5 October

Climate change is usually seen as a scientific thing. Too much carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. But there’s a different way to see it that some are starting to articulate. It’s a problem of morality. One of my main interests. For most of its history humans have granted moral agency to humans only. Not to animals, and especially not to things like rocks or water, or even plants and micro-organisms. Climate change is the outcome. If you treat the non-human world as a means instead of ends, and do it for long enough, climate change is what you get. It’s like treating your spouse as a cleaner for a couple of decades - chances are they’ll respond in ways you don’t like. The agency of the world bites you back, right in the arse. It’s the world saying “hi, still here, pay attention now or you’re dead”. The world is not a means to our ends. It has ends of its own.