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.