Global warming and climate change

Global warming, ethics, and cultural criticism

M. Oksanen Department of Behavioural Sciences and Philosophy, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland; majuok@utu.fi

Abstract
The climate is under continuous changes due to human action. This fact raises ethical questions concerning the adaptation to the predicted changes, the duty not to engage with harmful activities, and the duties of restoration. Typically, ethical issues are addressed either in terms of individual or collective responsibility. In the former case, the focus is on individuals and on her actions and omissions; in the latter case, the focus is on the collective aspect of human life that is governed and regulated through formal institutions and structures such as legislative systems and public policies. The paper aims to study the cultural implications deriving from these ethical considerations of anthropogenic climate change. These cultural aspects seem to have a life of their own and are difficult to regulate if not specifically addressed. Accordingly, I distinguish between three approaches to environmental policy: consumerist, institutionalist and cultural. The institutionalist approach puts emphasis on legal and social structures and processes governed by formal rules. The consumerist approach focuses on the individual choices and lifestyle. I claim that to get a more comprehensive picture, attention must also be paid to cultural dimensions that are not fully governed by individuals and that either should not be controlled through formal laws in a liberal-democratic society. Such cases are stemming from various aspects of the human mobility, kinship relations, symbolic activities and rituals which can be best analysed through cultural criticism that rests on (environmental) ethical concepts and ideas. It is difficult for individuals to avoid fulfilling certain social expectations that are of cultural nature. Although visiting faraway living relatives or attending religious ceremony afar from home and thus causing GHG-emissions is, in the end, an individual decision, it has a strong cultural dimension. At times, cultural ideals can be unsustainable. It seems that the cultural approach must tackle at least two fundamental problems: First, if a cultural practice is regarded as unsustainable, its criticism might not have a recipient because it is an abstract trait of a common life of some group of people. And second, there may not be standards of criticism independently of specific cultures. Keywords: culture, consumerism, institutionalism, custom

Introduction
In this paper, I take for granted the climate is warming because of human activities. This raises ethical questions concerning the adaptation to the predicted changes, the duty not to aggravate the situation, and the duties of restoration. Typically, the issues of human responsibilities and obligations are addressed either in terms of individual or collective responsibility. The focus is either on individuals and on their actions and omissions or on those social aspects of human life that are governed by legally recognised entities and through formal rules including laws and public policies. Instead of paying attention to human individuals or legal entities (e.g. states, firms, municipalities, parishes), my aim is to study the cultural implications deriving from the ethical considerations of anthropogenic climate change. The cultural realm is the world of significance. It has a life of its own beyond individual action and coordinated collective action based on formal rules. The paper is divided into four sections. First, I shed some light on the notion of culture. Second, I distinguish between three approaches in environmental policy: consumerist, institutionalist and cultural. Third, I consider the possibility of taking a critical view on the cultural dimensions of human life.
T. Potthast and S. Meisch (eds.), Climate change and sustainable development: Ethical perspectives on land use and food production, DOI 10.3920/978-90-8686-753-0_10, Wageningen Academic Publishers 2012

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Such an exercise is called cultural criticism, the focus of which is here taken narrowly as informal practices and customs. Fourth, I briefly examine some case studies on gift exchange, human mobility and rituals of purification. My general claim is that if these and other alike activities are considered merely from the consumerist or institutionalist viewpoints, some essential elements of human life fail to receive proper attention and the overall criticism of unsustainable practices is inadequate. This is so because cultural dimensions are not fully in any individuals command and because these dimensions ought not to be controlled through formal laws in a liberal-democratic society either.

