Spending a great deal on morality and ethics in class discussions recently, I wanted to look at the challenges we face with being green. Holly Howitt’s story The Weatherman, showed drastic measures of being green people. Within the story there was a strict class system along with strict orders for the green people to maintain perfection within the world (after previous generations ruined the climate.) The weather station was built to control everything from sunshine to rain by the press of a button. Even though this was beneficial to the greens, it was not to others. In the end the main character sacrifices himself to destroy the weather station and give everyone an equal chance. Was that really the moral thing to do? Was his decision going to help his family? Would it even help the world? Some of these questions got me to think deeply into ethics and morality within today’s climate change.
One quote that really stuck out to me from The Weatherman was, “I know you hate the control, but at least the law has you best interest at heart.” (p.33] I related this to our situation today; is the law making ethical decisions about climate change for our own best interests and even the whole world’s? I found an article in the Telegraph newspaper: Climate change is a problem. But our attempts to fix it could be worse than useless, that provides evidence showcasing our decisions about climate change not being so ethical. One of the main reasons is that, “cheap and abundant energy is what powers economic growth.” Four fifths of the world’s power comes from fossil fuels and other countries strive on coal as their provider for power. The US has been using gas, which does half the damage than coal and has lowered US gas emissions to our lowest within the last twenty years. As it looks, fossil fuel will be in our presence for some time. Why is this not enforced worldwide until a better solution is found? Is the world not trying to be a better place?
The Telegraph article also claims politics playing another huge role in the ethics of our climate change policies. “For the last twenty years, the refrain has promised to cut CO2… however; these policies have failed within the last twenty years.” From biofuel to the Keystone XL Pipeline, policies like these may help benefit others, but as a whole they aren’t helping everyone. Not only are we throwing money down a drain at these situations, but we are also diminishing our human trace. Take example biofuel: the price of food has risen as well as the number of people starving. There have also been policies made that failed when we could have used that money for other resources or even research. According to The World Bank, developing countries are going to be hit the hardest due to climate change and the policies that we have to try and “prevent it.” Is it really moral to put our country’s success over the overall world’s success? Should we be wasting money on failed attempts or should we be putting that to current worldwide problems?
From stories like The Weatherman and articles concerning climate change policies, I see how being green isn’t always the easiest choice. With that I have to wonder if each climate change policy made is an ethical one overall. Are we just throwing money at a situation before we know it will work? Are we thinking about the world as a whole? Are we actually being green?
First, I would like to applaud your title choice. I giggled both at the little kermit pic and it also got me thinking about how it really isn’t that easy being green. If it was, we wouldn’t be having this climate change problem right now. I also like that you are asking so many questions that we should all be asking ourselves (and our government). Your question “Is it really moral to put our country’s success over the overall world’s success” stuck out to me the most because I’ve been wondering that for a long time. If we think that in the US we’re going to have our lives changed, the developing countries are going to get hit hard.
I can’t help but jump on the bandwagon and agree with Maria that your title is great! It definitely caught my attention not just because it’s funny, but because it’s true. It’s hard being green because our society hasn’t totally accepted that climate change is happening; therefore, we aren’t adapting to the new lifestyle as fast as we should be. Like you said in your blog, our society is wondering whether some of our adaption ideas are even ethical. “The Weather Man” was a perfect example to back up this idea, because the protagonist is conflicted between following his morals, or protecting his child from the living in a world with climate devastation. I guess we will just have to find polices that are most morally correct in order to save our planet from the mess we made.
I completely agree with the comments above! Your title was both catchy and entertaining which led me to click on your post eager to find out more. You brought up some great points about climate change in regards to ethics and morality, and did a great job tying your ideas in with the readings from class. I also like the two articles you chose to include with your post, they definitely added some validity to your main points. One part in your post that particularly stood out to me was when you asked “Is it really moral to put our country’s success over the overall world’s success?”. I think that was a really strong question and you could end up going off of that a lot in the future.