JPS Theological Ethics (Final)
Catholic social teaching on climate change:
o Climate feedbacks (define):
- Processes that either amplify or dampen the effects of initial climate change
- Positive Feedback Loop: Warming accelerates warming
o Documented post-industrial temperature rise
- 1.1°C since 1880
o Tipping point of post-industrial temperature rise
- 1.5°C
o IPCC-identified emissions cuts by 2025, 2030, and 2050
- 2025: Global GHG emissions peak
- 2030: Cut ~50% from 2019 levels
- 2050: (90% direct reduction) Net zero CO2
Voting
o Prudence
- Right, reason applied to action
o Two methods to integrate values in tension
- Layered or Lexically ordered: First level must be secured completely before we can turn to the second
- Intricate Herringbone pattern: Values must all be integrated tightly
o Three Functions
- Selective: Select person to serve as an authority and exercise power on our behalf
- Expressive: Express opinions, beliefs, positions
- Contributive: An act of solidarity with one’s community
o Three parts of an issue stance
- Judge: Is climate change a problematic reality?
- Diagnosis: Is it human-caused?
- Proposal: How should we address this problem?
o Four candidate considerations
- Competence
- Character
- Collaboration
- Connections
o Meaning of “no monopolies” on values, issues, and solutions
- Values transcend issues, and no issue has a monopoly on a value
- No solution has a monopoly on addressing an issue
o Formal and material cooperation with evil
- Formal: Agreement in the Will
- Material: Disagreement of the Will
▪ Proportionate reasons are values
- Reason: The value at stake (e.g. human dignity)
- Proportionality: The relationship between means and end (gives act a moral meaning)
Public Narrative
o Three parts of narrative plot
- Challenge
- Choice
- Outcome
o Three narratives
- Story of Self: What are the experiences and values that call you to assume leadership
- Story of Us: What are the experiences and values of the ‘us’ – or the people in the room –that will call them to join you in action
- Story of Now: Why is it urgent to respond to the challenge? What do you want to call on the people here to join you in doing? What is the outcome? Where is the hope?
Community organizing
o Power (define)
- The capacity to enact/catalyze change
o Three categories of people who activate power
- Organizers: Trained professionals who may come from outside a community or emerge within” and support leaders
- Leaders: Govern a community organizing group and decide what issue it will work on
- Participants: Those leaders encounter (one-on-ones), recruit, coordinate, and accompany
o One-on-One Interviews
- One on One: Conversations between organizer and leader/participant
▪ Self-interest
- Passion that inspires a person’s commitment
▪ Four aims
- Uncover self-interests
- Develop a relationship
- Evaluate leadership potential
- Recruit for the organization
o Problem and issue
- Problem: Broad, vague challenges
- Issue: Leaders/participants “carve a discrete, achievable goal” to address problem
o Primary and secondary target
- Primary: The person or, sometimes, group of persons that can make the change you want / Possess power to authorize change
- A powerful group or person that can influence/pressure the primary
o Developmental leadership
▪ Dot model vs. leadership team
- I’m the leader and we’re all leaders vs. leadership team
▪ Three qualities of leadership teams
- Bounded
- Stable
- Interdependent
▪ Snowflake
- Approach where each member of the core tam accepts responsibility (distributed leadership) for the organization of their own leadership team
Nonviolent social action
o King’s four phases in any nonviolent campaign
- Collection of the facts
- Negotiation
- Self-purification
- Direct Action
o Difference between just and unjust laws
- Just: Any law that uplifts huma personality
- Unjust: Human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law
o Six sources of power
- Authority: Power of the office
- Human Resources: People who enact power of a ruler
- Skills and Knowledge: Conceptual and Evaluative
- Material Resources: Means to leverage power
- Intangible Factors: Habits, attitudes, values
- Sanctions: Threat/application of punishments
o Pillars of support
- Specific – institutions & groups
- Not general sectors
o Police
o Military
o Bureaucracy
o Educational System
o Organized Religion
o Media
o Business Community
▪ Definition and relationship to obedience
- Pillars of Support: Specific institutions and sections of society that supply the existing regime with sources of power required for maintenance and expansion of its power capacity.
- Relationship: “Heart of political power” – If the people do not obey, the ruler cannot rule
▪ Reliant and dormant sources of power
o Four mechanisms of change
- Conversion: Inspired to change for principled or ethical reasons
- Accommodation: Convinced to change based on cost-benefit analysis
- Coercion: Forced to change based on prospect of unsustainable losses
- Disintegration: Unavoidable change based on systemic collapse
o Four levels of strategic planning
- Grand Strategy: A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a mahor or overall aim (teleological)
- Campaigns: “Fronts” of the grand strategy related to issues with discrete aims that all work toward a common objective
- Tactics: Plans to achieve specific, limited objectives
- Methods: Specific actions
o Three types of methods
- Protest and Persuasion (e.g. petitions and picketing)
- Non-Cooperation (e.g. strikes, walk-outs, boycotts)
- Intervention (e.g. sit-ins and blockades)