Global Warming

Five Ethical Theories about Environmentalism

(courtesy of Dr. Dan Holbrook, Distinguished Professor of Ethics WSU)

• Utilitarianism

Actual effects of an action

No intrinsic value to anything, but humans

Maximizing utility for the future

Environment is at the top of the list of human pleasures

• Land Ethics (Leopold)

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and the beauty of the biotic community (including soils, waters, plants, animals). It is wrong when it tends otherwise”

• Deep Ecology (Devall)

Everything has intrinsic value separate of merely human purposes

We need to find a sense of place among other equally valuable entities in

nature, i.e., where do the individuals fit in

                        Humans have no rights to reduce resources in the world past their vital

needs

• Respect for Nature

value in individuals…they all have an interest

• Anti-Environmental Ethics (Thomson/Holbrook)

only candidates for intrinsic value are self-conscious, self-determining beings (humans)

Ethics, Public Policy and Global Warming

Dale Jamieson

Science, Technology and Human Values Vol. 17, No.2 (Spring, 1992), pp. 139-153

Background and History

• Speculation about the possibility of anthropogenic global warming since the late nineteenth century
• Anthropogenic =  of, relating to, or resulting from the influence of human beings or nature
• Thought it would increase agricultural productivity and delay onset of the next ice age
• Recently, the prospect of GW is the stuff of “doomsday narratives”

Widespread drought, flood, famine

• High level meetings since 1963 (Conservation Foundation 1963
• International consensus about the likelihood of AGW began with National

Academy of Sciences, (Report in 1983)

• The IPCC (1990), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a doubling of atmospheric carbon from its pre-industrial baseline (same as predicted by Arrhenius, (1896)
• Policy interventions, with 60% reductions are needed to stabilize a carbon dioxide doubling by the end of the next century (IPPC)
• Emerging consensus brought to American Public 1988
• James Hanson testified before the Senate that it was 99% probable that GW had begun
• Front page in New York Times (greenhouse effect had become an important public issue
• Media backlash against Hansen, beginning in 1988
• Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York times expressed skepticism
• Forbes (1989) published “The Global Warming Panic”
• Forbes took out full page ad in the NYT congratulating itself for its courage in confronting the “doom-and-gloomers”
• Bush Administration influenced by this backlash, (April 1990)
• Bush Administration reiterated its position in July at Houston Economic Summit

Hypotheses

• Several hypotheses at variance about the future of GW
• Variances are differences in emphasis, rather than kind
• Others emphasize degree of certainty attached to the predictions
• Budyko (1988), Idso (1989), both say it is good for us
• Ephron (1988, injection of greenhouse gases will trigger a new ice age
• Gaia thesis, (Lovelock, 1988), self-regulating planetary mechanisms may preserve climate stability

Dale Jamieson’s Hypotheses

• Most important force driving the backlash is not the concerns about the weakness of the science, but the realization that slowing global warming or responding to its effects may involve large economic costs and redistributions, as well as radical revisions in lifestyle
• Some economists express doubt about the worth of trying to prevent substantial warming
• All of the facts may never be in
• GW is not just a scientific problem, but one of ethics (values) and policies and science

Management Approaches

• GW and its consequential problems are to be managed
• Management techniques are drawn from neoclassical theories
• Manipulating behaviors by controlling economic incentives through taxes, regulation and subsidies
• Public debate has internalized neoclassical economic perspective to the point of invisibility
• Policies are now debates over economics, e.g., within the EPA policy options
• Economics is very important, but not the grandiose claims being made today
• Economic efficiency is only one value
• Equity is another value, but less understood
• Some believe that NEC provides the only social theory that accurately represents human behavior AND
• Self-interest is the only motivator for human beings, self-interest is the soul of modern economic man, (Myers1983)
• People are really motivated by a broad range of concerns, including family, friends, religious, moral and political ideals
• Some believe that it is inappropriate to take economic considerations into account for some events
• Jamieson suggests that it is not always rational to make decisions solely on narrowly economic grounds
• Additionally, it is not possible to assign economic values to all of the diverse and unknown impacts of GH warming and alternative courses of action.

Ethics and Global Change

• Ethical questions about GW include how we ought to live, what kinds of societies we want and how we should relate to other forms of life.
• Economics tell us how to reach our goals efficiently, but not what goals to pursue
• There is a diversity of opinions of the place of values, but a system of values assigns blame, praise and responsibility.
• A value has a force for a range of people who are similarly situated. Values are more objective than preferences
• A system of values is generally a cultural construction rather an individual one
• A system of values may govern one’s behavior
• Jamieson believes that our dominant value system is inadequate and inappropriate for guiding our thinking about global environmental problems
• Our current value system evolved in low-population-density and low-technology societies, with seemingly unlimited access to land and other resources
• Our current system presupposes that harms and their causes are individual and readily identified
• It is hard to assign blame in a Global environment
• Clearly identifiable harms will have occurred because of human agency
• Conventional morality would have trouble finding anyone to blame
• Unless we develop new values and conceptions of responsibility, we will have enormous difficulty in motivating people to respond to this problem

Conclusion

• Some may think that new values are idealistic, but needed
• Our current values are historically constructed
• Values permeate our institutions and practices
• Reforming our values is part of constructing new moral, political and legal concepts
• Science has alerted us to the impact of humankind on the planet
• We should confront GW as a fundamental challenge to our values and not treat it as if it ere another technical problem to be managed