Moral sentiments towards our climate
Despite the uncertainties in policies and actions against climate
change, human behaviour towards nature has evolved from exploitation to
conservation and finally to preservation during the history of human
civilizations (Saito, 1998). The ancient civilizations had also
exploited natural resources for maximization of their utility which has
resulted in local environmental problems mostly defined as the tragedy
of the commons. The rapid advance of human civilizations after
industrialization and scientific advancements supported capital surplus
which Norton defines as a shift from transformative value for survival
in the wild to demand value for human welfare (Stephens, 2005).
Eventually, the history of nature coincided with the history of human
civilizations promoting humility and wonder as environmental virtues
(Lindberg, 2016).
The marginal utility from production and natural capital is optimized
based on the elasticity of substitution between them. The value of the
environment in the narratives is mainly instrumental with a locus on
human welfare based on the intensity of our relations with nature
(Elliot, 2005). As these narratives don’t present any normative rules on
how we should live to protect our climate, the solution to climate
change is by reducing population growth and changing consumption and
production patterns calling for future generations to act with
environmental virtues (Pianalto, 2013).
We don’t know that future generation will act according to environmental
virtues to protect our climate by sacrificing their welfare. We also
don’t know whether current regional rivalries between human communities
will be put on hold in face of a climate alarm. But we can be sure that
climate change will force the depletion or even extinction of nature as
we know currently if we continue to act without any environmental
virtues. Sandler (Sandler, 2006) proposes the identification of the
environmental virtues through their relations with distinctive
environmental values. There are various studies in the literature
relating personal values with environmental behavior by categorizing
values based on egoistic, altruistic, hedonic and biospheric
orientations (Poortinga, Steg and Vlek, 2004). These values have human
individuals as their source and bearer based on a utilitarian
perspective to maximize total welfare including human made and natural
capital.
The egoistic and altruistic values put the locus of value on human
individuals where individual welfare would contribute to the welfare of
communities which increase total welfare and availability of their usage
for the protection of nature. The biospheric values shift the locus of
value on nature through relations with human societies to contribute to
welfare maximization with the investment of natural capital. These
values are not sufficient to support actions to protect our climate as
they lack any transformative values towards abiotic systems which
contribute to climate change.