What is culture?
Culture is a notoriously elusive concept that denotes an intricate aspect of human existence; as a result, definitions of culture are manifold. Richerson and Boyd (2005) offer a useful starting point: Culture is information capable of affecting individuals behaviour that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission. The key concept here is information and it covers any kind of mental state that is processed by, and stored in, the (human) brain. These mental states include propositional knowledge, concepts, know-how and social rules. What makes culture as a form of information so special is the manner of transmission from one entity to another. It occurs by non-genetic means, such as teaching and imitation. In other words, humans acquire cultural information through learning it from other humans. When it comes to the nature of cultural information, it is partly normative and partly non-normative by its content. Often these elements are inseparable, like in the case of religious morality. I assume that norms constitute an instance of information although their cognitive content is about social reality composed of institutional facts, not about brute facts (see Searle, 1995). These institutional facts are common knowledge about rules and norms of behaviour and this knowledge is shared by the group members (Ostrom, 1990). The normative elements of a culture determine human relations and roles. Traditionally, these normative elements have been referred to as habits, traditions, and customs. When conceptualised in this manner, it is plausible to think that the source of habits, traditions and customs is also cultural. There might, however, be duties that are not culturally transmitted but are universal, such as the duty not to kill unthreatening humans. If such duties exist, how were they transmitted? Perhaps morality is innate and somehow bound to the human genetic constitution but this nature/nurture quandary is aside the main theme. Whatever is the source of morality, virtually every theory of normative ethics has a place for cultural heterogeneity shaped through the processes of teaching and learning. As Westermarck (2001) eloquently puts it, Society is the school in which we learn to distinguish between right and wrong. The headmaster is Custom, and the lessons are the same for all the members of the community. These conceptions of right and wrong, good and bad constitute the morality of a community. The concepts Westermarck uses were popular at his times; today it is common to speak in terms of practices, norms, rules and institutions (and thus to understand social life as a game that exists in virtue of rules (see North, 1990)). Institutions are, according to Ostrom (1990), sets of working rules that contain prescriptions that forbid, permit, or require some action or outcome. Social reality consists of many cultural communities. A cultural community is a recognisable group of people the members of which share certain features such as language, religion, institutions and practices, art, living rhythms and division of labour. The cultural category characterises groups of humans, and their individual members cannot fully undo those cultural features that they have. Therefore, as Walzer (2005) points out, cultural communities are involuntary associations. Involuntary communities involve involuntary constraints on individual life.
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In the study of the normative nature of society, North (1990, 1991) has distinguished between formal rules and informal constraints. He (1991) characterises institutions as humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights). Hodgson (2006) has criticised Norths attempt to clarify this distinction. As he sees it, North identifies formal rules with legal rules, while informal rules are enforced by our fellow community members. Moreover, Hodgson claims that the aim of restricting the scope of formal rules to the legal rules is to neglect the fact that there are social orders that are not legally expressed from the category of an institution. Hodgson (2006) refers to the social customs that exist in cultural communities, some of which are related to class structure in Britain, religion-based hierarchies in India and so on. Following Hodgson, I want to put forward a proposal that there is a social category that is neither reducible to individual lifestyle choices nor formal rules nor institutional structures of a society. This social category, that is, informal customs, can be simply called a cultural dimension of society, even though the term culture can be understood in a broader way so as to include individual lifestyles and written laws. In the following sections, I shall attempt to clarify further the meaning of culture in the context of environmental policy and to illustrate it through examples.

Three approaches in environmental policy

In environmental policy, arguably two approaches have been dominant, the consumerist and the institutionalist. In addition to these two, I propose the recognition of third approach, which stresses the cultural dimension of human life and the importance of informal customs in working out responses to human-induced global warming. The third, cultural approach has not always been recognised. For example, Maniates (2002) reinforces a duality of responses to environmental problems. The consumerist approach presumes that humans as consumers are responsible for environmental problems. Thus the remedial policy focuses on a specific aspect of human life. Accordingly, the virtuous consumer is a green consumer. Maniates argues that this approach individualises responsibility and claims that the formation and implementation of environmental policies should be left to the individuals who in the role of consumers participate in the formation of environmental policies. Maniates goes on to say it leads to depoliticisation of environmental policy and the loss of room for debate about institutions. It is a conservative force that legitimizes existing dynamics of consumption and production. Maniates sticks up for institutionalist approach and the repoliticisation of environmental policy. He acknowledges that institutional thinking has an individualistic edge, but individuals consider themselves more as citizens than as consumers. The citizens have different channels of making impact to the society and thus can participate in the formation of broader policy and larger social institutions. In my view, the focal point of the institutionalist approach is on the economic, political and social actors, structures and processes governed by formal rules (that are often coercive). Moreover, some of these actors have power to invalidate existing rules or replace them with the new rules. These changes are predominantly carried out in legislative bodies and courts. The consumerist approach addresses the individual lifestyle with the confidence that consumers will response to global warming through choices. To obtain a more comprehensive picture of the human life, attention must be paid to the non-formal social dimensions that are not fully governed by individuals and that either cannot be controlled or we do not wish to control them by formal laws in democratic and multicultural societies. In other words, we need to complement the variety of approaches with a cultural one. These three approaches are, above all, theoretical constructions that can be separated from each other as long as culture is understood in the narrow manner.
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It is important not make too stark contrasts between position because these approaches share many features. First, they all can be individualistic in the sense that the roots of the reforms are in individuals. Second, consumerist approach requires larger systemic changes, such changes in production and distribution processes. And these changes may rest on self-regulation of the sector: relevant actors mutually agree to implement certain constraints within which to act. Cultural and legal changes outside the realm of business parallel it. Despite these similarities I think there is a place for cultural approach in environmental policy.

