402). Dispersion of causes and effects, fragmentation of agency and institutional inadequacy. Read spatially they give the global storm; read temporally, the intergenerational storm.
- The global storm (pp. 399–402).
- The Prisoner’s Dilemma: (PD1) each agent prefers that all restrict pollution over none; (PD2) each prefers not to restrict, whatever others do. A tragedy of the commons is that dilemma over a common resource.
- Commons problems are often resolvable, with enforceable sanctions and a wider context of interaction. The obstacle is the lack of global governance.
- Three aggravations: scientific uncertainty about national impacts, which casts doubt on PD1; the roots of emissions in the energy that supports economies, which brings vested interests and a status quo bias; and skewed vulnerabilities, since the rich caused most of it and the poor are most exposed.
- The lag (pp. 402–403).
- The IPCC’s 5–200 years in the atmosphere obscures a long tail. Archer (2005), quoted: 17–33% of fossil carbon still in the air after 1,000 years, 10–15% after 10,000 and 7% after 100,000; mean lifetime about 30,000–35,000 years.
- So climate change is resilient, backloaded and deferred. By 2000 we had committed to at least 0.5°C and perhaps more than 1°C beyond the 0.6°C then observed.
- The Pure Intergenerational Problem (pp. 404–405), drawn from
Gardiner 2003.
- (PIP1) It is collectively rational for most generations to cooperate: “(almost) every generation” prefers all restricting to all overpolluting.
- (PIP2) It is individually rational for all generations to overpollute, whatever the others do.
- It is worse than the Prisoner’s Dilemma in two ways. PIP1 leaves out the first generation, so its defection has “a domino effect” and the problem iterates. PIP2’s cause is deeper: the parties do not coexist, so neither a wider context of interaction nor reciprocity is available.
- Gardiner holds that “the intergenerational problem dominates the tragedy of the commons aspect in climate change” (p. 405).
- Multipliers (pp. 405–407).
- Inaction adds to the problem rather than passing it on, and accelerates it: emissions had more than quadrupled since 1950 and grew about 2% a year, which compounds to 22% in 10 years and 35% in 15.
- It may harm generations who would otherwise be spared, which on some views violates “Do No Harm”.
- It may force tragic choices. A generation pushed past a threshold may be permitted, in self-defence, to harm a later one, and the pattern can iterate.
- The theoretical storm (p. 407). Our best theories have “basic and often severe difficulties” with uncertainty, intergenerational equity, contingent persons, animals and nature, and climate change involves all of them.
- Moral corruption (pp. 407–409).
- Eight strategies are listed: distraction, complacency, unreasonable doubt, selective attention, delusion, pandering, false witness and hypocrisy.
- Selective attention: emphasizing uncertainty, high discount rates and lifestyle costs over scientific consensus and the Pure Intergenerational Problem.
- Corruption may reach theory. The prominence of the global model may be “encouraged by” the intergenerational storm, since the model assumes states represent their citizens in perpetuity and so assumes the intergenerational problem away (p. 408).
- Each generation can negotiate “weak and largely substanceless global accords” and herald them, while “simply exploiting its temporal position”, without “the unpleasantness of admitting it – either to others, or, perhaps more importantly, to itself” (pp. 408–409).
- Two commons, two solutions (note 36, p. 411). If nations represent their citizens in perpetuity, the commons is cross-generational; if their current citizens, intragenerational. The two have different solutions, the second probably with much less mitigation, so solving one is no evidence of interest in the other.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Read temporally, climate change is a collective-action problem between generations in which every generation rationally overpollutes | moderate: a model stated, not derived; assumes generations as unitary, non-overlapping agents | §II; Gardiner 2003 |
| C2 | The intergenerational problem is worse than the Prisoner’s Dilemma and cannot be solved by institutions or reciprocity, because the generations do not coexist | moderate: follows from the model’s assumptions | §II, p. 405 |
| C3 | The intergenerational problem dominates the global commons problem in climate change | weak: asserted (“in my view”), not argued here | p. 405 |
| C4 | The convergence of the three storms makes the current generation highly vulnerable to moral corruption | weak to moderate: a list of strategies and one example, appealing to observers’ recognition | §IV |
| C5 | The prominence of the global model in theory may itself be a product of corruption, since it serves the present | weak: offered as “a very unpleasant thought” and a possibility | p. 408 |
Concepts
- perfect storm: “an unusual convergence of independently harmful factors” likely to produce substantial, possibly catastrophic, outcomes (p. 398). The definition is Gardiner’s own (note 7).
- global, intergenerational and theoretical storms: the spatial and temporal readings of the three characteristics, and our theories’ ineptitude.
- Pure Intergenerational Problem (PIP): the intergenerational collective-action problem between non-overlapping generations, PIP1 and PIP2.
- backloading and deferral: present climate change is caused mostly by past emissions, and the full effects of present emissions come later.
- moral corruption: the facilitation, by the storm’s complexity, of manipulative or self-deceptive handling of the problem, so that a generation can serve itself while seeming to act.
