The Sino-British-American Summer School of Philosophy, 2019: Environmental Philosophy

Yang Xiao

Handout #1
Ecological Crisis as Philosophical Crisis
Agenda for today
1. What is our ecological crisis?
(1a) What is climate change?
(1b) Why it is not necessarily the same as the environmental issues?

2. Why technology cannot solve all the problems without karma? – Against
“Crazy Technologists”.

3. “I want to understand”
What is Our Ecological Crisis?

• The phrase “our ecological crisis” refers to two things:

• (1) “our environmental crisis” understood in a narrow sense: air
pollution 雾霾, the disappearance of beautiful nature (青山绿水), the
loss of biodiversity, and so on.

• (2) “our environmental crisis” in a broad (global, planetary) sense:

“climate change”.
(1a) What is climate change? – A ”Scientific”
Explanation/Understanding

During the Anthropocene (the age of humans, when humans have become a “force
of nature”), which started around the Industrial Revolution (the 18th Century) or
perhaps around the 1950s (more than 90 percent of the warming on the Earth has
happened over the past 50 years), humans have been emitting more and more carbon
dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere of Planet Earth, making it thicker and thicker. It
is “very likely” that, due to the greenhouse effect, this has caused “global warming”
– the rise of temperature on the surface of Planet Earth. It is “very likely” that this is
further connected to a series of phenomena that have been happening or will be
happening in the near future: the rise of sea levels, frequency and severity of
extreme weather, extinction of species, droughts and famines, civil wars, climate
refugees, the eventual disappearance of island nations and coast cities, and so on
and so forth.
https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
31 years ago, two important events took place
in the summer:
• 中英暑期哲学学院第一期 and James Hansen, a NASA scientist, testified
at a US Congress hearing, presenting evidence for the likelihood of global
warming (June 23rd, 1988).

• The latest news: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ICPP)’s

report released on October 8th, 2018:

• “Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of

global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to
1.2°C” and that this range is “likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052
if it continues to increase at the current rate.”
• What does “likely” mean? A challenge to philosophy of science?
• Computer model-based science: Eric Winsberg, Philosophy and Climate
Science, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Another question we’ll have to come back later:

This is a “scientific” understanding/explanation of climate change.

Can there be “non-scientific” understanding/explanation of climate change?

“Philosophical”, “historical”, or “religious” understanding?

• The great irony of global warming is that its causes and consequences
are inversely distributed. The rich nations of the global North are
responsible for 70 percent of historical carbon dioxide emissions, but
they bear only about 18 percent of the total costs. It’s the South that
takes the hit: according to the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, the
global South loses nearly $600bn each year due to drought, floods,
landslides, storms and wildfires. As climate change worsens, their
losses will reach a staggering $1 trillion per year by 2030.
• https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/285588-the-climate-crisis
• And then there’s the human toll. Global warming claims some
400,000 lives each year worldwide – many due to extreme weather
events but most due to climate change-induced hunger and disease.
Only 2 percent of these deaths occur in the North. The South suffers
the rest, and the vast majority of climate mortality occurs in the
countries with the lowest carbon emissions in the world.
(1b). Why climate change is not the same as
environmental issues？
Sometimes issues concerning the environment (here the environment is
understood narrowly so that it does not include the atmosphere of Planet
Earth or Planet Earth as a whole).
dadi 大地 (soil, earth) versus diqiu (the Earth, Earth, Planet Earth)

The following are environmental issues (in a narrow sense):

Air pollution (wumai 雾霾)
the disappearance of beautiful nature (青山绿水),
the loss of biodiversity, and so on.
Plastics everywhere (Arendt’s prediction in the 1950s: wherever one turns
one encounters men-made things)
One obvious difference:
• Unlike 雾霾, CO2 is smell-less, color-less, and harm-less in itself. Not
harmful directly.

• 雾霾(环境污染)(以及后面会提到的马粪)是可见度高，可闻度高的
“技术剩余物”。它们本身直接有害。 二氧化碳不是。它是无嗅无
味无毒的“技术剩余物”。本身无害。它的害处是间接的。因此，
不易引起人们的注意.
Slogans that cover the environmental issues in a narrow sense:
“美丽中国 ”(a beautiful China),
“绿水青山就是金山银山” (Clean water and green mountains are money)

• “We will make China a beautiful country with blue sky, green vegetation and clear
rivers,” President Xi Jinping promised in September 2016 when world leaders gathered in
Hangzhou for the G20.
• However, the Chinese government does also have slogans that cover the ecological
issues in the broader sense:

• “生态文明” (ecological civilization)

• “人类命运共同体”
The Crucial Difference: Environmental issues are “local”,
whereas climate change is “global” or “planetary”

