Reading Notes⌗

Jamieson’s Ethics and the Environment Chapter 4⌗

4.1 Moral Theories⌗

  • Two fields of normative ethics
    • Moral theory
      • What categories or types of things/acts/practices are correct
    • Practical Ethics
      • Is a specific thing/act/practice morally correct
  • Moral theories consider acts from different viewpoints
  • Each theory must explain the situation fully
  • It is natural to have multiple, they aren’t absolute truths

4.2 Consequentialism⌗

  • This is the family of theories that holds that acts are morally based solely on their consequences
  • Consequentialism has been around for a while
  • All consequences of an action matter, even those that affect others
  • An issue they face is determining which actions directly lead to what consequences
  • More importantly, they must consider what truly constitutes an action versus a consequence
    • If a consequence is an inevitable outcome of an action, then the action itself may take on a value (lying vs. bringing a lie into the world)
  • Actual versus probable, foreseeable, or intended consequences
    • You may mean to do well, but ending up causing a morally incorrect action inadvertently
  • A theory in this family must have:
    • A theory to assign value to consequences
    • At what level to determine the value of a consequence
    • a principle which specifies how or to what extent the properties must obtain in order for an action to be right, wrong or indifferent
  • Examples
    • Hedonistic Act Utilitarianism
      • Maximize the pleasure gained from an act
    • Perfectionist Act Utilitarianism
      • An act is correct if it gets you closer to being perfect
    • Hedonistic Act Minimalism
      • Any act that produces pleasure is correct
    • Hedonistic Lifetime Utilitarianism
      • Any act that maximize the pleasure gained from a life in which that act is done is correct
    • All are different
  • Demandingness Objection
    • Consequentialism is too demanding - we should not be responsible for every single consequence of every action
  • Special Relations Objection
    • Consequentialism is too objective to consider partial or individual relations between people
    • Morality depends on the obligations and relations we have to others, but not here
  • Rights and Justice Objection
    • There are cases in which to provide the greatest good to the most amount of people, Consequentialism would judge it morally correct to violate someone’s right
    • Depending on what to maximize, Consequentialism can sanction inequality despite need
  • Consequentialism obviously has flaws, and that’s alright
    • Indirect Consequentialism is a theory of motivation rather than justification
    • Hare says that we should follow conventions unless there is a conflict, at which point Consequentialism should be invoked
    • Rule Consequentialism says that an act is right if it follows rules that satisfy Consequentialism generally/universally
    • Motive Consequentialism says that an act is right if its motive follows Consequentialism

4.3 Virtue Ethics⌗

  • The main question to a virtue ethicist is “what person would do such an act?”
  • The main difference from consequentialists is that they believe that virtues themselves are what hold value
  • To have a value, a person must hold that value through and through
  • Living virtuously means flourishing, whatever that may be
  • Anscombe says that virtue ethics is its own thing
    • Most theories hold morality like a law, but then there must be a lawgiver, which is a contradiction
  • Hursthouse says that an action is right if and only if is what a virtuous agent would do in those circumstances
    • A virtuous person is one whose life express the virtues as a whole
    • In addition, not all actions by a virtuous person as virtuous
    • Virtuous people may do practically wrong act despite following a morally correct theory
    • However, the virtuous person is the definitions of morally correct, which means they can never act wrongly
  • In addition, most explanations don’t provide a concreate moral reason, just that a virtuous person wouldn’t do such a thing
  • What virtues should we follow? Who should the virtuous person be based upon?
  • It’s not exactly a convincing or helpful theory either way
  • But, virtue ethics works well in environmentalism in some cases
    • If a person destroys the environment for their own pleasure, and hurts no ene else, why is it wrong?
    • Virtue ethics says because a virtuous person would not do such a thing, it’s his character is the issue
  • Virtue ethics also struggles with tragedies of the commons
    • Is it wrong to live a normal life even if that life hurts the environment?

4.4 Kantianism⌗

  • Central Doctrines
    • We are rational agents living in a world with other rational gents
    • Morality depends on how we reason about what to do and what we can do
  • Categorical imperatives are absolute and objective, no matter the conditions or motives
    • Kant says there is only one, but in different formulations
    • Act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
    • Put simply, something is right if the world would work if everyone did it
    • Preferences don’t matter, if it can be willed it is right
  • An action might be deemed wrong by a broad maxim, but a more specific one may deem it right
  • This leads to the question, what maxims can we trust/use?
  • Another formulation is the formula of humanity
    • Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, as always an end and never as a means only.
  • This means that we have no duties to animals as they are “mere things”
    • Kant justifies this, saying that we care for animals because we care for ourselves and our morality
  • Korsgaard says that rational agents are valueable (like Kant), but also so are their ends (because rational agents give them value)
    • Since we are rational agents, and we value animalistic nature in ourselves, we must value it in animals as well
    • Since we value our own ends, we must value that other animals must pursue their own ends
  • We need to be careful about too much general simplification
  • The difference from consequentialism is that something can be wrong despite having no consequences

