Notes on What’s Wrong with Joyguzzling?

What’s Wrong with Joyguzzling?

Thesis

  • There is no moral requirement to refrain from emitting reasonable amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) solely to enjoy oneself.
  • Focus Example: Joyriding in a gas guzzler (joyguzzling).
  • The thesis applies to current circumstances for most people.
  • It is possible circumstances might change to generate a moral requirement to refrain from joyguzzling (e.g., laws, social norms, promises).
  • The claim is only about moral requirements.
  • It does not deny that refraining from joyguzzling is morally better, best, ideal, or virtuous.
  • It does not deny a pro tanto moral reason to refrain from joyguzzling.
  • It makes no claims about whether joyguzzling might affect an individual’s responsibility to promote political action.

Virtues

  • Some critics argue for cultivating "green" virtues to understand climate change responsibilities.
  • Examples of virtues include humility, mindfulness, temperance, and respect for nature.
  • Virtues are not moral requirements.
  • Failing to be virtuous or good, or even being vicious and bad, does not necessarily violate a moral requirement.
  • Moral requirements differ from other moral reasons in which kinds of reactions are appropriate.
  • Violating a moral requirement without justification leads to moral wrongdoing and negative sanctions.
  • Conforming to a moral requirement does not always deserve a reward.
  • An act that is not virtuous or good does not always become liable to a negative sanction.
  • Bridge principles suggest requirements can be derived from virtues.
  • Hursthouse claims an act is right if and only if it is what a virtuous agent would do in the circumstances.
  • Bridge principles seem problematic in cases of supererogation.
  • Donating to a particular charity is supererogatory rather than morally required.
  • Even if all fully virtuous people would refrain from joyguzzling, that shows only that it is morally ideal, not required.
  • Even though some virtues (such as benevolence and generosity) do not ground moral requirements, maybe other virtues (such as honesty or non-malevolence) do ground moral requirements.
  • To apply this principle to the case of joyguzzling, opponents would then need to show that joyguzzling causes harm or violates a moral rule.

Group Causation

  • Critics charge that individual actions contribute to a group effect, even if the individual action seems harmless.
  • However, Sinnott-Armstrong never denies that sets or groups of actions can cause harm.
  • The crucial question is whether every individual act is morally wrong whenever it falls into a group of acts that jointly cause harm.
  • Example: Senators stabbing Caesar.
  • Significant differences exist between the Senators stabbing Caesar and people joyguzzling.
  • Senators conspired and intended to kill Caesar.
  • Senators directly transferred energy (and a knife blade) into Caesar’s body, causing a separate wound.
  • Factors such as coordination, intention, energy transfer, and individual wounds can explain why each Senator’s act is seen as causing harm and as morally wrong.
  • When millions of people joyguzzle during a year, they do not coordinate, intend to cause harm, or directly transfer energy to any particular target.

The Simple Division Approach

  • Critics claim that a single joyguzzle contributes to the overall problem.
  • The language of "contribution" links the individual act with the global outcome without making a firm statement in the language of causation.
  • The simple division approach calculates contributions by multiplying the total expected effect of climate change by the fraction that represents an average person’s proportion of the total emissions.
  • If contributing is not a causal notion, we need to know why contributing violates a moral requirement.
  • If contributing is a causal notion, the statements that a single emission causes even part of the composite problem become much less plausible.
  • We should not assume that one can find the morally relevant effect of one individual act by dividing the effect of the set of acts it belongs to into chunks that correspond to the effects of an individual act.
  • If contribution is not a causal notion, its moral relevance is derived by dividing the total moral relevance of the group of acts by the number of the individual acts.

Partial Causation

  • Partial causation theorists claim that the actual difference made by one joyguzzle is that it causes part of the harm of climate change.
  • Argument:
    1. Increasing the CO_2 concentration by 100 parts per million (ppm) within decades will cause very large amounts of deaths and suffering S from floods, storms, droughts, sea level rise, and disease transmission.
    2. A joyguzzle can be expected to increase the concentration of CO_2 by one part per quintillion (1/10^{18}).
    3. If CO_2 concentration increases of 100 ppm within decades causes suffering S, then increases of 1 part per quintillion causes suffering roughly equal to \frac{S}{10^{14}}.
    4. Therefore a joyguzzle causes suffering roughly equal to \frac{S}{10^{14}} (from 1 to 3).
    5. \frac{S}{10^{14}} is enough suffering to provide a moral requirement not to joyguzzle.
    6. Therefore, there is a moral requirement to refrain from joyguzzling.
  • The partial causation approach admits that the wrongfulness of a joyguzzle depends on what difference it makes.
  • Emergence Objection
    • Premise (3) assumes that increases in the level of CO_2 are harmful in an aggregative way.
  • Timing Objection
    • Even if the argument from emergence fails, we have another response that would amend the amount of suffering attributable to a single joyguzzle, meaning that premise (5), which states that this amount is significant, would become false.
    • The partial causation approach admits that the wrongfulness of a joyguzzle depends on what difference it makes.
    • To determine what difference it makes, we need to compare what happens after the joyguzzle with what would have happened without the joyguzzle.

Expected Disvalue

  • Critics turn to probability and focus on the expected disvalue of a joyguzzle, which they assume grounds a moral requirement.
  • John Broome is one philosopher who takes the expected disvalue approach.
  • Morgan-Knapp and Goodman add that the harms of climate change can be divided between extreme weather events and gradual changes.
  • They hold that joyguzzles increase the probability of extreme weather events and contribute fractionally to the gradual changes.