Adam Briggle

This book is a guide for understanding climate change. It takes an interdisciplinary approach because climate change is simultaneously a matter of science, engineering, economics, politics, culture, ethics, and more. _A Field Guide to Climate Change_ thus follows the contours of climate change as it appears in the world—as a tangle of problems. Briggle presents climate literacy as a form of problem-posing by offering a set of tools for understanding how problems get framed, debated, and resolved. Through developing climate literacy, students gain the ability to think critically about how facts are constructed and mobilized in the pursuit of values. Part One (Big Picture and Fundamentals) provides basic definitions and broad orientation by situating climate change within larger contexts like the Anthropocene, international climate diplomacy, sustainable development, and “green growth.” Part Two (Climate Sciences) offers tools for understanding climate science, its historical development, and its place in society by asking: who knows, what do we know, and how do we know it? Part Three (Politics, Ethics, and Policy) shows how to analyze debates about climate change policies from mitigation to rewilding.

This chapter concludes the case for the energy orthodoxy by turning back to a parable. The myth of Prometheus is the ultimate energy story: the hubris of stealing fire from the gods. The original tale, however, is in need of an update, because it retains the worldview and morality of ‘virtues’ or the old energy paradigm about limits and the proper reach of humanity. “Prometheus 2.0” is a modern story about an evolving and accelerating intelligence that allows for unlimited problem-solving and, thus, the unlimited control of fate.

This chapter begins Part II, which explains and defends the energy orthodoxy in a new voice, namely, that of a recent ‘convert’ to the orthodox faith. The chapter reframes the so-called paradoxes of a high-energy life as “First World Problems.” Climate change is also a first world problem. This chapter uses a parable to illustrate the logic and moral force of the energy orthodoxy, which is about controlling fate to achieve comfort, convenience, and security. Next, the chapter reframes the Anthropocene as a universal human accomplishment, albeit one that required a particular culture to finally unlock the winning formula to control fate.

In the Anthropocene, we can do more than we can understand. This raises the question of whether we can think through climate change at all. “The Unnatural Growth of the Natural” surveys the paradoxes bedeviling the Anthropocene. High-energy civilization has unleashed natural metabolic energies beyond all natural limits. This is known as economic growth. If this cannot be sustained, then we are in a crisis that calls for radical change. Yet, although many pay lip service to the “climate crisis,” few really believe it. Most of us belong to the energy orthodoxy, a belief that we can grow and tech-fix our way out of climate change. The chapter concludes with an overview of the paradoxes that are explored in the remainder of the book.

The energy orthodoxy is built on modern science, which is the rejection of magic. Yet magical thinking continues to haunt the orthodox project of controlling fate, especially when it comes to solutions for climate change. “Magic, Machines, and Markets” examines two of the central pillars of the energy orthodoxy: decoupling and the invisible hand. Are they the logic of a mechanistic modern civilization or wishful thinking? A closer look at the scale of decarbonization called for by climate scientists should leave us wondering about whether we can really tech-fix and green-grow our way out of the climate crisis.

The philosopher of technology Albert Borgmann is another important heterodox voice. “E, Neutrality, and Democracy” uses his notion of the “device paradigm” to explore the dark sides of convenience and the means-ends dichotomy that are central to the energy orthodoxy. It begins by criticizing the idea that modern energy services are neutral, arguing instead that they are ‘media’ that shape culture and identities in non-neutral ways. The chapter then explores questions about the supposed neutrality of liberal democracy, and it concludes with a discussion of freedom and meaningfulness in a high-energy world.

This chapter retells the history of the modern energy paradigm or orthodoxy with a focus on its overarching purpose. “Convenience” is the moral imperative of the high-energy world. The mission of the energy orthodoxy is to convene around us a constellation of commodities and experiences that are made cheaply, safely, and abundantly available. The chapter draws primarily from John Locke, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx to show how labor power is the essential kind of energy at work in the making of a more convenient world.

In the United States and some other nations, the energy orthodoxy is being hijacked at the highest levels of political power by a look-alike ideology. This chapter uses the canary as the totem animal of the orthodoxy and the honey badger as the totem animal of this imposter ideology. The honey badger wears all the same trappings as the orthodoxy: celebrating the control of nature, innovation, and economic growth. Yet unlike the orthodoxy, it doesn’t dare to know the truth about its impacts. The honey badger is numb, whereas the orthodoxy (like the canary) is sensitive. The orthodoxy invests its faith in a process: the unfurling of human intelligence. The honey badger is faithful only to a product: fossil fuels. Nothing could be more reckless when it comes to climate change.