Whyte and Cuomo’s Ethics of Caring in Environmental Ethics in the Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics⌗

Introduction⌗

  • Tree hugging started 40 years ago when the people of Chipko Andolan movement protested environmental exploitation
  • Care Ethics
    • This is a view of ethics where caring and caretaking of ourselves and others is at the center.
    • Contrary to other theories like Kantianism, Consequentialism, or Virtue Ethics, Care Ethics understand that there will always be affection, relation and context in human morality and networks.

Morality should address issues of caring and empathy and relationships between people rather than only or primarily the rational decisions of solitary moral agents.
—Virginia Held

  • Since women have often more experience in caretaking and caring, theorists suggest that women might have more insights here, but it is not by any means limited to just women, it should be everyone
  • Care Ethics provide a perspective on caring for others an nature that other western philosophies may not consider
  • Despite care ethics promoting an emotional despite for nonhuman things, environmental ethics often glosses over it

Care Ethics in Indigenous Environmental Movements⌗

  • Concepts of care are integral to indigenous culture in some form or other
    • They highlight understanding that the self is just one part of a web of many
    • Morally involves reciprocating responsibilities to other
    • Praise values that protect the environment
    • Help those who need it in a way that helps nature
    • Want to have sovereignty to help the land
  • Indigenous people face being forced out of their land. their land being polluted and other health effects from pollution
  • Compounding pollution and colonization of lands has disproportionately affected indigenous people
  • Their environmental movements often highlight relation between humans and other human as well nature
    • Key theme is understanding the closely tied and multidimensional relationships between humans, non human, entities and collectives
    • These relationships have intrinsic value as identity,community and spirituality, but also instrumental value
    • They’re heavy burdens but motivate good things
    • Caring means a value necessary for Justice and sustainability in this case
  • Despite the struggle, indigenous peoples have been fighting against organizations that have dominated them and have been winning, helping the environment
  • Their protests have shaped national policies

Knowledge, Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Moral Repair⌗

  • In indigenous literature, stewardship does not mean absolute control, rather, knowing that being a part of the environment means caring for some of it and morally have to do so
  • Care is often used, especially when traditional entities are referred to as sentient beings (which circumvents roadblocks in western ethics)
    • Water is often shown as an example here and many declarations and other literature focuses on water as a essential part of this web, to which we both have responsibility and receive from it
  • All elements of the have responsibilities toward each other here
  • Especially with policy, “civil societies” don’t always consider the culture of caring and sharing between people and nature that indigenous peoples have
  • The interdependence that they have yields a lot of expertise and knowledge that is know always used in “civil society”

Feminist Care Ethics and Environment Ethics⌗

  • Values
    1. People are interdependent
    2. Mutually beneficial relationships are crucial
    3. Care work is often attributed to females and subjugated people
    4. It’s good to know how to care
    5. Context matters for morally
    6. Care is necessary to heal from injustice
  • Morals don’t have to be absolute truths

Gilligan’s findings indicated that even among culturally similar (white, American, middle class) subjects, two moral “voices” or paradigms of moral reasoning are evident: one focused on impersonal justice and rule-​following, the other focused on appropriate caretaking and meeting responsibilities within specific relationships

— Whyte and Cuomo

  • These different views are often insightful and breaking the illusion that there is only can break gender roles and barriers in society
  • Using the knowledge here can build better relationship between people that does not take advantages of caretakers
  • These ethics are often used to care for animals and even non-sentient beings as they emphasize care for all
  • Caring for others and teaching others to care for themselves can promote independence and help foster and better climate situation

Climate Change Ethics: Essential Readings Chapter 1⌗

Introduction⌗

  • It’s hard to examine climate change morally because of the wide breadth of knowledge need to understand it
    • But, it is fundamentally an ethics question, so we should power through

1 - Terminology⌗

  • We started with Greenhouse effect, which was true, but not clear because there’s a natural component too and it’s not the only issue
  • Next we used global warming, which understand there multiple issues but higher temps aren’t the main problem (even if they don’t’ seem like one) — the imbalance is, plus temps may go down in the end
  • Now we’re at climate change — the fact that the climate itself is going off balance

