Informationsöverflöd om klimatet frestar till etisk korruption - Stephen Gardiner

Stephen Gardiner professor i filosofi och miljö undersöker hur vi överöses av etiska krav från klimatkatastrofer. Det blir "information overload". Istället för att börja lösa problemen kan det leda till att vi blir etiskt korrupta. Grupper fokuserar på att manifestera åsikter eller åtminstone göra något istället för att förverkliga lösningar.

Gardiner urskiljer tre etiska stormar som tillsammans blir en orkan. De tre består av krav från fattiga och andra klimatoffer runt om i världen, samt krav från framtida generationer, vilket kombineras med alla vetenskapliga varningar. Tillsammans skapar de en orkan av information och krav. Det frestar till att man söker anpassning och skydd istället för att förverkliga en bättre värld. 

Per Herngren

6 september 2026, version 0.1

Citat av Stephen Gardiner

"I take a perfect storm to involve the unusual intersection of a number of serious, and mutually reinforcing, problems, which creates an unusual and perhaps unprecedented challenge. In my metaphor of the perfect moral storm, the three problems (or “storms”) are all obstacles to our ability to behave ethically." (s 6-7)

"prefer to put resources into adaptation (from which it expects benefits), rather than mitigation (which tends to benefit the future). Moreover, even within the category of adaptation, the current generation will have an incentive to prioritize projects and strategies that are more beneficial to it (e.g., temporary “quick fixes”) over those that seem best from an intergenerational point of view. In short, we should expect shadow solutions." (s 200)

"If a generation experiences a severe abrupt change, we might expect longterm concerns (such as with mitigation) to be crowded out in the finite pool of worry by more immediate concerns. We might also expect such a generation to be morally justified in ignoring those concerns, to at least some extent." (s 207)

"Under some circumstances actions that harm innocent others may be morally permissible on grounds of selfdefense, and such circumstances may arise in the climate change case." (s 40)

"it is likely to welcome any rationale that appears to justify its behavior." (s 45)

"The temptation to pass the buck on to the future, the poor, and nature is very strong. So, the incentive to disengage is high." (s 9)

Referens

Stephen M. Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.