While there is near-universal agreement concerning the essential facts of the climate emergency, many believe that the question of climate justice is a matter of merely personal opinion. But the intricate interweaving of fact and value beliefs suggests otherwise.
“Fairness is always in the eye of the beholder”, declared a delegate at the 2021 Glasgow Summit. He was discussing one of the most vexing questions in international climate negotiations: how to distribute the burdens of climate action. In 1992, 154 countries ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, with its key principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’. But to arrive at a durable agreement, translating that principle into binding emissions targets has proven impossible.
The quote expresses a belief that is extremely influential in our world: that norms are mere personal preferences. Debating ethical matters, in this view, is as fruitless as debating one’s taste in oysters, as Bertrand Russell put it.
Now it is striking that the Glasgow delegate in question, Saleemul Huq, represents Bangladesh, a country that has contributed little to greenhouse gas emissions yet stands to be devastated by climate change. The very survival of his country requires that the international community acknowledge that what is owed to Bangladesh, to many other poor countries, and to the future of humanity, is not a matter of personal preference, but of binding duties of justice. For Professor Huq to channel a view so contrary to the interests of his country testifies to the cultural power of the oyster view of norms. (Paradoxically, the influence of this view persists despite the fact that no one can fully subscribe to it. Few can believe, for example, that one’s view of attacks on unarmed civilians in Yemen or Ukraine is a matter of ‘taste’.)
The very plausibility of the subjective view of norms requires that one ignore the reasons why people hold particular value beliefs. If we were to ask Professor Huq why he believes that the wealthy countries should shoulder the lion’s share of the burden of addressing the climate emergency, it is unlikely that he would say “that’s just my personal opinion”. Rather, he would almost certainly answer something like: they made the mess, they should clean it up.
If we were willing to sit down and debate this normative claim, we would quickly be drawn into questions of fact. For example: what would a world look like if no one respected this normative principle? Well, as it happens, the world would look pretty much as it does today on matters of climate. That is, the emergency has been sharply intensified by the fact that oil and coal companies – among other actors – proceeded under the assumption that they would never be held responsible for the products they produce, nor for the deception that they promoted for decades concerning the science of climate change.
That our serious normative discussion would quickly shift to the terrain of facts is an example of a broad truth: our normative beliefs are not freestanding, being tied up with fact beliefs of various types. Conversely, our fact beliefs always depend on normative ones, in various ways: the things you notice and those you overlook, for example, depend on your values and interests.
Now one might answer: this is fine in theory, but in practice the representatives of different nations are simply not willing to engage in the sort of serious normative discussion you envisage. True. Sad, but true. And partly as a result, people do differ on the question of climate justice. But people also differ on the essential facts of climate change, until they agree to investigate the matter honestly and rigorously. Indeed, in the quarter-century since the 1997 Kyoto Accord, the climate change denial industry has done its best to obscure climate facts. While it can shape-shift, such denial continues to this day. (At its last national convention, my country’s Conservative Party voted down a motion that declared ‘climate change is real’.)
Recognising that norms are not free-floating preferences, that they need to be supported by cogent arguments and can be subject to rational critique, will of course not magically lead to agreement in international climate negotiations. Decisive climate action will not occur until leaders of the key industrial countries feel irresistible political pressure to act. That, in turn, requires having ever greater numbers of citizens persuaded that this is the most vital issue of our time.
Abandoning the sharp dichotomy of facts and values helps suggest how to advance that persuasion: by untangling and addressing the complex of fact claims and normative beliefs that impede serious climate action. More generally, it can also point to the need:
- to develop social institutions devoted to normative analysis;
- to build such analysis into all levels of education;
- to attack the enduring influence of the fact-value dichotomy in the social sciences; and
- to make disciplined normative analysis a more central part of all public policy making.
Together, these developments can help make even more people as ‘allergic’ to unsupportable normative claims as they are to factual misinformation.
It is important not to exaggerate the power of normative critique. As just noted, dominant interests have worked for decades to block climate action, and they have no intention of stopping. But – with apologies to Harry Potter – we can view the dichotomy of facts and values as one of various ‘horcruxes’ that must be slain so that the principal obstacles to humanity’s survival might be attacked head on.
Phil Ryan is Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University.
Facts, Values and the Policy World by Phil Ryan is available on the Policy Press website. Order here for £85.
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