• Environmental issues are “local” and can be solved through what I

shall call the “German way” – importing the problems to other
countries.
• The New York Times 2007 article: a big steel factory in the Ruhr
Valley in German was moved to Handan 邯郸 in Hebei province.
• https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/world/asia/21transfer.html
• Reporters interviewed residents in these two places.
Everyone else is adopting the German Model now

Cities in China have been adopting the German way: moving polluting
factories to frontier provinces or importing them to other countries.
An example I encountered recently: a polluting chemical factory in a
small city in Hunan (湖南湘乡市) was moved to Yunnan Province (云
南)
Many polluting factories in China have recently been moved to Vietnam
越南 and Cambodia 柬埔寨.
After these countries, which countries can they be moved to next? North
Korea 北韩 (北朝鲜)!
(Of course, there soon will be no place on earth to go!)
However, Global climate change (全球气候变
化 ) is “global”

CO2 produced locally enter the atmosphere of Planet Earth, and become
a global problem for the whole planet. The German model will not work.

What we are dealing with is no longer dadi 大地 (soil, earth, a local part
of Planet Earth), but rather Planet Earth 地球 as a whole.
We now live in the Age of Planet Earth. This is why it should not have
come as a surprise that climate change was first discovered by a NASA
scientist:

31 years ago, James Hansen, a NASA scientist, testified at a US

Congress hearing, presenting evidence for the likelihood of global
warming (June 23rd, 1988).
The Limits of Traditional “Non-Global” “Non-
Planetary” Philosophy
• To think about climate change might require a different set of
concepts: "Planet Earth, the Earth, or Earth" (in its modern sense as
an object), and different “global” conceptions of “action”,
“responsibility”.

• “Up to now men have dedicated themselves to transforming the

world; from now on the challenge will be to take responsibility for it.”
(M. Cruz, cited by JULIA URABAYEN)
The most difficult problem in political philosophy is global governance.

How can the global community be governed without a world

government?
Another Difference between the environmental issues and
climate change

Sometimes, solutions to climate change and solutions to

environmental issues are in conflict.
For example:
• Should we build dams on the Nujiang (Nu River) in Yunnan, China's
last free-flowing river?
• China is the world’s hydro champion, having built tens of thousands of
dams since the 1950s – including the Three Gorges, the world’s
biggest project of its kind. Hydropower is a key plank of the country’s
bid to reduce its dependence on “dirty” fossil fuels such as coal
and produce 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.
• Many environmentalist NGO and activists were against the central
government’s 2003 plan to build dams on the Nu River.
• When the central government decided to abandon the 2003 plan, Wang
Yongchen, who runs Green Earth Volunteers, one of China’s oldest
environmental groups, said, “I am absolutely thrilled.”
• However, one might agree with Wang that it is a bad idea to build dams on
the Nu River, but disagree with Wang’s absolute opposition against building
dams on any river:
Wang said, “They haven’t said they will never build the dams, so we still
need to carry on fighting. It is too easy to say this is the final victory.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/02/joy-as-china-shelves-
plans-to-dam-angry-river
2. Why technology cannot solve all the problems without
karma? – Against “Crazy Technologists”.

• Obviously, there are aspects of climate change that are about technology: we
need to find new, alternative, clean and cheap energy to replace coal and fusil
fuel.
• We are not against technology. We are against technologism, or “crazy
technologism”
Liu Cixin 刘慈欣, arguably the most famous sci-fi writer in China once said:“我是一
个疯狂的技术主义者，我个人坚信技术能解决一切问题”(I am a crazy
technologist. I personally believe that technology can solve every problem).
Liu’s short story, and movie based on it, “The Wandering Earth”, is a disguised
technologist “solution” to climate change!
Moving Planet Earth out off the solar system.
• I want to reformulate his claim as a question:
“Can technology solve every problem ”cleanly”?
Here “cleanly” means “without karma”, “without a curse 诅咒”, without
“another technological surplus 剩余物”
Karma is the Buddhist concept of “action” and the Chinese terms for
karma are one of the most frequently used ones by ordinary Chinese:
ye 业，yuan 缘， yuanfen 缘分，yinyuan 因缘, yinguo 因果, baoying
报应, yinyuan baoying 因缘报应
利用一个关于纽约的马粪的故事来引进一个新概念：“技术剩余物”
or “技术的因果报应
• The example to illustrate karma that almost everyone in China knows is
from The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber (the best
translation is done by the greatest translator David Hawkes):
• Two lovers, Baoyu and Daiyu. Although they are deeply in love, the girl
cried constantly. Why?
• The author, Cao Xueqin曹雪芹, gives a beautiful Buddhist explanation
还泪说: 前世因缘 (karma in their previous life): 女孩前世是三生石
畔的一株灵珠草，男孩前世，给花浇水，救了灵珠一命。。
The “karma of technology”: “纽约气味变化”问题

It’s the story of horse manure in New York. “19世纪大城市里的马粪问题

A pun that can only work in Chinese:“纽约气味变化”问题 (the problem of changing the
smell of New York City)：”
qiwei bianhua 气味变化 vs. qihou bianhua 气候变化

In the late 19th-Century (before the invention of automobile and fusil fuel), rich people in
New York had the comfort and convenience of what we have called “modern life style”.

• Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel The Age of Innocence (and later Martin Scorsese’s film based
on it) gives a glamour portrait of such a life in the 70s and 80s in the 19 th-Century New
York.
The story from Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s new book
Superfreakonomics

We know modern life style requires the support of a big amount of

energy. How did they do it in New York in the 19th-centyury?
Horses! A lots of them!
By the last decades of the century, at least 200,000 horses （=
20 万匹马）lived and worked in the city.
But this “required that 45000 tons of manure be shifted out of the city
every month. Projections showed that, if the upward trend continued,
the city would literally be buried in horseshit within three decades.”
• “Decades earlier [of the 19th-century], when horses were less
plentiful in cities, there was a smooth-functioning market for manure,
with farmers buying it to truck off (via horse, of course) to their fields.
But as the urban equine population exploded, there was a massive
glut. In vacant lots, horse manure was piled as high as 60 feet （= 18
meters）. It lined city streets like banks of snow. In the summertime,
it stank to the heavens [臭气冲天 - 纽约的气味变化问题];; when the
rains came, a soupy stream of horse manure flooded the crosswalks
and seeped into people’s basements.”
• “Today, when you admire old New York brownstones and their elegant
stoops, rising from street level to the second-story parlor, keep in mind
that this was a design necessity, allowing a homeowner to rise above
the sea of horse manure.”
• “When the world’s first international urban-planning conference was
held, in 1898, it was dominated by discussion of the manure situation.
Unable to agree upon any solutions—or to imagine cities without
horses—the delegates broke up the meeting, which had been
scheduled to last a week and a half, after just three days. The 2009
Copenhagen climate conference seems strikingly successful by
comparison.” (Levitt and Dubner，p. 9)
• The end of the story:

• Then, automobile was invented, fossil fuel was discovered. A

new, alternative, clean and cheap technology solved the
problem of smell in cities. People lived happily ever after.
• We all believed that was the happy ending of the story until later when we
discovered the “surplus” or “karma” of the human actions of inventing
automobile and discovering fossil fuel:
First, Air Pollution (wumai 雾霾) and then CO2
• The lessons we have learned:
Technology is human action, humans acting into nature, and all human
actions have “karma”.
A new technology might solve a problem created by an old technology. But it
cannot solve it without its own karma.
This is an eco-ontology of action. It’s an eco-ontological vision of the world.
“Chickens always come come to roost”

• “As a proverbial expression, it's half a millennium old. The older fuller
form was curses are like chickens; they always come home to roost,
meaning that your offensive words or actions are likely at some point
to rebound on you.”
Arendt as a Buddhist Thinker
• Arendt has an essay entitled, “Home to Roost”.

“The human condition comprehends more than the conditions under

which life has been given to man. Men are conditioned beings because
everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a
condition of their existence.”
(The Human Condition, 9)

“conditioned” and “conditioning” – Buddhist concepts.

• The world in which the vita activa spends itself consists of things
produced by human activities; but the things that owe their existence
exclusively to men nevertheless constantly condition their human
makers. In addition to the conditions under which life is given to man
on earth, and partly out of them, men constantly create their own,
self-made conditions, which, their human origin and their variability
notwithstanding, possess the same conditioning power as natural
things.
• (The Human Condition, 9)
Philosophical Problems as meta-problems:
questions about first-order problems
Sciences ask first-order questions, philosophy asks meta-questions.
For example:

Why do we keep having problems created by technology?

Can there ever be a technology that can end this seemingly infinite
series of problems created by technology?

Why does a technology, which is supposed to benefit humans, often

become a “curse” on humans (if not now, then later)?
New (and Difficult) Questions we now might
ask …
• How can we find an eco-ontology of things, including actions (and
responsibilities) that makes connections among past, present and
future, and things in the world?
• What does it mean when we speak of “eco-philosophy” or
“ecological”?
• (1) “relational” or holistic
• (2) “humans are animals living in a world on earth”
• All good philosophy must be “ecological” or “eco-philosophy”.
• We now have a criterion, according to which we can “judge” (判教 –
another Buddhist concept) philosophies or philosophers.
The karma of technology“技术的报应” The
Curse of technology“技术的诅咒”
Coetzee’s 2007 novel Diary of a Bad Year.

It is Coetzee’s ”understanding” of 9/11 in 2001, as well as Bush’s decision to invade

Iraq in 2003.

9/11 is the 报应”(karma) or curse“诅咒”brought to the US by its unjust actions and

policies in the Middle East in the past.