Introduction: Paths to Witnessing, Ethics of Speaking Out

Writing about the threat of nuclear catastrophe in The Fate of the Earth, Jonathan Schell observed: “the act of thinking about it is always voluntary, and the choice of not thinking about it is always available.”1 The same can be said for most of us, most of the time, when it comes to the unthinkable of unchecked climate change. But the choice is not available to men and women whose work is to comprehend the radical dangers of climate change, and to act on what they know. For the authors in this issue of Dædalus–along with many other scientists, doctors, public health experts, social scientists, lawyers, journalists, business consultants, and military officers–climate change shapes their professional identity and expands their sense of responsibility. They find thinking about its many elements within strict disciplinary confines constraining, and the codes of professional ethics that govern day-to-day practice inadequate. The extraordinary challenges they confront require more. They push the bounds of their fields and they push themselves to become witnessing professionals. The term witnessing professionals is not part of common parlance. Yet we need a name for those who speak out from the vantage point of their specialized knowledge about the dangers posed by crises like climate change. In this volume, the authors reflect on their paths into climate work and bearing witness to what they know. Each focuses on a different aspect of climate change’s effects and responses to it, so that this constellation of essays helps us grasp that climate change is not one single fearful thing. The familiar phrase obscures its many-sidedness. We may, as Carolyn Kormann writes in her contribution to this collection, “try to see the whole of the moon,” but we must also appreciate the innumerable, dynamic facets of climate change.2 Its devastation is pluralistic. It ravages the earth as we know it: Arctic ice, rain forests, islands, and reefs; health and habitats; economic systems and social arrangements; and for many people worldwide, it deranges everyday life. Climate change is all encompassing, and so is the domain of witnessing professionals.