Climate dreaming 215 Dashwood in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility gradually convince each other that John owes his stepmother and half-sisters far less than he initially took himself to have promised his father, worsening their poverty in order to enhance his own wealth while convincing himself that he has kept his promise. Gardiner observes: if we are tempted by buck-passing, but reluctant to face up to moral criticism for succumbing to it (our own, or that of others), we are likely to be attracted to weak or deceptive arguments that appear on the surface to license such behaviour, and so to give such arguments less scrutiny than we ought.32 Moral corruption seems to be intellectual sloth, serving self-interest.33 This lazy thinking allows one to settle for a comforting false conclusion when harder thinking would uncover inconvenient truths. If we realized that if we do not ambitiously pursue radical reductions in carbon emissions immediately, future generations are likely to suffer grave – potentially catastrophic, in fact – threats to their basic well-being, we might feel badly (either about the likely suffering in the future, or about the heartless kind of person we see that we have let ourselves become – affective empathy or shame – or both), unless we spring into action in support of ambitious mitigation. But becoming serious about mitigation might be at least somewhat expensive (although progressively less so at a rapid rate), time and energy consuming, or inconvenient. Luckily, we may think, people are building NETs into future climate scenarios, and it seems plausible that if emissions can be reversed in future, it will not hurt anything if we do not exert ourselves now but merely engage in symbolic mitigation to show that our hearts are in the right place, and leave the technologically heavy lifting to the people of the future. In short, it looks as if NETs may buy time for emissions reductions later – by other people. That’s a comforting thought. But, of course, as we have seen, the thought is comforting but groundless. And, as Gardiner pointed out, climate change is a case in which many costs must be borne by the current generation (because if action is not taken now, it will be too late – again, we often cannot in fact ‘buy time’), but the benefits will be enjoyed only by people in the future. Who wants to pay now so that others can benefit in future? So there is a strong temptation for generational buck-passing: let’s not pay – since they will benefit, it may seem fair to let them pay. But if we can see that delay will set severe dangers irretrievably in motion, it may be more difficult – for some people, at least – to stick to the hard-headedly self-interested strategy while maintaining their self-respect. Much better for our self-respect if delay will not be deadly – and it would not if over-shoots in emissions could be corrected later by NETs (and nothing untoward happened meanwhile). So, in order to face uncomfortable facts such as the fact that BECCS may not be compatible with food security for the poor and the fact that a number of very untoward events will be set in motion during any delay in aggressive mitigation, one must actively resist wishful thinking. Such resistance is perfectly possible, but it does require a desire to face facts and a willingness to respond to reality. Nothing heroic is required, only a fundamental sense of justice, a little study, and a little hard thinking. President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with what appear to be morally corrupt men. They would, they say, gladly take action on climate change if it were really clear what needs to be done. But while climate change is occurring to some 32. Ibid 302. 33. Cf Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2013) 46. © 2017 The Author Journal compilation © 2017 Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd