In the seventh thesis of his essay “Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View”, Kant argues it is inevitable that the different fractured nations of the world will eventually unite into a “league of nations”. I won’t go too into detail regarding his arguments, but in short, his reasoning is that, just as each individual human benefits from entering into a society to ensure collective safety, the same logic holds when applied at scale. So if we consider each nation as an individual person, it is for each nation’s collective benefit to act co-operatively rather than against each other.
However, he elaborates on this and says that the natural/instinctive way humanity arrives at such contracts of peace has always been out of necessity rather than reason – despite the fact that reason alone should theoretically be enough to bring the world to peace. In other words, humans have a habit of doing everything the hard way and are unwilling to make the necessary changes until forced to through pain and conflict.
Although Kant was referring to global peace, I felt this analysis of humanity’s nature at approaching problems could just as easily be applied to the issue of climate change. Despite reason and science telling us far in advance the very real and inevitable consequences of climate change, humans seem to have a super-power for ignoring long-term problems in favor of protecting a more comfortable world view.
His solution for this is “long internal working of each political body toward the education of its citizens” – specifically an education towards a stronger moral disposition. I do believe the current generation of young minds are at a point where they are becoming more and more concerned with the issues plaguing us with climate change. Yet, it still seems to be out of necessity of the imminent threat rather than as a result of reason and higher education.
In a way, I have no doubt that every generation has had their fair share of imminent threats that forced change (except maybe those hippies in the 60s and 70s). But it seems to me that, to truly act in a way that minimizes collective human suffering – each generation would have to not only work to solve the problems of their time; but also selflessly, out of moral obligation, work to predict and prevent the problems of subsequent generations as well.