Cultural criticism
Cultural criticism is the critical reflection of the content of the information being transmitted non-genetically. Humans are cultural beings who adopt their views as they raised in their communities, and therefore they might avoid subjecting beliefs and customs they acquire from their communities to critical reflection. As Westermarck (2001) puts it, in every society the traditional notions as to what is good or bad, obligatory or indifferent, are commonly accepted by the majority of people without further reflection. Walzer (2005) echoes this by stating that most humans, given their cultural and political education, will choose what they have been given. Even the rebels and revolutionaries among them are likely to oppose only some part of the given world. North (1990) also denies the possibility of a rapid cultural revolution: Institutions typically change incrementally rather than in discontinuous fashion. [...] Although formal rules may change overnight as the result of political or judicial decisions, informal constraints embodied in customs, traditions, and codes of conducts are much more impervious to deliberate policies. As far as these opinions hold, it is virtually futile to exercise cultural criticism with an aim of a quick change. (There are exceptions; because of the swine flu epidemic in winter of 2010-11, people stopped handshaking virtually overnight.) Actually, many of us who either look at ones own culture or keep an eye on other cultures are highly critical of what we come across, but at the same time we are ready to defend our customs because they are so meaningful to us. At its broadest, cultural criticism is a systematic evaluation of all of those elements that make up a society. These elements include actual beliefs and attitudes, individual lifestyles, practices, formal and informal institutions and established social hierarchies and so on. In this respect, culture is ever-present. However, in this paper cultural criticism is understood narrowly as a critical study of informal practices and customs from an ethical perspective. Thus, cultural criticism could be understood as a criticism of those common behavioural tendencies that do not consist in purely individual preferences and that are not wished to be governed by formal laws (e.g. no one suggested to criminalise handshaking during the epidemic). Two questions need to be addressed in this case: (1) what does it precisely mean to take ethics as a basis of an analysis?; and (2) what is the specific target of criticism when it is said to be culture or informal social reality? As regarding the former question, ethics is one platform for exercising cultural criticism, as ethics is systematic and critical examination of actual normative systems, including laws, customs, and the etiquette. There is, however, the fundamental question concerning the basis of moral evaluation. I assume that the sources of critical reflection of ones own or other peoples cultures stem from human rationality, uncoerced reflection and open discussion. (Criticism can, naturally, stem from emotional and other non-rational sources but philosophical and reflective criticism is not purely emotion-based.) Consider human-induced global warming. It will have damaging consequences in overall, and therefore we should identify the relevant human behaviours and assess them critically. This reflection can produce a proposal for cultural transformation the justification of which is the fact that it is in peoples best interest not to warm the globe any further. It should be noticed that the term culture is often used both to describe what has existed or exists at the moment and to outline the standards of cultural criticism. In the latter case, culture is used in a purely normative sense with an aim to capture an ideal society and
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deviations from it. In environmental debate, many social critics (e.g. Plumwood, 2002) have argued that the dominant Western culture is unsustainable and in need of reformation. The latter question is the following: when we assert that a culture P or a cultural feature Y is climatically unsustainable, what exactly is the target of our critical judgement? The notion of culture is related to the concept of community and social group. Communities and social groups are regarded as having a culture of their own. Therefore, these collective entities exist to some extent through their cultures. Culture is also a normative system. However, I have used the term in a narrower way and excluded the formal, largely written legal system. Furthermore, cultural criticism is not merely concerned with the individual lifestyle choices or plans of life. As much as legal criticism can be understood as criticism of existing laws and their interpretations, criticism of consumption can be understood as an individualised form of social criticism. Culture is not something that any one individual may alter as one sees fit because it is jointly produced and sustained. As Ostrom (1990) has pointed out: Individuals have shared a past and expect to share a future. It is important for individuals to maintain their reputations as reliable members of the community. Therefore, cultural criticism is not reducible to the criticism I am subject to as a consumer or as a voter. Cultural criticism focuses on cultural properties of a human community.

