Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming

1. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • William F. Baxter, “People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution” • Baxter defends an anthropocentric approach. • Four goals associated with this approach: • 1. The sphere of freedom criterion • 2. Waste is a bad thing (why?) • 3. Every human being is an end • 4. Incentives and opportunities to improve individual satisfaction

2. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • William F. Baxter, “People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution” • We should strive for an optimal state of pollution. • Trade-off between environmental improvement and other things that interfere with it • Trade-offs are negotiated by reference to human satisfaction. • Must find optimal balance between environmental goods (e.g., clean air) and other goods (e.g., certain kinds of technology) • Balance is optimal when shifting the balance can only decrease overall human satisfaction.

3. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic” • Leopold proposes an ecocentric ethic according to which it is an action's effects on the “integrity, stability, and beauty” of the “biotic community” that ultimately make the action right or wrong. • He thinks of the land ethic as a next step in the “extension” of ethics: • Step 1: Ethics deals with the relation between individuals • Step 2: Ethics deals with the relation between the individual and society • Step 3: Ethics deals with the relation between the individual and his natural environment

4. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic” • A conservation system “based wholly on economic motives” will assign no value to “non-economic categories” (i.e., the organisms that cannot be “put to economic use”). • But the “economic parts” of the environment depend on these non-economic parts. • This, in conjunction with an appropriate appreciation of nature, shows that we should not make decisions about land use that are based solely on economic considerations.

5. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving the Natural Environment” • What not to ask: • Are rights or interests of plants neglected? • What is God's will on the matter? • What is the intrinsic value of a tree or forest? • What is wrong with destroying the environment? • A more useful question: • What sort of person would want to destroy the environment? • Hill's example of the “wealthy eccentric”

6. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving the Natural Environment” • Answer: • Valuing nature is conducive to the possession of certain virtues, especially humility. • Two aspects of humility that Hill focuses on: • 1. Appreciating one's place in nature • 2. Self-acceptance • Ignorance is correlated with the lack of humility. • So those who do not value nature will tend to be ignorant, have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and lack an important kind of self-acceptance.

7. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Peter Wenz, “Environmental Virtues: Consumerism and Human Flourishing” • Consumerism harms the environment. • Consumerism harms poor people in the Third World. • Consumerism harms industrial people. • Consumerism promotes recognized vices.

8. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Peter Wenz, “Environmental Virtues: Consumerism and Human Flourishing” • Traditional virtues oppose consumerism and promote human flourishing. • Traditional virtues and environmentalism are mutually reinforcing. • Practical implications

9. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “It's Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligation” • Eight starting assumptions • The problem (and Sinnott-Armstrong's example of wasteful driving) • The motivation for finding a moral principle: • Actual act principles • Internal principles • Collective principles • Counterfactual principles

10. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “It's Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligation” • None of these principles supports the intuition that wasteful driving is wrong. • So? • “[W]e cannot claim to know that it is morally wrong to drive a gas-guzzler just for fun.” • This does not mean we know it is morally all right!

11. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Bjørn Lomborg, “Let's Keep Our Cool About Global Warming” • Global warming is a real problem, but “it is categorically not the end of the world.” • Predictions about rises in sea level, etc. • Some unrealistic approaches • U.K., Kyoto Protocol, etc. • One element of Lomborg's approach: “we should tax CO2 at the … level of about $2/ton, or maximally $14/ton.”

12. Chapter 14: The Environment, Consumption, and Global Warming • Bjørn Lomborg, “Let's Keep Our Cool About Global Warming” • Another element of his approach: • “all nations [should] commit themselves to spending 0.05 percent of GDP in research and development of noncarbon emitting technologies” • This will allow flexibility for each country to “focus on its own future vision of energy needs” • Lomborg's traffic deaths example: if all nations lowered speed limits to 5 mph, traffic deaths would cease to be a problem. • Comparison to global warming: eliminating a problem may be possible, but completely unlikely