Climate activism when morality fails

Lecture with Professor John Broome.

For many decades the international community has been trying to bring climate change under control by appealing to the morality of people and governments. That effort has failed. Now our only chance of success is to appeal instead to people’s self-interest. I shall explain how self-interest can be harnessed to fight climate change. It will require large changes to the world’s economic and financial system. What is then the role for climate activists? Not to continue appealing to morality, because that has failed. Activists must push governments into making the institutional changes that will be required.

Bio

John Broome is Emeritus White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. One of two philosophers involved in writing the ICCP 5th Assessment report. Author of Climate Matters: ethics in a warming world and ‘Against denialism’, The Monist, 102 (2019), pp. 110–29. Broome has had a substantial impact on the moral discussion relating to climate change.

Professor Broome is a member of the Royal Society of Edinburg, the British Academy, and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  In 2007 he became Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from Lund University.