The Hidalgo Family Celebrates Earth/Arbor Day in Blacksburg, VA

Just today a friend asked me why, considering the controversy around the politics of the environment and the few but loud dissenting voices about climate change, I celebrated the arbor and earth day with my family. In short, I told him that the way I thought about history compelled me to do it, and that if I was to err I would err on the side of precaution.

To use Logic and reason rather than emotion and tradition is what we try to teach our kids. This is the same lesson that my colleagues and I try to impart when we challenge students to study the past through critical analysis, instead of habitual ways of interpreting history. Applying the same thought processes to present times should be so simple choice as to require no further thought. And yet, it is not that easy to view our lives as historical because we are frequently caught in the same web of daily contingencies as the people from the past were.

We indeed live in a historical age, as every other individual in history has lived, and taking responsibility for our actions today is in a way applying logic and reason over emotion and tradition. In scholarly jargon this is akin to the awareness of personal agency. And as students of the past we are certain that our shifting relationship with nature has always had consequences.

We study the long term effect of human actions, and understand that often historical individuals do not realize how their behavior may translate into reverberations for generations to come. But we have no excuse now: because of the long view that history affords us we do notice the cost.

The logic is that even if we did not know the future in its fullest extent we can still figure out its probabilities. If we play with fire we run the risk of getting burned. Reason, the same analytical tool we ask our students to employ, requires us to weigh our prospects carefully.

The scientific community has reached a rare consensus about the human causes of global warming—a consensus that could easily leave other disciplines green with envy. Historians, for example, have not even reached a consensus on fundamentals like the origins of modern racism, and the impact of modernity.

This is not to say that the green consensus is uniform. Most scientists are scholars, and as scholars we tend to perceive the world in complex ways. We are likely to appreciate ideas as in transition and could definitely hold opposing views. Thus, not all of the scientists that have thrown their lot with the green community necessarily think like Al Gore.

Yet, that most scientists admit that the changes in climate and the environment that we are starting to witness are largely our responsibility should move us to action, not because they are unquestionably correct, but because they may just be right.

Scientists have erred before. There was broad scientific consensus on the biological formation of races, and similar support for eugenics. Indeed, most late nineteenth century scientists believed that geography determined race and social temper.

This racialism helped them explain why races living in the southern hemisphere appeared inferior and uncivilized. These premises resulted in large part because of poor empiricism and cultural myopia. They also suspiciously collaborated with Western imperial longings of domination and preservation of the status quo. But it was the scientific practice of unrelenting skepticism in sync with political activism that successfully challenged them.

The scientific community today, however, is not advocating conservatism. In fact, climate-change scientists are launching a frontal assault on the status quo, and reformists, taking their cue from them, are again on the streets holding everyone accountable.

The underlying message resonates with that of the 19th Century abolitionists. They asked their audiences to recognize how the consumption of sugar and cotton related to slavery. Today environmentalists and social justice activists continue to draw attention to seemingly indiscernible links that may also render our society immoral. For example, they say, New Englanders should know that Colombian coal, from one of the most hazardous open pits in the world, fuels their electricity. In other words, you may not know the origins of what you consume, but that ignorance is dearly expensive and cumulative.

That we have chosen to celebrate Earth Day by planting trees and by appropriating measures that will gradually decrease our carbon footprint, should not be seen as illogical fanaticism. It is, actually, the most reasonable course of action: it would be totally reckless to have seen the possibility of disaster and not have done anything about it. If by any chance it happens that our modern way of living turns out to be harmless, and that the green community’s suggestions for change were unnecessary, nobody is hurt, and nothing terrible would have come from this movement for change. What we would have, regardless, is a more politically and socially aware community.