Just watched Q&A on ABC TV. They were talking about climate change and while there was almost complete agreement it is coming at us fast (1 in 1000 year weather events happening all the time now) there is a view that we shouldn’t act until the rest of the world (big countries like China India US) act because what we can do will have so little (basically nil) effect on the climate – nothing we can do will stop floods and cyclones and droughts and bushfires coming so to speak.
Well I think that is an immoral attitude.
It is basically one of the two attitudes that give up on the future but it is the selfish uncaring one that plunders the future to the last.
The other attitude that gives up on the future is moral. It is based on a perception that it is all much too late and the game is over but it goes from there into profound grief for what is lost mourning for humanity and for all the lost species and for the future for things greatly loved and to be eternally lost.
The other moral attitude is one of hope. This isn’t a belief that it is not too late but a determination to live as if the future matters to begin now to do whatever is right and possible to salvage whatever we can for the future and build the very best future that is possible (even if nothing is possible). It is to dream and work for tomorrow.
To keep going destructively as we are is the utterly immoral option. I don’t think beating ourselves up with blame and regrets is anything more than a waste of energy that is desperately needed for the hope tasks at hand but if we don’t stop our endless growth and consumption then we are truly guilty and deserve to be condemned.
The fact that it is so almost utterly impossible to know what to do constructively for the future is not a reason to avoid talking about and identifying what the things we should stop doing are. It is very easy to identify a great number of these.
As the poet says: What did you do once you knew?
Or did you even avoid knowing?