- generation-relative motivation: the paper’s term for what the global model relies on. Protecting future people needs “motivations that are not generation-relative” (note 35, p. 411).
Connections
- Bostrom 2013 (NOTE-1321). The pan-generational public good, and his “deficit of motivation”, have the same structure as the intergenerational storm. Gardiner adds why the deficit hides itself.
- Hurlstone et al. (NOTE-1279). The intergenerational game is a laboratory version of the Pure Intergenerational Problem: without a legacy frame, most groups let a benefit to later players fail. That paper does not cite Gardiner.
- Meyer, SEP (NOTE-1304). Names Gardiner and sets him aside, as describing a structural dynamic rather than what is owed. The paper agrees: it says it is not about the substance of a defensible regime but about “the process of making climate policy” (p. 398).
- Parfit (LIT-1768). The theoretical storm names “contingent persons” as one of theory’s difficulties (p. 407) without discussing the non-identity problem.
- Scheffler (LIT-1754), unread. Not cited. Gardiner’s account needs a moral motive that can be corrupted. Scheffler grounds concern for the future in what the living value. They meet at the question of what the living want for the future and why it fails to bind.
Bearing on the record
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The owner’s thesis (CLAIM-491). The paper bears on it in three ways. These are inferences; Gardiner does not discuss the self.
- The standard model assumes the thesis’s shape and the paper denies it holds. A state that represents its citizens “in perpetuity” is a self extended across generations, whose self-interest would cover the future. Gardiner’s intergenerational storm begins by supposing that countries are instead “biased towards the interests of the current generation” (p. 404). In the thesis’s terms the self actually at work is generation-relative, and concern stops where it stops.
- That is the thesis’s prediction, not a counterexample to it. As with Bostrom 2013 (NOTE-1321), concern reaches as far as the self’s stake and is undersupplied beyond it. Gardiner’s remedy, motivation that is “not generation-relative” (note 35), is what the thesis would have to say is either a larger self or not available.
- Corruption needs a motive to corrupt. If the living cared for nothing beyond a generation-relative self, there would be nothing to hide from themselves. Gardiner’s generation avoids “overtly selfish behaviour” and the “unpleasantness of admitting” its exploitation “to itself” (pp. 408–409). The motive deceived is moral concern for future people, or a self-image as someone who has it. On the second reading the self served is again a self-concept kept true, the sense the fusion reading (NOTE-1256) also needs.
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The triviality objection (CLAIM-492). The paper offers a structural limit on how far a self can extend in time. Agents scattered across generations “cannot actually become unified” and can only act “as if they were a single agent” (p. 404). If that is right, a self extended across generations exists only as an identification the living hold, not as a unified agent. The criterion the objection asks for would then have to be psychological, such as felt continuity with future generations, not institutional.
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Batson’s objection (CLAIM-494). Not addressed.
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A dated note to CLAIM-491 is proposed, as an addition to its note “the thesis in time”:
Gardiner’s perfect moral storm (NOTE-1252) shows the thesis’s shape inside the standard climate model, which treats states as representing their citizens “in perpetuity”, a self extended across generations. His intergenerational storm starts from denying that this holds in practice: the operative self is the present generation, and concern stops there, as the thesis predicts. But his problem of moral corruption needs a motive that the present must deceive “to itself”, either concern for future people or a self-image as caring for them. The thesis can claim the second only by counting a self-concept kept true as the self being served.
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No THEORY filed. The Pure Intergenerational Problem is argued in Gardiner 2003, which the record does not hold.
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No ML instruction.
Limitations
- A short programmatic paper. The theoretical storm gets one paragraph, and seven of the eight corruption strategies are only named.
- The model, not the world. Generations are treated as unitary and non-overlapping. Gardiner grants that overlap complicates this (note 26) and defers to Gardiner 2003.
- The science is of 2005. The emissions figures (quadrupling since 1950, growth of about 2% a year) and the committed warming are dated.
- C3 and C5 are asserted. That the intergenerational problem dominates is “in my view”; that theory is corrupted is “a very unpleasant thought”.
- Typos.
- “the Andreas Gail” (p. 399); “the Andrea Gail” on p. 398.
- “under the global gap” (p. 398), presumably “cap”.
- “But it also because” (p. 402).
- “the spatial fragmentation even considered in isolation” (p. 404).
- “What I have in mind if this” (p. 407).
- “Hansen and Soto 2004” (note 28); the references have Sato.
- “Edgar Elgar Publishing” in the references (p. 412), for Edward Elgar.
- Junger’s book is listed as A Perfect Storm (p. 412); its title is The Perfect Storm.
Open questions
- Do people who feel more continuous with future generations show less of the corruption Gardiner lists, or only less of the incentive? A study that measured felt continuity, endorsement of corrupting rationales (uncertainty, discounting) and support for mitigation would separate a generation-relative self from a corrupted moral motive.
- What does Gardiner 2003 add on overlapping generations, where some of the future is one’s own children?