Climate Change and Structural Emissions: Moral Obligations at the Individual Level Notes

Introduction

The central question is: What obligations do individuals have to lower their personal carbon emissions, considering climate change is a large-scale global issue?
The paper explores recent suggestions by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Dale Jamieson, offering models for understanding their approaches.
It will also present a third model based on the idea of structural violence. It agrees with Sinnott-Armstrong that people have limited moral obligations to directly lower personal emissions, because the structural arrangements of our lives place a limit on how much individuals can restrict their own emissions. Thus, individuals should focus their efforts on changing the systems instead (e.g., the design of cities, laws and regulation, etc.), which will lead to lower emissions on a larger scale.
The paper questions whether individuals should limit personal emissions regardless of others' pollution or aim to reduce total global emissions, even if it means increasing personal emissions to do so.
Two authors, Sinnott-Armstrong and Jamieson, agree that one should aim to limit total global emissions, but disagree on the best way to achieve this change.
Sinnott-Armstrong argues individuals have little obligation to limit personal emissions and should focus on large-scale political change.
Jamieson proposes individuals have obligations to directly limit emissions, advocating for non-contingent actions.

Sinnott-Armstrong - The Threshold Model

Sinnott-Armstrong argues that individual efforts to reduce emissions will have little direct effect on climate change unless everyone acts.
The question then becomes, what are the moral obligations of one person to reduce her own personal emissions?
He concludes that while one does have obligations to urge larger institutions such as governments to limit total emissions, one has no obligations to change one's personal life to limit one's own emissions.
According to Sinnott-Armstrong, there is no sense in which my personal emissions cause global warming, nor do my actions cause the resulting weather patterns that make up climate change.
A single act of driving (or even a lifetime of driving) by one person is not a sufficient condition for climate change, nor is it a necessary condition.
Sinnott-Armstrong considers two interpretations of causing climate change: creating a problem or exacerbating an existing problem.
He wrote, "[t]he point is not that the harm I cause is imperceptible. I admit that some harms can be imperceptible because they are too small …. Instead, the point is simply that my individual joyride does not cause global warming, climate change, or any of their resulting harms, at least directly."
He believes that, collectively, human emissions of greenhouse gases is causing global warming, and will likely cause devastating climate change.
Sinnott-Armstrong uses an analogy of five people pushing a car over a cliff to illustrate the threshold model. If it takes just three people to push the car, the sixth person's actions are neither necessary nor sufficient to cause the car to go over the cliff.
According to the Threshold Model, specific changes to weather patterns would require a certain threshold of emissions in order to occur.
Once the threshold level of emissions is reached, the resulting sudden rise in global temperatures would begin to cause negatives effects on climate.
Even given debates about climate change, there is still some sense in which weather changes are threshold events, such as a storm.
If my carbon contributions are not enough to cause a storm, then no harm has been committed from my emissions.
Suppose that total emissions are well below some threshold level. In this case, even if my individual emissions cause tiny increases in global temperature (say, by breathing) my emissions could not result in the weather event.
Now suppose that total emissions are above some threshold level (see Figure 1) and are causing a weather event. Now if I were to reduce my personal emissions, total global emissions (the solid arrow) would decrease a tiny bit. However, total emissions would still be above the threshold level of emissions, which presumably causes the event, so my actions would have no effect on reducing harm due to the event.
According to the Threshold Model, changes to my personal emissions can neither cause nor mitigate the changes to the climate. Thus, Sinnott-Armstrong's Sunday driving for fun would be morally permissible.

Jamieson - The Lead-By-Example Model

Jamieson agrees that the goal is to reduce the effects of climate change, presumably by reducing total global emissions. He also agrees with Sinnott-Armstrong that one individual's personal emissions have little direct effect on global warming and climate change.
However, Jamieson argues that an individual's personal emissions do matter morally-they have a significant indirect effect on total global emissions.
Jamieson emphasizes that we are social creatures and are influenced by others. Anyone can serve as a role model, and if that person reduces his emissions, then other people will see him. Soon many people will be following his example and reducing their personal emissions. Finally, if many people reduce personal emissions, then together we can reduce global emissions (179).
Jamieson argues that the best way to bring about the desired outcome is to model the desired behavior. Thus, in the case of global warming, personal emissions and personal habits, not just large-scale political change, become very important. One must set a good example by sticking to the virtuous action that reduces personal emissions (182).
Jamieson argues that when faced with collective action problems such as climate change, one cannot wait for others to act, even if your action would have little effect by itself (172).
Jamieson argues that since someone must act first to break up the standoff, the morally right thing to do is be that first person: cut your own personal emissions. Others will see your example and follow suit, resulting in a cascading set of actions that will bring down global emissions (see the dotted arrow in Figure 2).
Jamieson concludes, the best way to reduce total global emissions is, indeed, to reduce one's personal emissions; I should not wait to see what everyone else is doing, but rather do the virtuous thing and soon others will follow me.

