We do a grand review - the greatest hits - of the lessons learned and the ground covered during this course.

1. 30. Climate Change
The Big Picture
Prof. Adam Briggle
UNT Phil 4250 Climate Change
adam.briggle@unt.edu

3. Outline
• Objective: To highlight the main take-aways from the course
• Course summary
• Getting oriented: maps and tools
• Climate science
• Climate science in context
• Ecomodernism?
• Major policy platforms
• Elections matter
• What are you going to do?

4. Course summary
• This course takes an interdisciplinary and problem-oriented approach to climate change (Philosophy).
• The goal is to provide a view of the decisive features and crucial dimensions of climate change (Theoria)
• so that students have maps and tools to use as they think about and act on climate change throughout their
lives.

5. Getting Oriented
• Space and time: The Anthropocene – our high-energy way of life (technoscience to liberate and enrich
the human condition – convenience)
• Approach: Philosophy as problem-oriented thinking, travelers following philosophical questions as they
dive and emerge through technoscientific, political, and economic issues.
• Tools: Problem orientation, decision process, and social process.
• The ‘wicked’ and “collective action” problem: “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference in the
climate system”

7. 1.2 Billion
people
328 Million
people
Anthropocene or
Capitalocene?

8. Thinking through
Climate Change
• Metaphysics: What exists?
• Phenomenology: What do we feel and
experience?
• Epistemology: What do we know?
• Hermeneutics: How is meaning made?
• Rhetoric: How are things framed?
• Logic: Is this argument sound?
• Theology: What are my highest ideals?
• Aesthetics: What makes something beautiful
or repulsive?
• Ethics: What should we do?
• Political Philosophy: Who should have
power?

9. The Decision
Process
INTELLIGENCE PROMOTION PRESCRIPTION INVOCATION
APPLICATION APPRAISAL TERMINATION
Participants
Perspectives
Situations
Resources
(Base Values)
Strategies
Outcomes
AlternativesProjections
Conditioning
Factors
Goals Trends

10. Climate science
• Worldview: Nature as resources
to control for liberation,
convenience
• Body of knowledge: What do
we know?
• Institutions: Who figured this
out?
• Methods and tools: How did
they figure this out?
Wicked problems – complexity and clashing values make it
hard to:
1. Define the problem
2. Locate the problem
3. Settle on solutions
High stakes
Uncertainty
Science/tech woven into ethics/politics
Add to this: epistemic fracture – disagreements about
authorities and, thus, about knowledge and reality – fueled by
media, money, politics
Sum: part of the problem is knowing what the problem
even is. Multiple interpretations.

11. Climate Science in Context
• What science can and cannot do – explanation/world-articulation; disclose new or invisible
phenomena/problem formulation; a coherent and detailed view/consensus and action.
• Science does not compel consensus and action (linear model or politics as applied science)
• Politics is about paradox – seeing something as this rather than that. Do not dismiss all
disagreement…But beware false-equivalencies.
• Politics is about propaganda – big money, special interests, and disinformation. Do not
platform junk…But beware false dichotomies (purity test of good vs. evil).

12. The balancing
act
Truth-telling Rights-defending
Free speech
Authoritative,
Expert consensus
Institutions,
Gate-keepers
Processes of testing
knowledge claims

13. A problem formulation from the UNFCCC
Goal: The “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that
would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference* with the climate system.”
Trends: The Keeling curve and CO2 emissions
Conditioning factors:
i. Direct = fossil fuel consumption and industrial agriculture/deforestation
ii.Indirect = a production/consumption/growth way of being in the world
Projections: Current policies are likely insufficient and we may have already lost our chance to
achieve the 1.5 oC target
Alternatives: *Lots of debate. Basically, we need to decarbonize energy and agriculture systems
rapidly. But can a massive “energy transition” happen fast?

14. What qualifies as “dangerous anthropogenic interference”?
a. The IPCC puts this in terms of temperature increases above pre-industrial
levels.
b. The risks increase as temperatures rise (and half of a degree can be a big
difference, thus the shift after Paris).
c. Temperature targets come with corresponding carbon budgets, with net zero
carbon dioxide emissions dates (like 2050 in the IPCC report).
d. So, we can understand the goal/alternatives in terms of keeping fossil fuels in
the ground (putting a lid on the bucket) or in terms of carbon dioxide removal
(CDR) or “negative emissions” (a hole in the bottom of the bucket). Or, we
can use sulfate aerosols to reflect solar radiation to buy us time for the energy
transition!

15. Science Wise Policy ActionKnowledge Political Consensus
Uncertainty
Expert disagreement
Seeing double
“Excess of objectivity”
Different media,
Different frames
Incommensurable epistemologies
Persistent factions
Alternative stories
(existential crisis or manageable issue)
Range from legitimate to conspiratorial
(not just ignorance or lies)
Multiple alternatives
(e.g., nuclear?)
Competing priorities
Uncertainties about
costs/benefits

16. Paradox: The Iron Triangle
Politicians
Advocates Scientists
Excess of
objectivity
Multiple
worldviews
The science
says do A
and not-A!
What does
the science
say?

17. Another answer: Propaganda –
“The Tobacco Strategy”
Science Wise Policy ActionKnowledge Political Consensus
Carbon Industrial Complex
(e.g., Big Oil/Coal, Koch Brothers, Heartland Institute)
Junk science,
Fringe scientists
Alternative media universe
Doctrine of neutrality
Campaign contributions
Lobbyists
Perpetuate status quoDisagreementDoubt and confusion

18. Is ecomodernism right?
• Are we screwed or are we ok?
• Will green growth – decoupling – be the answer?
• The Drawdown Report as ecomodernism – applying technology to
decarbonize the economy – NOT degrow it.

19. Major Policy Platforms
• The options: four levers (Kaya Identity – population, GDP, energy/GDP, and
carbon/energy) and three buckets (mitigation, adaptation, and geoengineering)
• The Paris Agreement
• The Green New Deal
• The SIJ Framework (from making carbon expensive to making carbon-free
cheap)
• Electrify Everything
• Elections matter! Consider the vast differences in climate platforms between
the Trump and Biden campaigns…

20. The Kaya Identity – a skeleton key for climate change conversations. It shows there are four main levers to
pull in trying to tackle the problem: population, wealth, energy intensity of the economy (efficiency, that is,
the amount of energy per unit of GDP), and carbon intensity of energy (amount of carbon emitted per unit
of energy).
C = P x W/P x E/W x C/E
C is Carbon
P is population
W is wealth
E is energy

21. • Global GHG Sankey Diagram
Aren’t you
going to miss
Sankey
Diagrams!!??

22. What are you going to do?
• Private choices
• Public action
• Critical thinking and speech
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do
with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”
-- Annie Dillard

23. Admiral Ackbar says:
“Critical thinking is
the greatest weapon
the resistance has.”