Longtermism as a "positive disruption" for citizen climate advocacy

United Nations climate process: broad discontent

At the end of April, the Tony Blair Institute published a high-level re-visioning of climate policy, an initiative driven by the failure of the United Nations process to meet ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (see here for a review). The Institute's white paper arrived alongside a spate of critical commentary that followed the UN's last climate meeting, the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) held in November, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Much of that analysis speaks to a broadly perceived need for fundamental institutional reforms to the UN approach (for example, see here and here). The present moment has been well-captured by New York Times journalist David Wallace-Wells, who recently described a "souring" of climate politics that extends worldwide. Not mincing words, Wallace-Wells writes that, instead of fostering a new era of international synergy, the Paris Agreement has led instead to "an atavistic age of competition, renewed rivalry and the increasingly naked logic of national self interest..." That's a mouthful, but it echoes the sentiments of many observers, who concur that the promise of the UN climate process is now rapidly devolving into little more than a scramble for national advantage. 

A fair amount of the criticism leveled at the UN climate process focuses on a perceived willingness of world leaders to tolerate corporate greenwashing while giving much less attention than needed to equity and global inclusivity. For example, Mohamed Khalil of the Atlantic Council deplores a lack of focus on root economic causes of the climate crisis, which he feels is "overly focused on profit generation and wealth creation." Similarly, Nina Lakhani, climate justice reporter for The Guardian, thinks that the UN process fails to recognize that "deep systemic inequalities" are the root causes of global warming. These writers reflect a broadly held sentiment in progressive circles that the UN process must be fundamentally transformed before it can adequately confront the economic drivers and global inequities that drive the climate crisis.

But Prime Minister Blair and climate policy expert Lindy Fursman, who coauthored the Institute's report, seem confident that the root causes of the failed UN process instead lie in a profound disaffection of developed and developing nations alike. Global North countries resent the need for continued sacrifices when many of their own renewable energy transitions are well under way, while Global South nations often lack access to affordable renewable power and so insist, not unreasonably, on rapid development using fossil fuels that are readily available to them. For Blair and Fursman, resolution of the present impasse will not come from directly addressing inequality, but rather by aggressively developing new technologies (like AI), instituting creative approaches for deploying financial capital, and establishing a novel governance model that focuses on collaboration among a small number of the world's largest economies with the wherewithal to make a real difference. 

Centrists versus progressives

The acute contrast between centrist (Blair) and progressive (Kahlil; Lakhani) solutions to the UN troubles is, of course, yet another instance of an endless policy debate that persists because the two sides hold sharply distinct views on both the merits of capitalism and the urgency of addressing systemic inequality. Centrists often view climate change as a technical challenge, albeit a profound one that requires reinventing the global energy system. In their view, technology-driven capitalism has already brought tremendous benefits, and what's needed is to sharpen its ability to foster innovation. In contrast, progressives insist on directly linking climate solutions to social equity, because they view capitalism as the original sin that produced both the climate crisis and the marginalization of historically vulnerable communities.

Al Gore adds fuel to the fire

The clash between these visions was further sharpened when former Vice President Al Gore, a leading figure in the progressive climate advocacy movement, criticized Blair's approach in a TED talk this June. Blair had advocated carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as a key approach to meet emissions reduction targets, given that fossil fuels still dominate global energy flows and cannot be quickly eliminated. But pointing to charts showing that CCS has been slow to develop, Gore asserted that the technology is a fraud and deception, and supporting it plays into the interests of fossil fuel companies. This was music to progressives' ears: earlier this year, hundreds of organizations penned a letter to US House and Senate leaders urging them to jettison all carbon capture tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act - including both capture of carbon dioxide from industry smokestacks (to meet net-zero goals) and atmospheric drawdown by approaches like enhanced weathering and direct air capture (for net-negative carbon removal to ultimately return CO2 levels to 350 ppm or lower). 

Longtermism: ethical grounds for centrist climate policy

What does this profound clash of values imply for citizen climate advocacy, especially for individuals who would like to help forward Blair's vision? In the US, few options are available to those seeking a direct advocacy group that aligns its policy positions with his technology-forward, centrist approach. The Citizens' Climate Lobby is avowedly nonpartisan, supports centrist policies and welcomes advocates of all political orientations, but it is badly overmatched in its work at the federal level by the unremitting hostility of the Republican-led Congress and Trump administration to all things climate. In contrast, it is much easier to accomplish something in states and local communities, where lawmakers and other influential individuals are usually more accessible, and tight advocacy networks can be readily formed. However, as the CCS letter mentioned above suggests, the great majority of organizations promoting citizen engagement in the states - such as 350.org, Climate Reality Project (founded by former Vice President Gore), and Climate Justice Alliance - are strongly progressive in orientation.

We suggest that engaged citizens can participate in Blair's call for disruptive re-visioning of climate policy by embracing an ethical frame for action grounded in the principles of intergenerational equity (IE), or longtermism. Longtermism centers the idea that the decisions made by contemporary populations will have profound effects on the well-being of far future generations, who will bear most of the cost if our actions are inadequate. Indeed, climate modeling and population studies show that a newborn in 2020 will experience 2-7 times more extreme events globally than an individual born in 1960. Yet despite the harms awaiting them, generations to come are almost entirely without representation in today's political debates. It is well past time for this to change.

