Malcolm Bull (one of my dearest and smartest friends from Oxford days) ponders the moral transformation required to properly grasp the problems created by climate change:
Adam Smith once noted that we are less troubled by the prospect of a hundred million people dying as a result of an earthquake in some distant location than of losing our little finger, but would nevertheless be horrified by the idea we might allow them to die in order to save it. Climate change effectively transforms the former scenario into the latter, and so places unprecedented demands on our moral imagination. Almost every little thing we do contributes to our carbon footprint, which increases greenhouse gases, which could in turn ultimately threaten hundreds of millions of lives in some remote time and place – the uncertainty only adding to the sublime awfulness of our responsibilities… climate change does not tempt us to be less moral than we might otherwise be; it invites us to be more moral than we could ever have imagined.
(Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty.)
The Dish 