Cultural criticism in practice

Let us look at three cases gift exchange, travelling, and purification that are of cultural nature and that have climatic dimensions in a sense being complicit in the warming of the globe. Gift exchange is a long-standing practice in most cultural communities. It may, however, lead to unnecessary and unsustainable consumption. One of the most obvious cases is a childs birthday party that could be seen as a celebration of plastic (it has, of course, other meanings too). The following applies at least to the urban, middle-class, present-day Nordic country: if the invited guest fails to bring a present to the birthday boy, he will be considered impolite and he might think to have let himself down in the eyes of the host. If the children are not following the custom, the psychological and social costs can be unexpectedly high taking the form of for instance bullying or social exclusion. The only way out of environmentally and socially troublesome situation is a commonly acknowledged change in the expected behaviour, in a cultural custom, so that both parties can save their faces when not participating in the practice of gift exchange (as it now exists). Regarding minor consumables, the practice of gift exchange cannot be controlled and regulated by formal instructions: there is no point having such legislation. It can neither be given up by individuals alone because of the aforementioned costs. Therefore, a cultural change plays an important role as a response to global warming. Travelling is an important element in many cultures. This also means that people do not travel to solely satisfy their individual desires or because of the governmental obligations but rather it is customary and socially expected. Recreational tourism, religiously motivated travelling and reinforcement of kinship ties are among the main reasons for human mobility. Consider academic culture and conference participation as an essential part of a career. Often, participation requires flying. Somebody might object that the best option (climatewise) is to stay at home and to rely on a teleconference technique. This option makes possible only a partial participation, since often it is the case that the best debates in a conference are those that take place outside the formal programme. If we like to make a full contribution to a workshop, we have to be present. If we like to network, we should also be present. And to be present requires travelling that implies GHG-emissions. Therefore, as far as we exercise cultural criticism, we should pose the question whether it is morally acceptable to organise a face-to-face conference and whether this format is something that should advance the career of its participants. Some people have individually decided to reduce or even to refrain from taking part in conferences but this possibility is limited to established professionals; the general academic ethos and the standards of excellence in the
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academic world still regard such activities highly. Therefore, it is the academic culture that clashes with GHG-emission reduction policies. Sauna has a long history in the culture of northern peoples, most notably in Finland. Today most Finnish houses have sauna facilities. As explained in the Wikipedia, saunas are not associated with sex and sexuality. Quite the contrary, historically saunas have been the most sacred places after the church. This is, of course, an idealised and puritan (and therefore unintentionally comical) view of the function of sauna in the Finnish culture. Saunas, however, are not a wholly positive phenomenon because many of them consume a lot of electricity and therefore are a source of GHG-emissions. These are forms of cultural behaviour in the sense that they are not necessities for individuals; in other words, birthday boys and girls survive without presents, academics without conferences and Finns without sauna (although they have to look after their hygiene somehow). Nevertheless, the cultural groups would not be the same if these behaviours disappeared because the sense of commonality depends on joint activities. There are some forms of cultural behaviour that might be thought of as religious obligation and thus beyond criticism. Religious tourism is a case in point. Most notably, a virtuous Muslim makes a Hajj at least once in a lifetime. Hindus and Christians have their own traditions of pilgrimage to holy sites. These traditions do not only face difficulties because of GHG-emissions but also because of the crowdedness of the world. It is infeasible that all of Muslims perhaps 1.2 billion people can actually make the Hajj simultaneously. This fact alone raises the question about meeting the cultural and religious obligations in alternative ways. Seeking such alternatives require cultural innovation and renewal as well. When we focus on the cultural dimensions of climate change, we are able to raise questions that people do not often wish to be raised. It could be argued that acting upon ones cultural traditions is not a secondary but a primary interest for people (cf. Kymlicka, 1995). This is to say that cultural traditions are essential to human identity and they promote the quality of life; denying the right to keep them alive would be a gross neglect of human rights, equal to denying access to food and water, to shelter and to decent physical environment. Applying this idea to the climate debate, we may wonder whether such long-lived cultural practices and religious prescriptions really are in the primary interest if they are unsustainable. In principle, we are free to ask whether it is morally acceptable to attempt to meet religiously or culturally important but climatically suspect demands. The idea of the distinction between primary and secondary interests embodies in global warming debates as the distinction between luxury and survival emissions (cf. Shue, 1993). The meaning of those cultural practices depicted above has adapted to varying circumstances and evolved in time. As often in ecological matters, the viability of a culture depends on its adaptive ability. In this situation, hanging on to one practice despite the significant problems it causes is not rational, neither from the point of view of cultural survival nor from the point of view of human survival. Therefore, the argument from the primacy of cultural practices has its limits (cf. Aaltola and Oksanen, 2002).