Structural Emissions Model

The State of Washington Department of Ecology recommends that citizens "Drive less, weather proof your home, change your lights, cut hot water usage" and so on. Yet will these changes be enough?
Gerald Gardner and Paul Stem estimate that if everyone in the U.S. implemented these sorts of changes, U.S. carbon emissions could be reduced by 11 percent.
The U.S. needs to reduce annual emissions by 75 percent just to be at the global per capita average, and some bills have Congress setting sights on 80 percent reductions by 2050 to be in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommendations for target global carbon levels.
Timothy Gutowski has led recent studies on personal environmental impact, in which the authors incorporate infrastructures into their calculations. Once government services are accounted for, the authors write,
- [w]e identify a floor, below which environmental impacts for people living in the United States do not drop. For example, none of the life styles studied here ever resulted in an energy requirement below 120GJ (in 1997). This includes the life style of a five year old child, a homeless person and a Buddhist monk. While 120GJ is about one third the American average in 1997 (350GJ), it is almost double the global average energy use in that year (64GJ). (172)
The environmental impact of a millionaire's lifestyle can be nearly ten times that of an average U.S. citizen, yet even citizens at the limiting floor consume twice what citizens globally consume because of the high energy set-up of current built-in government infrastructure (police, roads, libraries, etc.).
Many have noted that systems strongly influence individual choices. From Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's "nudges," to incentives and economics systems, the structures that one encounters can shape one's choices.
One particularly clear articulation of this appears in Johan Galtung's description of "structure violence."
Galtung suggests that even when no single individual causes violence, a system can cause violence.
Paul Farmer, among others, has built on this idea of structural violence by detailing how structures such as racism and poverty limit people's choices, and can lead to health problems and premature death.
Structures are like roads in that they strongly guide the directions one can travel. Driving off-road might still be possible, but very few people do it. Structures are also like roads in that they seem inevitable and unchangeable, and yet both can be changed with enough conscious effort, albeit not usually by one individual (an individual can lobby the city to have a new road put in, or to have a road removed, but she rarely builds a new road herself).
Sinnott-Armstrong argues that bridge repair is the job of the government and it is unreasonable to morally expect individual citizens to undertake the repairs themselves, even if they were capable of it (287).
His use of the analogy is to show that certain paths can guide our actions without our realizing it, and it can be difficult to choose a different action without changing the direction of the path itself. Thus, it might not be possible for an individual to significantly reduce her carbon emissions without there being changes to the structures in her life.
An actual example of how structures limit or influence our choices would be a grocery store. When you walk into an upscale organic grocery store to buy milk, only certain kinds of milk will be available on the shelf. When you walk into a regular grocery store, different choices will be available.
In many poorer neighborhoods around the United States there are no organic grocery stores nearby, so to buy organic milk one would have to make a special trip; very few people will do this. Thus, decisions by grocery chains on where to put their stores and how to stock their shelves place limits on what people can choose to buy.
In the U.S. many infrastructures are built around emissions, leaving limited room for personal choice such as car dependency.
One can try to be conscious about purchases, but there are many hidden environmental impacts associated with the products available for purchase in the United States.
Individuals can choose to install double-paned windows, but so long as they are living in freestanding houses, there will be a limit on how much they can reduce heating and cooling costs. Such homes are significantly less heat-efficient than small, clustered apartments in apartment buildings.
The Structural Emissions Model directs us to think about changing the structures, not the individuals. In these cases, we would think about how to change the communities, for example bringing housing and commercial areas closer together; screening what products are available in stores and increasing oversight on imports; and building apartments and condominiums instead of houses.
Some solutions are small and easily implemented by private institutions, such as universities switching the default on their computer labs from screen saver to sleep mode. Other small and simple fixes are highly controversial, and must be put forward by governments to have any effect at all.
Changing existing food subsidies is another structural change that is technologically simple but politically entangled. Reducing meat and diary subsidies and increasing vegetable subsidies could influence market demand, thereby reducing methane emissions and other emissions related to the meat industry.
Changes that are less controversial but much more involved include increasing the numbers of safe and protected bike lanes, such as those added in New York City, providing trams, subways and buses for transport, such as in Vancouver and Berlin, and adding curbside composting in addition to recyling in cities such as Seattle.
Individuals can affect their workplace, school district, university, neighborhood, local municipality, local businesses, etc.
Possible structural solutions range from the simple to the complex, from seamless shifts to radical cultural changes. T
Even if the Lead-By-Example Model starts off successfully and one person can effectively influence a whole community to reduce its emissions, this is still not enough to mitigate climate change.
If individuals must act within current structures, such as roads for single cars and freestanding houses, there will be a limiting floor to how much that community can reduce the total emissions (see the dashed arrow in Figure 3).
While Sinnott-Armstrong argues that personal emissions play no role in increasing global emissions, and Jamieson argues that they play a significant role, I suggest they can play only a limited role.
One should focus on changing the structures in which one lives, which will indirectly reduce total emissions, rather than focus on directly reducing one's own personal emissions.