This chapter begins Part III, which opens heterodox lines of questioning about climate change and the high-energy way of life. It does so from the perspective of someone whose faith in the energy orthodoxy is waffling. The chapter begins with a vignette about a Texas gas station with a beaver mascot. It then revisits the parable of the fisherman to examine the insecurities and counter-productivities that hound the high-energy quest for security and productivity. Next, the chapter criticizes the scientism of the energy orthodoxy before concluding with a turn toward phenomenology as the way into heterodox truths that evade the orthodoxy.

This chapter examines the origins of the modern energy paradigm or orthodoxy. “Putting Descartes before the Horse” means looking at the ideas and values that precede and are built into modern machines. The chapter uses Descartes and the clock of medieval monasteries to capture the crucial shift to a mechanistic paradigm or worldview. It then critiques the Aristotelian paradigm of energy with its emphasis on different energies for each kind of thing. The key insight of the modern energy paradigm, one with scientific and political ramifications, is the notion of energy as a universal currency or a perfect similarity operating across different kinds. This is the energy that has changed the human condition and the climate.

This chapter examines the historical development of the energy orthodoxy. It first substitutes ‘paradigm’ for ‘orthodoxy,’ because modern energy is part of a new scientific understanding of reality. Next, the chapter explores the work of Leslie White, a mid-twentieth century anthropologist of energy. He offers a conceptual and normative framework that relates the scientific paradigm of energy to a social and ethical imperative. Progress means commanding more energy to produce an ever-greater “Factor M” or the means of subsistence.

This chapter examines the paradoxes of active passivity (or the innocent guilty), collective individualization, and the immorality of justice. “Trespassing” starts with the story of a protest at a fracking site. Next, the chapter explores the destruction of the old commons and its re-assembly as something more monstrous. In the global commons now, justice is understood as growing the pie, not sharing it. Whether this is a recipe for disaster depends on whether the orthodoxy can deliver the green growth it promises. Climate strikers might offer an alternative model based on the revival of a more classic sense of the commons and the common good.

“Climate Change and the Future of Humanity” concludes the book by putting modern energy (volts or E) at the heart of a story about human liberation. Like E, we too can experience a shape-shifting, transgressive “morphological freedom.” Energy can blast us off from humanism to transhumanism. The chapter imagines a conversation between the orthodox and heterodox voices. At issue is whether we are progressing or running faster and faster to stay in the same place. The chapter ends with brief remarks about the coronavirus pandemic and climate change.

The founders of the modern energy paradigm operated under the assumption of nature as practically infinite (e.g., the ‘new’ world). Beginning with Thomas Malthus, critics have argued that this is a recipe for collapse: economic growth will hit the wall of planetary limits. This, however, is mistaken. Intellectual labor drives the modern high-energy world and this resource is infinite. This chapter explains how “Decoupling” a growing economy from environmental harms is the key to sustaining the successes of the modern energy orthodoxy. Through measures such as energy efficiency and decarbonization, we can meet climate policy goals without sacrificing economic growth and development.

This chapter uses magic realism to describe the paradox of “thick world, thin places.” Modern energy opens many portals to an upside-down realm superimposed atop our day-to-day reality. The chapter then examines the energy orthodoxy, picturing it as a non-negotiable way of life that is premised on negotiating ever new ways of life. Next, it describes the energy orthodoxy as trapped in a paradox of strength-weakness. High-energy civilization is strong enough to shove walruses off of remote cliffs, but too weak to control the snake brain of human impulses.

This chapter concludes the section on heterodox thoughts. It begins with a meditation on the paradox of loving and killing, which is the dynamic of intergenerational justice and climate change. “Love, Death, and Carbon” then summarizes the orthodoxy in terms of the iron law of climate policy, which states that economic growth is indisputable. The chapter invites the reader to wonder whether that is sane or foolish. It ends with a story of climbing a mountain with a YouTuber to illustrate just how lopsided and narrow our sense of energy has become.

