The confluence of the Climate Conference in Warsaw and the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines has been confronting. If they are treated separately there is little problem in finding words and symbolic gestures to recognise the importance or lack of it placed on each. The Australian Government has done so by contributing an initial $30 million to the relief effort in the Philippines and by sending a public servant, not the minister, to the Climate Conference.
That example shows how difficult it is to find words to hold together climate change and the death of so many people in natural catastrophes, let alone to act as if they might be related.
When the typhoon and climate change are brought together in conversation and in postings on articles like this one, the discussion almost always becomes didactic, rebarbative and abstract. It seems impossible to focus on the persons whose lives have been lost and to explore with open minds and hearts the connections between their fate and the ways in which we handle the natural world.
The discomfort at exploring connections may arise from a more general unease at being led out of questions of demonstrable fact into questions of value. To reflect on the connections invites us to ask how much weight we place on the lives of poor Filipinos, on our own comfort and on the maintenance of an economic order that has served many people well.
To countenance the possibility that human ways of using and relating to the material world may have an effect, a lethal effect, on the lives of human beings elsewhere compels us to reflect on what matters most to us.
One of the reasons why passion to defend the natural environment creates such controversy is that it constantly raises questions of values that cannot be reduced to monetary terms. It sees the world and people as interconnected, so that human flourishing depends on the flourishing of the natural world. It demands that we respect the relationships that connect us to one another and to the natural world. To do this requires an attention that goes beyond economic considerations to questions of value.
That explains why it is difficult to explore the connections between Typhoon Haiyan and the environment. It also explains why other questions connected with human ecology are so difficult to resolve. For example, discussions about whether and under what conditions mining should take place