Progressive climate justice groups argue that their perspective already encompasses equity for future generations. For example, in a retrospective describing their Beyond Coal campaign, the Sierra Club emphasized that the health benefits of their work to shut down coal-fired power plants would make the future brighter for our children. When a coalition of groups headed by the Center for Biological Diversity asked the Biden administration to protect old-growth forests on federal land, they noted the benefits of this policy for both present and future generations. Indeed, any project that helps build robust, climate-resilient infrastructure clearly benefits both present and future populations. Does this mean that there is no need for dedicated advocacy based on longtermism?

The answer is no, because the climate justice perspective fails to properly consider that solving global warming requires present populations to make sizable sacrifices, monetary and otherwise, for the sake of posterity. What's missing is the recognition that making policy choices that benefit contemporary populations often discounts future interests. In fact, the necessity to consider future interests is the key issue distinguishing healthy climate advocates from traditional environmental groups. Reducing criteria pollutants and protecting local natural resources do not require explicit tradeoffs between current and future interests. Taxing carbon emissions today to pay for solar power tomorrow does.

Progressive climate groups discount the future by prioritizing the interests of contemporary environmental justice (EJ) communities, refusing to support approaches that they think will unfairly burden these populations. In addition to net-negative carbon removal, which is clearly needed to restore pre-industrial CO2 levels, broad opposition also exists to industrial biofuels, both low-carbon and green hydrogen, landfill gas, nuclear fission and CCS at manufacturing and power plants. Many justice groups also oppose crucial platform policies such as compliance and voluntary carbon markets as well as carbon taxes (all seen as manifestations of capitalism), and permitting reform for large energy projects, seen as allowing burdensome impacts to EJ communities. The best science underlying the net-zero paradigm, however, is favorable toward all these approaches, and makes clear the cost of policy choices that would leave any out. Ruling out or restricting the application of so many approaches would make it difficult or impossible to reach climate goals, extending the timeframe for the clean energy transition and plainly discounting the interests of future generations.

In contrast, healthy climate advocates with a longtermist view would have strong reasons to take policy positions consistent with climate science. In particular, they would surely note that the longevity of CO2 in the atmosphere means that the extent of anthropogenic climate change is, to a fair approximation, proportional to the amount of this gas that is allowed to accumulate. Minimizing harm to the integrity of the biosphere and wellbeing of future generations alike then requires mitigating CO2 emissions where possible, while simultaneously fostering the technical and policy innovation needed to execute the green transition. Longtermists would thus likely support incremental solutions to reduce harm, including most or all of the technologies mentioned above, which are disparaged as false solutions by climate justice groups. Support for carbon capture in the industrial sector might be seen as especially important, because the development of CO2 pipeline infrastructure and carbon sequestration technologies are essential to the eventual net-negative drawdown that far future generations will depend on to restore a healthy climate.  

Longtermism: positive disruption with broad political appeal 

Longtermist climate advocates will have their work cut out for them, because decision makers have little incentive to take their interests into account. Indeed, recent research suggests that many people feel less empathetic towards the suffering of future persons compared to their contemporaries. Longtermism is also a relatively recent development in both philosophy and legal scholarship, and while a few European and international organizations focus on intergenerational climate justice, we are unaware of any US grass-roots group that mobilizes citizens' climate advocacy by referring primarily or exclusively to the interests of future generations. 

Nonetheless, the development of a new US grass roots advocacy movement based on longtermism could offer a positive disruption in climate politics. This is because intergenerational equity has broad political appeal and hence holds significant potential to engage much larger numbers of citizens. In a recent academic review, Kyle Fiore Law and colleagues suggest that the longtermism "resonates with values of legacy, stewardship and family, positioning climate action as a shared responsibility for social stability rather than a divisive issue." Law and colleagues have conducted 13 separate studies providing evidence that the longtermist ethic can be effective because it is "widely endorsed, uncorrelated with demographic indicators and less tied to political ideology compared to other forms of responsibility..." 

In contrast, coupling climate advocacy to environmental justice for contemporary populations is divisive because it explicitly conflates climate policy with progressive values that lack broad popular support. Indeed, detailed political typology studies conducted by the Pew Research Center show that progressives represent only 6% of the US general public. Further, evidence from polling conducted by the Yale Center for Climate Change Communications shows that 26% of Americans identify as "Alarmed" about climate change. However, when queried about why they still do not take action, many respondents offered "I'm not an activist" among their reasons. This suggests that the policies or tactics of progressive climate justice groups are not to their liking. Longtermist-based citizen advocacy groups thus appear to have substantial potential to tap into a large reservoir of alarmed Americans who do not identify as progressive yet are nonetheless motivated to act on their concerns about climate change. As these citizens lean more to the political center, they may be likely to endorse Tony Blair's centrist vision for re-visioning climate politics along more politically inclusive lines.

The differences between progressive and centrist approaches for addressing climate change are grounded in sharply distinct ethical frames for weighing present versus future interests. The climate justice approach is well established and benefits from the rich milieu of the environmental justice movement, while longtermism lacks an activist history and has yet to become established as a significant force in US climate politics. Nonetheless, longtermism's potential to bring many more citizens into the advocacy movement, and to act as a unifying force to address today's bitter partisan divides, must not be overlooked. 

Finally, it is worth noting that climate justice and longtermist advocates need not always be at odds, and would have a strong basis to cooperate in many areas, such as directing adaptation and resilience funding to address the greater needs of environmental justice communities. Common ground may also be found in advocacy for local electricity microgrids and natural climate solutions. Longtermist groups could bring new energy to all these initiatives, catalyzing a faster green energy transition towards a more just and resilient world for both present and future generations.

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