Sustainability and the categorical imperative

As momentum builds towards the COP-15 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Copenhagen this December, rhetoric on the urgency of establishing and ratifying a necessary and adequate climate agreement reverberates in media portals and political bodies throughout the world. The Columbia community is one of many centers for such discourse, with events such as speeches by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo at the World Leaders Forum and the law school’s debate on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill last week. At Columbia, the Core Curriculum teaches us the intricacies of the hallowed arguments of old white men, all the while insisting on their relevance to contemporary issues and debates. Perhaps, then, a fresh perspective on the debate over climate policy can be gleaned by such a return to the old—specifically to Kant, whom Contemporary Civilization students should have studied.

In “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,” Immanuel Kant develops a system of morality based on his “categorical imperative,” which delineates a core basis from which society may derive a rationally moral system. It states, “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” In this form, the categorical imperative provides the first criterion for a Kantian moral principle—­universalizability (Kant’s own term). This implies that an action is not rationally moral unless it can be adopted as a universal practice.

The categorical imperative provides a valuable framework on which an argument for climate change may be made on purely rational and ethical grounds. Earth’s systems are so interdependent and sensitive to the collective choices made by humankind that the categorical imperative is a perfect lens through which to view and develop the ethics of climate change policy. It provides a useful framework for the construction of necessary and moral policies that are universally reproducible and sustainable.

This criterion of “universalizability” of moral action is almost synonymous with the idea of sustainability—development that can be equitably distributed across regions and timescales. This universalizability is therefore both static and dynamic—that is, within and across timespans—when applied to development policy.

Regarding the question of carbon emissions, this implies that it is moral to emit only the amount that would not cause permanent environmental damage or deplete resources necessary for present and future development. Current emission practices of industrialized countries are extremely detrimental to the environment as well as unsustainable. Therefore, they are immoral by a Kantian definition because, if all people or countries acted like those with large carbon footprints, the environment would collapse within a few years. Climate change policy that preceded the Kyoto Protocol required developing countries to curb emissions and therefore hindered their ability to bridge the development gap because of transgressions they did not commit. UNFCCC agreed to “common but differentiated responsibility” when formulating the Kyoto Protocol and, therefore, set emission control goals commensurate with per capita emissions before 1990. Although this is an attempt to be just to developing countries like China and India, in the long term this is not moral in the Kantian sense because the emission levels that China and India will need to maintain in order to keep their economic development as rapid as it has been are not universalizable.

In another formulation of the categorical imperative, Kant posits a “kingdom of ends” in which rational beings unite through common laws and in which every individual is simultaneously capable of making the law and of following existing maxims. This kingdom is a model of the categorical imperative in practice and should be applied to all countries willing to cooperate with the goal of global sustainability. A global body analogous to the “kingdom of ends” would be a multinational organization that transcends international politics and economic dynamics (the United Nations would be inadequate) to address problems of environmental degradation, climate change, and inequality that transcend national borders. The “legislative law” referred to in this formulation is manifest in documents such as the Kyoto Protocol, which constitute legally binding codes of conduct that all ratifying signatories are required to follow.

The UNFCCC has the potential to be either a great disappointment or a turning point in the history of international politics. It is time sustainable development is recognized for what it really is—not just an environmental or political “issue”, but a global and interdisciplinary policy imperative in and of itself with far-reaching implications for everyone on the planet.

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Monica Varman is a Columbia College junior majoring in economics-mathematics and concentrating in sustainable development. She is a senior editor of Consilience and works on the Millennium Village Project. Green Piece runs alternate Tuesdays.
opinion@columbiaspectator.com

Tags: Opinion, Monica Varman, Kant, sustainable development