The Global Bystander Effect: Moral Responsibility in Our Age of Ecological Crisis

Jon Mills

《Journal of Futures Studies》 25卷2期 (2020/12) Pp. 61-75

https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.202012_25(2).0008

摘要

We are facing a planetary ecological crisis due to global warming, despoliation of our natural resources, mass scale industrial pollution, desertification, deforestation, widespread collapse of ecosystems, and extreme climate change. World overpopulation is nearing a record tipping-point, where food and water scarcity will bring about more famine, drought, pestilence, and death. Global catastrophic hazards have escalated due to the environmental crisis, encroachment by man, destabilized markets, hegemonic politics, the ubiquitous dread of nuclear war, terrorism, infectious diseases, techno nihilism, and psychological self-interest driving everything from vain desire to the local economy and international relations, not to mention the anathema of evil, abuse, trauma, greed, and the psychopathology of everyday life. Our recalcitrant dependency on fossil fuel is gradually suffocating the planet. Greenhouse warming, climate catastrophes, and aberrant weather phenomena occur every day throughout the globe and yet we do very little to mitigate it, let alone reverse its course. Moreover, we have caused the Anthropocene. Despite the fact that we see the ruin with our own eyes and do practically nothing to mitigate the ecological crisis, world masses have adopted a global bystander effect, where denial and abnegation of social responsibility lie at its very core. Regardless of the degree of gravity we assign to these calculated risks imperiling our existence, we cannot ignore the ominous threat of planetary extinction unless humanity unites in moral preventative action. After offering an adumbrated exposition of our ecological crisis, I examine these complexifications through a combined methodology relying on causal layered analysis, risk mitigation concerns, and foresight praxis as new directions in futures studies.

關鍵字

Bystander Effect ； Climate Change ； Global Warming ； Climate Denialism ； Anthropocene ； Gaia Theory ； Paris Accord ； Risk Mitigation ； Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)