ENVR 203 - Environmental Ethics

Flashcards covering key concepts in environmental ethics as discussed in the ENVR 203 lecture notes.

Ethics

Analysis of normative propositions; not just about deciding what is right or wrong, but understanding what we 'ought' to do.

Types of normative concepts

Value concepts: good vs bad

Deontic concepts: right vs wrong

Normative proposition that challenges intuition: 3 responses

1. accept the logic and revise intuitions

2. find an arbitrary stopping point on the “slippery slope”

3. revise and refine the normative proposition

Moral Relativism and Boghossian’s Objection

The belief that moral judgments are true or false only relative to a particular cultural framework. Boghossian denies it.

• relativism implies either A or B.

  • A leads to rejection of ethics (nihilism)

  • B leads to absolutism

Enoch’s Ethical Objectivism and 3 tests

3 test which prove that moral objectivism is intuitive.

• Spinach test: “glad I don’t like spinach cuz then I’d have to eat it” joke, doesn’t work for certain things like racism because they are objectively wrong

• Disagreement and deliberation test: moral disagreement/deliberation feels like debating absolute truths, not subjectivities, showing that we feel morals are absolute.

• Counterfactual test: “would it still be wrong if we believed it was right?” the answer is yes for morals (e.g. gender discrimination, murder), so they are objective

Consequentialism

The moral rightness of an action is determined solely by its consequences.

Deontology

Actions are right or wrong based on their adherence to rules or duties, regardless of the outcomes.

Consequentialism and Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism that focuses on net pleasure, rather than net goodness.

Intrinsic Value

The value that something has in itself, as opposed to the instrumental value which is derived from its usefulness.

John Stuart Mill

Anthropocentric utilitarianism. “Can they reason?” is what matters.

—> humans enjoy higher pleasures than animals, and higher pleasures are what matter.

Jeremy Bentham

Founded modern utilitarianism. Animal rights activist, “Can they suffer” is what matters (influenced Singer).

Peter Singer

Anti-speciesist utilitarian and effective altruist. Equal moral standing for animals.

Effective Altruism

Determine the most effective ways to create the most benefit to others and save as many lives as possible (global-scale utilitarianism). Peter Singer is effective altruist.

• Singer says you should try to maximize your good deeds’ marginal utility, i.e. by donating to charities in poorer countries

Slippery Slope Argument

Logical fallacy, argues that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant impact.

Jeff McMahan

If humans should stop eating meat, it follows that predatory animals should be replaced by herbivores (i.e. make predators sterile to decrease world suffering).

• It seems he is dead serious. But this can be used as a critique of Singer if read as satire—if we reject McMahan’s conclusions, we may reject Singer’s also

Shelly Kagan’s Hierarchy

Rejects anti-speciesism, hierarchical standing based on species’ capacity to reason (e.g. humans > apes > dogs > fish). Uses modal personhood to argue that humans’ standing is always superior (even in cases of cognitive defects) because it is potential to be a person that matters.

Problems with Utilitarianism

• Consequentialism: ends justify means, doesn’t consider equality/distribution of pleasure

• Hedonism: pleasure is not intrinsically valuable, but instrumentally valuable?

  • experience machine: can feel good without doing good

  • death isn’t an experience, so death okay under hedonism?

• Sum-total: no objective basis for measuring pleasure or comparing it between people. Also, distribution problem again: (10,2) sums to the same as (6,6)

Kantian Animal Ethics

Deontological approach. Anthropocentric: duty to animals is duty to humanity. Treat nonhumans well because it enhances our humanity, not for their own benefit (they lack intrinsic value and moral standing).

Kantian Morality

• must act willingly, not driven by pleasure or pain

  • this makes us human

• categorical imperative: act as if you’d be okay with your actions being universal law

• emphasizes interactions rather than net good/bad

• must treat all humans as ends rather than means

Kant’s Personification Principle

Direct moral duty to persons, indirect duty to nonpersons (animals and environment). Our duties to nonpersons are actually duties to ourselves and each other, since cherishing nature makes us more human.

Biocentrism and problems

Living things have moral standing.

• is it wrong to eat plants?

• do nonliving things have no intrinsic value?

Arne Naess’s Deep Ecology and Problems

Ecosystems have intrinsic value. Contrasted to shallow ecology, where central objective is wellbeing of people rather than ecosystems for their own sake. Calls for smaller human populations and limiting human consumption to “vital needs.”

Problems:

• how to implement small human populations?

• how to define humans’ “vital needs”?

Longtermism and Implications

Extension of utilitarianism (anthropocentric) where future lives are valued equally to current lives. Must maximize the sum of human wellbeing over the long-term. The future population is so much bigger than the present that we must prioritize them at our own expense, i.e. reduce existential risks.

Implications and objections:

• innovations to reduce existential risks (space travel, geoengineering, etc) are likely to happen in HICs, so should we invest more in them than in LICs?

  • ethical dilemmas regarding resource allocation and equality

• loss of lives in the present is basically negligible compared to future

  • so should we just stop caring about current suffering? Sacrifice everything for future lives?

• trust in technology and human progress

  • excessive trust?

Monetary Valuation of Human Lives - Why and How

Why?

• determining financial compensation for lives lost

• CBA for live-saving technologies, policies, regulations

• CBA for climate change mitigation

How?

• willingness to pay using contingent valuation method, i.e. imaginary scenarios:

  • how much would you pay to save X lives?

  • problem: WTP for own life varies based on age, health, income—does this mean lives have different value?