Different Models Focus on Different Things

One might note that the three models do not necessarily contradict; one could reduce personal emissions and inspire one's community while still working toward structural change.
As Jamieson notes, even if the best solution for curbing emissions is at the governmental level, this does not absolve individuals from action. If the state is not acting, individuals must step in (170).
However, the Lead-By-Example Model encourages one to stick to "green virtues" in order to be an effective role model. I contend that this strict behavior comes at a cost.
For an individual hoping to fulfill his moral duty to mitigate climate change, the Threshold Model recommends that he put aside worries about his own life and focus on large-scale political action.
The Structural Emissions Model draws attention to the potential of the local level, as well. Effective structural change can occur in cities and local communities, though both government and grassroots action.
By contrast, under the Lead-By-Example Model, one's focus would turn inward to one's own life: Which light bulb to buy? What is the best way to bike to work? Where is the farmer's market?
This example highlights how the Structural Emissions Model invites us to look at social and legal influences as well as physical ones, and so can point towards more efficient methods than the Lead-By-Example Model alone.
There are many things (power plants, clothing production) that are presumably more efficient on a moderately large scale. If we truly succeeded in getting people to live outside existing structures, would these new lives be more efficient than those within the structures?
Suppose I need to work long hours promoting a new government initiative outlawing Styrofoam take-out containers. I can either order take-out so that I can stay up all night, or I can stop to cook my own food. The Lead-By-Example Model encourages one to maintain personal integrity to set a good example ( cook one's own food), while the Structural Emissions Model encourages one to keep an eye on the big picture (focus one's time on the initiative).
In cases of conflict, the Structural Emissions Model encourages individuals to work toward big, systemic change, even if it means violating "green virtues" in the short run.
While an individual can absolutely work for both personal and structural change at the same time, I suggest the priority should be on changing structures.

Conclusion

Walter-Sinnott Armstrong offers a Threshold Model of personal emissions. This model suggests that one has a moral obligation to focus on governmental and political changes, rather than on reducing one's personal emissions.
Dale Jamieson appears to offer a Lead-By-Example Model, which focuses on personal change. Jamieson agrees that one's personal emissions have little direct effect on global warming, but he argues that one cannot wait for everyone else to reduce their emissions.
I propose a third model, which I call the Structural Emissions Model. This model focuses on intermediate changes, such as local and city changes, in additional to larger political changes.
The physical and political structures in which one lives limit how much one can reduce personal emissions.
According to structural models, you have an obligation to act anyway, even if you did not cause the harm.
The Structural Emissions Model avoids the puzzle from the Threshold Model as to whether an individual causes climate change, and provides a different reason to support Sinnott-Armstrong's conclusion: if reducing our aggregate emissions through personal change alone is not enough to drop total emissions below needed levels, then Sinnott-Armstrong is right that reducing our personal emissions should not be the main focus.
I agree with Sinnott-Armstrong that one has moral obligations to focus one's efforts on a larger scale to reduce total global emissions, rather than on directly limiting personal emissions. Let's not be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Figures

Figure 1: Threshold Model
- According to the Threshold Model, changes to my individual emissions will not be enough to mitigate climate change, and so they are not morally required.
Figure 2: Lead-By-Example Model
- According to the Lead-By-Example Model, changes to aggregate individual emissions appear sufficient for mitigating climate change, and changes in my individual emissions can inspire other individual emissions changes, so changes in my individual emissions are morally required.
Figure 3: Structural Emissions Model
- According to the Structural Emissions Model, once again changes to my individual emissions will not be enough to mitigate climate change. Other actions are morally required of me, but for reasons different from those in the Threshold Model.