This chapter introduces the idea of energy as a paradox. Climate change too is paradoxical: simultaneously all-encompassing and absent. The chapter summarizes the book and introduces the perspectives of the energy orthodoxy and the heterodoxy. The former preaches the energy of unlimited ‘volts.’ The latter preaches the energy of ‘virtues,’ which are bounded by the golden mean. Our high-energy civilization is premised on the gamble that growth and the control of Fate can be sustained. Our future is either green growth or degrowth.

The Catholic philosopher Ivan Illich is the foremost heterodox voice in energy studies. This chapter explores his idea that modern energy services only liberate us up to a certain point. After that threshold, we become shackled with more needs as energy slaves become our masters. The chapter relates this insight to psychological research on shifting baseline syndrome and the hedonic treadmill, as well as empirical social studies of energy that show happiness reaches a saturation point beyond which more energy brings, at best, diminishing marginal returns. A concluding section considers the relationships between energy and equity.

Who owns your genes? What does climate science imply for policy? Do corporations conduct honest research? Should we teach intelligent design? Humans are creating a new world through science. The kind of world we are creating will not simply be decided by expanding scientific knowledge, but will depend on views about good and bad, right and wrong. These visions, in turn, depend on critical thinking, cogent argument and informed judgement. In this book, Adam Briggle and Carl Mitcham help readers to cultivate these skills. They first introduce ethics and the normative structure of science and then consider the 'society of science' and its norms for the responsible conduct of research and the treatment of human and animal research subjects. Later chapters examine 'science in society' - exploring ethical issues at the interfaces of science, policy, religion, culture and technology. Each chapter features case studies and research questions to stimulate further reflection.

This book is a guide for understanding climate change. It takes an interdisciplinary approach because climate change is simultaneously a matter of science, engineering, economics, politics, culture, ethics, and more. _A Field Guide to Climate Change_ thus follows the contours of climate change as it appears in the world—as a tangle of problems. Briggle presents climate literacy as a form of problem-posing by offering a set of tools for understanding how problems get framed, debated, and resolved. Through developing climate literacy, students gain the ability to think critically about how facts are constructed and mobilized in the pursuit of values. Part One (Big Picture and Fundamentals) provides basic definitions and broad orientation by situating climate change within larger contexts like the Anthropocene, international climate diplomacy, sustainable development, and “green growth.” Part Two (Climate Sciences) offers tools for understanding climate science, its historical development, and its place in society by asking: who knows, what do we know, and how do we know it? Part Three (Politics, Ethics, and Policy) shows how to analyze debates about climate change policies from mitigation to rewilding.

This chapter offers a rough sketch of the history and sociology of public philosophy. For philosophy, the crucial historical period of professionalization in the US is roughly 1865–1920 and slightly earlier than that for Germany and some other European countries. The chapter discusses the pre‐disciplinary hodgepodge of philosophy and its public nature. Around the time of the founding of the American Philosophical Association in 1900, William James lamented the barriers being erected between the new disciplines of philosophy and psychology as well as the growing distance between knowledge workers and lived experiences in real social contexts. The process of professionalization can become counterproductive: a dynamic often described as professional deformation. Criticisms of professionalization never entirely went away, but they were confined to the margins of the growing disciplinary matrix. The chapter considers attempts to theorize and practice new relationships between philosophy and various publics, given the institutional and social characteristics of the twenty‐first century.

In this creative exploration of climate change and the big questions confronting our high-energy civilization, Adam Briggle connects the history of philosophy with current events to shed light on the Anthropocene. Briggle offers a framework to help us understand the many perspectives and policies on climate change. He does so through the idea that energy is a paradox: changing sameness. From this perennial philosophical mystery, he argues that a high-energy civilization is bound to create more and more paradoxes. These paradoxes run like fissures through our orthodox picture of energy as the capacity to do work and control fate. Climate change is the accumulation of these fissures and the question is whether we can sustain technoscientific control and economic growth. It may be that our world is about change radically, imploring us to start thinking heterodox thoughts.

In the sixteenth-century book Utopia, Thomas More argues that philosophers can play an effective role in the public sphere. This article builds from More’s argument to develop a theory of public philosophy centered on dialogue or rhetoric. It contrasts this public philosophy with the disciplinary form of philosophy that emerged in the twentieth century. The discipline constitutes philosophers as experts and limits them to a dialogue only with their peers. By contrast, public philosophers can be in dialogue with anyone involved in a public issue. The article discusses some key challenges to doing public philosophy. It then gives an account of the methods and central features of field philosophy, one kind of public philosophy.