Individual Responsibility for Climate Change

The other day I went to Dr. John Nolt’s lecture called Individual Responsibility for Climate Change. Dr. Nolt is Philosophy professor at the University of Tennessee- Knoxville. Dr. Nolt’s message was simple: we need to simply stop using all green house gas emissions. The emissions, unless necessary, should not be used what so ever. He used his clear message to then use arguments to state his claim. He pointed out that global climate change is likely to harm or kill billions of people over the next millennium (and untold numbers of nonhumans), as climate change leads to random and hazardous weather. He really emphasized on the fact that it doesn’t matter how fast you put the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but it is the quantity that matters. The more greenhouse gases there are in the atmosphere, the worse it is for mother nature. Another argument he had was that the harm varies directly, and probably more or less continuously with total emissions. What really stood out to me was the fact that it is really only the affluent who are responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. This makes sense since the affluent are the ones who have the money to use energy and burn fossil fuels. Nolt explained that we are the dominators. Those responsible for the domination are the affluent; namely those of us who live comfortably in industrialized nations. This harm contributes to an unjust domination of posterity by the affluent. At the end of the day, it’s about getting rid of the unnecessary things. This can be done in two ways: to retain, but stop using unnecessary greenhouse-gas-emitting devices, or to do away with them. According to Nolt, there are many devices we have that we simply don’t need. We don’t need a leaf blower, hot tubs, or jet skis. Changing our lifestyles might be hard, but Nolt thinks it’s a necessity. This isn’t something that will happen tomorrow, but it will take time. However, the message is clear; we need to simply stop using unnecessary greenhouse-gas-emitting devices now.