Civil Disobedience - Climate Change

Civil Disobedience, Moral Obligation and The Trolley Problem

I was arrested on the BNSF railroad tracks on May 15^th along with 51 other human beings who had decided that it was necessary, morally necessary, an obligation of duty to the world.  I believe that in a world in which our civilization is to survive into any future that is not extremely degraded with climate change becoming a threat to everyone and every living ecological support system on the planet it is past time to take action beyond the niceties of well-behaved conventional free speech.  

I think most of us believe that we must have a communitarian society, a society that recognizes that what is known to be the best and highest course of action for a good society must prevail against the individualistic tendencies that harm the majority.   That we need a society that recognizes that the interconnected biosphere and the regional bioregions are holistically evolved systems that support human life, liberty, and our pursuit of happiness.  That degrading and destroying these biologic support systems is the major threat to human survival right now and that this threat is the consequence of the fossil fuel-military industrial complex as it exists and as it insists on proceeding and expanding in defiance of the scientific and real every day evidence we can all see unfolding daily.

My case for taking action and doing civil disobedience comes from basic simple moral ethical considerations starting with my thoughts on some well-known academic treatises often presented in college courses.   First I want to visit Peter Singers, “World Hunger and Moral Obligation”.

To approximate Singer’s ideation from world hunger to Climate Change:

1^st Premise: 

If we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable significance we ought to do it. 

2^nd Premise:

The overwhelming evidence demonstrates that the future with continuation of fossil fuels use, industrial agriculture and the military industrial complex growing and expanded as planned is going to be very extremely bad in myriad forms.

3^rd Premise:

The sacrifices necessary to stop and reverse climate change are minor, almost insignificant compared to the possible future catastrophes if we continue and stay the course we are now on.

4^th Premise:

If one accepts the first three premises then, we ought to do something to stop and reverse human caused climate change. 

I note sadly that our society has not accepted basic reason and moral logic and instead is following the course as dictated by pure immoral individualistic monetary power and politics influenced by money.

Our society has become so sickly twisted by huge individualist wealth hoarding as the status quo modus operandi that we will not or cannot consider stopping harmful outmoded politics, economics, and industrial practices even where they require an insignificant sacrifice in order to ensure against a potentially much larger harm in the future.    It is difficult to comprehend this failing considering that in  the case of stopping climate change the actual benefits of massively reducing the fossil fuel sector of the economy and building its alternative replacement will begin almost immediately and accelerate rapidly creating a future that benefits all of humanity in terms of quality of life and life itself in exchange for the mere sacrifice of one sector of the economy and inconveniencing some few individuals who profit greatly from what is now in place,  individuals  who most likely will still profit and remain relatively well off in the new alternative green energy future.   Are we so controlled by huge individualistic wealth that it is unthinkable for these titans of historical wealth to even think of sacrificing anything for the good of anyone?   Most of us human beings of the 99% majority will actually sacrifice something of great worth to prevent great harm to someone or something we care about and here we are talking about shifting the economy (for now!), nothing more consequential than other historical events such as the end of slavery, a good thing, the sacrifices required to win World Wars 1 and 2, or the loss of US manufacturing due to capitalist free trade schemes over the last decades, a bad thing.

Now I want to visit the psychological ethical problem introduced by British Philosopher Philippa Root Foot, The Trolley Problem.  

 You are standing next to a trolley line, basically a railroad, at a track switch, and a Trolley is coming along.   On the track are tied five people and there is no hope of your doing anything at all except throwing that switch and diverting the train onto the other track, but, on that track stands one person who will surely be killed if you flip that switch.

You could do nothing, not your problem.  Or you could flip the switch and save five people but end up killing the one person who had nothing to do with the whole thing at all.    What do you do?

I believe 90% choose to flip the switch and save the five.  

Now instead, you are on a bridge and a vacant runaway trolley is coming and a large person stands in front of you and you see that there is a bus on the tracks with 20 people in it and you are certain because you’re a physicist that if you just flip the large person off the rail they will fall on the track and be killed and the trolley will be derailed saving the 20 people in the bus.

You could do nothing, not your problem.   Or you could push the large person off killing the poor person who had nothing to do with the situation but save 20 people.   What do you do? 

 And I believe that because our society is ruled by individualistic and selfish economics and capitalistic academics another option is never considered: You yourself grab a heavy object siting there and jump in front of the trolley derailing it and killing yourself, making the supreme sacrifice in order to save 20 people!  