  • used in 1995 IPCC report, controversial cuz LIC lives valued less

• pure time preference, discounting into future

• identified victims bias (vs statistical victims)

Identified Victims Bias

Environment policies deal with statistical lives, which people care less about. Cognitive, legal, political and ethical bias towards identified victims.

Heinzerling reading: ID life bias

• focus on costs, not lives

• focus on risk, not lives (risk of 100 deaths out of 100 000 is ok)

• CBA in policy-making deals with statistical lives, since identified lives are often priceless

  • leads to policy bias against statistical lives

Pareto Efficiency

“Better in every possible way”

Pareto inefficiency: something could be improved without cost to anyone.

Coase Theorem and Application Example

If transaction costs are low and property rights are defined, negotiation between parties will yield efficient resource allocation/internalization of externalities.

Applications (internalize externalities):

• factory pollutes and causes illness, victims sue and get compensated, factory has incentive to pollute less

• emissions trading: companies must buy permits, can sell permits when they emit less, incentive to reduce emissions

Internalizing Externalities

1. Internalize externalities with Coase theorem

2. Make (e.g. the climate) a common or public good

Climate Change and Mitigation as Goods

Climate is a common good (climate change a “common bad”):

• each country’s ability to mitigate is limited by other countries’ actions, so it is non-excludable and rivalrous

Climate change mitigation is a public good:

• mitigation is non-excludable and non-rivalrous, since benefits of mitigation are shared by all

Broome and Foley on Costless Mitigation, and Objections

If climate change is an externality (pareto inefficiency), it can be internalized with no sacrifice by transferring costs to future generations.

• requires World Climate Bank to handle long-term loans from future

  • bonds guaranteed by HICs

Objections:

• the market created this problem, can’t solve it

• too techno-optimist

• climate change mitigation must include sacrifice

• belief that although we owe things to the future, they don’t owe us anything (Broome disagrees)

Geoengineering and Objections

Large-scale, deliberate manipulation of Earth systems.

Why:

• avoids tragedy of the commons and the need for international agreement, since it can be done unilaterally to the benefit of all

• consistent with other mitigation strategies (like reducing emissions)

• can be profitable, like with incentivized CDR

Objections:

• “playing god”

• too uncertain, may be unexpected and irrevocable side-effects

• may de-incentivize mitigation if we can trust tech to save us

Oxford Principles of Geoengineering

1. Regulated as a public good

2. Public participation in decisions

3. Disclosure of research and open publication of results

4. Independent assessment of impacts

5. Governance before deployment

Gardiner and Fragniere say these are not rigorous enough.

Gardiner and Fragniere’s Tollgate Principles of Geoengineering

More demanding than Oxford Principles. Call for rigorous ethical standards, gobal/intergenerational public engagement, accountability frameworks, and respect of ethical and ecological norms.

Precautionary Principle

Prudence in the face of uncertainty, especially when there are unpredictable potentially irreversible consequences.

Implications/problems:

• precautions can be conflicting: if we are precautionary about extinction, we should take all measures to mitigate climate change, but we are also precautionary about geoengineering! how to compare risks of geoengineering and unmitigated climate change?

• what is the appropriate level of precaution, and how do we determine it?

Boghossian

Moral relativism fails because there is no “relativistic cousin” to absolute morality (abs morality is normative, relativism is not). Relativism leads to nihilism, while believing in some moral absolutes leads to rejecting relativism.

Enoch

3 objectivity tests:

1. Spinach test: only funny if the thing in question is subjective. Morals are not.

2. Disagreement test: if disagreeing about morals feels like disagreeing about facts, morals are absolute.

3. Counterfactual test: would it still be wrong if we thought it was right? if yes, morals are absolute.

claiming that disagreement = relativism is self-defeating.

McMahan

If it is biologically feasible and causes less total suffering, we should eliminate carnivores. Species are not a morally relevant category.

Kagan

It is okay to be speciesist. Moreover, we are actually modal-personist. Depending on the degree of personhood and an animal’s cognition, animal interests can count more than modal persons’.

Wood

Kantian view of standing based on cognition (fragments of rationality in non-humans should be respected).

• argues against personification principle, since it prevents honouring the rationality of beings who aren’t fully rational (i.e. smart animals, children, the dead)

Korsgaard

Kantian ethics allows duty to other animals, because when we (rationally) decide pain is bad for ourselves, we make it objectively bad. We don’t need to fix nature, just interact with animals in ways that are plausibly acceptable (since they can’t consent).

Bostrom

Longtermist.

• Total utilitarians should maximize speed of tech development to prevent astronomical waste, but more importantly minimize existential risk.

• Person-affecting utilitarians should still focus on minimizing existential risk and max tech dev.

• if speed and safety conflict, prioritize safety

Greaves and MacAskill

Strong longtermists: the most important feature of our actions is how they impact the far future. Axiological and deontic arguments for longtermism.

Axiological: there are so many future lives, we have to improve their wellbeing.

Deontic: if we can do something good with little personal and no moral cost, we must.

What should we do?

• fund asteroid detection

• prevent future pandemics

• guide ASI dev

Caney

Pure time discounting, growth discounting, and opportunity cost discounting give little or no reason for DA. But growth discounting justifies DC. Caney thinks DC is just (unlike Broome), because the future generations can pay and will be compensated by the benefits we create.

Broome on Duty

Governments have a duty of goodness to mitigate climate change, not a duty of justice, due to nonidentity problem. Private citizens have only a duty of justice because goodness would compel them to do non-climate good instead (more effective).