Concluding remarks
In cultural criticism, the legitimacy of a cultural practice cannot be presumed. Anthropogenic climate change is partly a cultural phenomenon; partly a source of the problem and thus the response must be cultural reforms. Most people are ready to consider that both formal institutions and individuals as consumers are responsible for contributing to the climate change. I do not want to deny the importance of individual responsibility or the weight of social institutions but rather to complement them with a cultural element.

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Although cultural criticism might be far more looser or unspecified when compared with consideration of the matters of law, there must be a place for it. Cultural criticism is a form of social criticism that does not aim to reform legislation; rather it aims to affect people and their understanding of things in the world of significance. In other words, it does not necessarily aim to criminalise cultural customs or transform informal rules into formal rules but to submit them to a critical analysis from an environmental ethical perspective. Philosophy carries, arguably, a lengthy history of exercising cultural criticism. It should be noted that as far as my critical analysis holds, the judgments presented in the case studies can be considered the cultural implications of climate change, the phenomenon we would like to avoid in the first place. In this respect, I do not claim that gift exchange, academic customs, maintenance of family bonds through visits, pilgrimages and saunas are intrinsically morally suspect (although there is a possibility to consider them bad on the basis of established cultural standards; they might harm someone, as is the case of circumcision or genital mutilation.) They are different, say, than such traditions that promote inequality and coercion, the suppression of women or cruelty to animals. Because of this feature, it is apt to say that these traditions are victims of global warming in the sense of becoming objects of criticism due to their being so successful.

References
Aaltola, E. and Oksanen, M. (2002). Species Conservation and Minority Rights. Environmental Values 11: 443-60. Hodgson, G.M. (2006). What Are Institutions? Journal of Economic Issues 40: 1-25. Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural Citizenship. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK, 280 pp. Maniates, M. (2002). Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World? In: Princen, T., Maniates, M. and Conca, K. (eds.) Confronting Consumption. MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, pp. 43-66. North, D.C. (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 152 pp. North, D.C. (1991). Institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives 5: 97-112. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 280 pp. Plumwood, V. (2002). Environmental Culture. Routledge, London, UK, 291 pp. Richerson, P.J. and Boyd, R. (2005). Not by Genes Alone. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA, 332 pp. Searle, J.R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. Penguin. Harmondsworth, UK, 241 pp. Shue, H. (1993). Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions. Law & Policy 15: 39-59. Walzer, M. (2005). Politics and Passion. Yale University Press, New Haven, USA, 2005, 184 pp. Westermarck, E. (2001). Ethical Relativity. Routledge, London, UK, 301 pp.

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