The choice, physically pushing someone creates a lot of doubt and uncertainty as the pusher is directly responsible for the death of the person pushed, whereas the switcher is disconnected from the death of the person down the track.

The moral question from Singer arises here:  Should something of lesser value, one life, be sacrificed to save five lives which we would consider a greater value.   And the civil disobedience aspect arises, would I myself sacrifice something of value to myself, my freedom, my well-being, my very life to stop something very bad from happening.  

Now I return to the fossil fuel problem and climate change.   Now you are standing at the threshold of a gigantic chasm called the certainty of a very bad very destructive train wreck, the climate change train wreck, and on the track is planet earth and everyone who lives on it, on the other track to the right sits the fossil fuel industry and all its related follies, Industrial petro-chemical agriculture and the fossil fuel military industrial complex.  Coming down that track full speed ahead is the The Denial Express and 100 cars loaded with pure gold plated political status quo bull shit. So what do we do?    

Do nothing as it is not our problem.

Or flip that switch and kill the fossil fuel industry, and as a bonus demolish the status quo paradigm which in this case is not even a difficult moral question as I will show.

You are on that bridge over the rail line and a large man stands in front of you at the rail and you see there is a trolley coming fast, there are five hostages tied to the track, named democracy, economics, environment, human health, and peace, and the large man turns to you and says, “hey, you, look at me, I tied those five to the track, and after this trolley runs over them I can collect big time!  Pretty Smart eh?”   

And now you see if you just poke him in the chest he will fall backwards off the bridge and derail the trolley saving the five hostages.  

What do you do?  What do we do?  What ought we to do?

Happily for all ending the fossil fuel industry, pushing it off the edge as it were,  or scaling it back 95% to appropriate uses could entail not harming anyone if it is done as a socialistic communitarian process, that is, rather than the way capitalism likes change where the entire sector is wrecked, bankrupted and millions thrown out of work and massive dislocation and poverty as when any number of industries were dismantled and moved overseas in the past, where for the high priests of economics  destroying communities and throwing millions out of work for “free trade” and profit was justifiable desirable sacrifice. 

We have a moral obligation to do the right thing as there is no real significant sacrifice and no real moral conundrum in saving the world from climate change and killing off the fossil fuel industry.  Plain and Simple. 

But alas, our leaders and the financialized world of capital control does not do anything but prevaricate and procrastinate and make vague plans about voluntary commitments to be met in the indeterminate future that any economist or realist knows is absurd as we cannot predict or know the future, we can only know what is here now and act accordingly now, not later.

So what have we done, legally, nicely, without disturbing anyone, and for 30 years and more:

Write letters to our elected officials

Write letters to the fossil fuel industries

Petition elected and regulatory agencies with massive signature support campaigns

Gain the support of all the well-known environmental advocacy groups

Form local organizations to raise awareness

Write letters to the editor

Start initiatives

Sign Initiatives

Go to rallies and protest marches

Go to hearings and testify

Write comments to regulatory agencies opposing fossil fuel projects

Educate the people on the issues

Change our own consumption habits

Boycott products we find offensive

Try to consume non fossil fuel intensive products

All the while the scientific consensus and the evidence against the fossil fuel industry has been mounting into an accelerating juggernaut pointing out clearly that something substantial should have been started long ago, and in fact one of the major fossil fuel corporations Exxon-Mobile has now been outed as knowing about this from its own closeted studies in the 1970’s that, yes indeed, the fossil fuel based economy will cause massive catastrophic climate change.    

So I put it to the test.  What ought we do?   What ought I do?   For me since the collective society is not taking action in a timely manner and is in effect creating a huge moral hazard, for me it is necessary to join others who are willing to sacrifice much, actually little in the larger picture, but willing to sacrifice freedom, to risk our bodies, and our fortunes, to enter into breach of the law and attempt to stop the hazard, to take actions to awaken people, to bring attention to the crises and to influence and shape public opinion and affect the actions of the political leadership. The sacrifice is worth it, nonviolent civil disobedience actions which harms no one except for interfering with the operations of the fossil fuel industry are absolutely necessary until such time as our political leadership and the economic system takes decisive action to wind down the fossil fuel industry with good plans to transition to the alternatives in a fair measured and socially just manner but with no concessions to the continuation of the current fossil fuel industries. 

For more and more of us the answer is clear we must take our own bodies in solidarity with others and lay down on the tracks, block the ships, the trains the pipelines, the refineries, the coal mines, stop the drilling and the fracking and the production and movement of fossil fuels. 

It is what we ought to do, we must do, what is an absolutely necessary moral imperative.