2 - Climate Science⌗

  • We know for sure the climate ic ahgning and we’re getting more confident
  • Predictions aren’t good and we’ll definitely to get off of fossil fuels
  • Despite how bad they sound, things are probably worse
  • The big issue would be the Ocean Conveyor
    • If ice melts and messes this up, bad things will happen
    • If its slows or stops, temperatures will drop fast and everywhere along with droughts
    • If freshwater interrupts the sinking salt water, it’s easy for it to slow
  • Warming may happen, but it may also cause cooling (which will affect richer, northern countries the most)
  • We’re not sure what will happen, but it’ll be hard to undo if it does happen

3 - Scientific Uncertainty⌗

  • Uncertainty is we can’t estimate how likely, but risk is we can estimate how likely
  • Climate change is in risk territory now, so it’s real
  • Even if the IPCC isn’t reliable we can still act on an uncertain problem — and we must
  • And even if its hard, we know most of the facts, we’re just missing a few pieces
  • Our sources for historical temperature and relatively short and fluctuate too, but that doesn’t mean you can dismiss climate change entirely
    • We also understand it theoretically and what’s happening fits with that
    • More than scientific debate over the existence of global warming, it’s a debate over whether it’s positive or negative feedback
  • Other sc

4 - Economics⌗

  • Some argue that living with climate change is less expensive than adapting to it
  • Cost
    • Abatement isn’t actually that bad int he grand scheme of things
    • Norhaus’s model is too simplistic
      • There are too many factors to practically Snider
      • Estimating cost also doesn’t work out because society will make it cheaper and most of the benefits won’t be reaped by us
      • Plus, some changes can’t be fixed by throwing money at it or at all
  • Adaptation
    • We’ll need to adapt anyway, should we abate?
    • Don’t want to make adaptation a self fulfilling prophecy
    • Adaptation and Abatement are mutually inclusive
    • Adaptation just delays things

5 - Risk Management and the Precautionary Principle⌗

  • Not only does economics matter, what we want in our environment also matters
  • What we used to value doesn’t really work in a world where we need to learn to adapt to a less-resource rich and more complicated world
  • We need to adapt a new sense of environmental morality
  • That might be a bit too intense
    • No Harm Principle - Do we want to make future generations responsible?
    • Precutionary Principle - Even if we’re not sure if something will hurt us or the environment, we should stop it in case
    • Both are controversial and not always clear
    • They really only work when we’re uncertain
    • In the case of climate change, it’s dangerous enough and likely enough and easy enough to solve that we should do it in case
  • So how do we act on this?
    • Try and reduce emissions as fast as possible
    • How do we resolve what we need now and stopping the use of fossil fuels?

6 - Responsibility for the Past⌗

  • Who is responsible for cleaning up?
    • Main consensus is that developed countries must do the majority of the work while developing countries continue to develop with emissions
    • The reason for this is the developed countries put those emissions out there so why should developing countries pay for their mistakes?
    • They should both clean their own mess and compensate for using so many resources
  • However, some argue developed countries shouldn’t be so responsible
    • They didn’t really know of their effects until now (but then again, we did know for a while)
      • Even then, if you did it, you did it, ignorance doesnt really work
    • In addition to this, how do you determine compensation?
      • There’s not really a good way to determine who polluted the most and go based off of that
      • In contrast to this, there are 3 reasons why that idea doesn’t work
        1. Poor countries will defect if the developed don’t pay for their actions
        2. Sanctions will cause external pressure
        3. Only depends on emissions and nothing else

7 - Allocating Future Emissions⌗

  1. Equal Per Capita Entitlements
    • We distribute some amount of allowable emissions equally to each person
    • This would drastically change actual emissions and be disruptive
    • Concern 1 - It would encourage pollution growth
      • Fix: Delay population changes in relation to allowed emissions
    • Concern 2 - Emissions aren’t the same for everyone - some are for luxury others for survival
  2. Rights to Subsistence Emissions
    • People should be allowed some level of minimum emissions that allow them to live
    • This implies that we may have to exceed a ceiling if it means people can live
    • This also implies different people will be given different amounts of emission to use
    • You can extend it with something else and increase slightly
    • Concern 1 - What is a necessity?
      • What morally counts as something needed?
      • Does this mean we continue to live our lifestyles and change our emissions accordingly in contrast to adapting to the new world like other suggest?
    • Concern 2 - It might not actually different from the first one
      • Isn’t the minimum built into the per capita one?
      • It’s hard to claim necessities and defend it appropriately
      • It also creates political tension and would hurt poorer countries
  3. Priority to the Least Well-Off
    • Basically offer assistance to LDCs
    • One version would be to help the poor now instead of their future generations which is less costly
      • The issue here is that helping the poor can also be acting on climate change
      • It’s also hard to convince countries to spend money on that
    • Another would be to allow increases of emissions based on GDP
      • An issue is how do we make sure that genuinely helps the poor
      • Also it’s just better and easier to spend that money elsewhere
  4. Fair Chore Division
    • What does this mean?