Philosophical musings on “waking up” to the climate emergency

Don't Look Up is a 2021 apocalyptic comedy about scientists trying to warn the world about an approaching comet that will destroy human civilization.

On 30 June 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of curbing the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. There is no better way to describe this than as a “Don’t Look Up” moment from the top court in the world’s most powerful country and second largest emitter of CO2.

Climate scientist, Peter Kalmus, responded imploring we do “all we can to wake people up to the grave danger we are in” so that we can shift to an emergency mode and end the fossil fuel industry.

I have lost count, however, of how many times in recent years I have been called upon by world leaders, scientists, environmentalists and journalists to wake up to the climate crisis. There is something much deeper going on here with philosophical and ethical antecedents.

Four years ago, in October 2018, I began delivering a lecture in various courses I teach with the same title as this article. The most recent version of this talk is shared below, delivered to students in a course on Climate Change in Asia Pacific – Science and Solutions.

I recorded this talk so that my students could watch it before class and to allow plenty of time for discussion.