A Stoic Response To The Climate Crisis

Matthew Gindin thinks that the Stoics have useful advice for us right now.

- Matthew Gindin

The Stoic philosophers, who flourished in the Graeco-Roman world between the third century BCE and the fourth century CE, were profoundly interested in the natural world, and considered science essential knowledge for a philosopher. It’s likely that a Stoic time traveller, transported into the early 21st century, would initially hesitate to believe that humans could remake the climate of the Earth and in doing so threaten the future of the entire biosphere. I think we can be confident, however, that once presented with the scientific evidence our devotee of Hellenic reason would embrace the consensus and agree we are facing an incomprehensibly dangerous emergency.

It is now widely agreed in the scientific community that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history – and that this one has been triggered by human activity. Due to the way we live, much of the biodiversity of the world has disappeared over the last hundred years, and more of it will go in the next hundred. At the end of 2018 the Living Planet Index of the World Wildlife Fund reported that from 1970 to 2014 there was a 60% decline in the overall numbers of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Another recent report, published in the journal Biological Conservation (Vol. 232, April 2019), found that more than 40% of the world’s insect species are dramatically declining and a third are endangered – risking what the report’s authors call a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems.”