Download Confronting climate change: Ethical issues

Confronting climate change:
Ethical issues
Paul Benson
October, 2006
Overview of issues
• The fact-value distinction:
– How are ethical judgments related to scientific
judgments about empirical issues?
• The ethical domain:
– How are ethical values related to values in general?
• Uncertainty:
– What principles should guide ethical decisions in the
face of uncertainty (not merely risk)?
Overview of issues (cont.)
• Cost-benefit analysis (CBA):
– Is CBA an ethically acceptable method for guiding
responses to the possibility of global climate change?
• Historical considerations:
– Do industrialized nations have special responsibilities
to limit GHG emissions that do not apply to
developing nations?
• Special ethical status of climate:
– Does protection of basic earth systems, such as
climate, have unique ethical value?
Questions from last class
• What are the implications for public policy of the
“messiness” of the data re. climate change?
• What level of empirical certainty should be
required in order to justify major change in public
policy?
• Why not err on the side of precaution? Where
does the burden of the argument rest?
• What time scale is most germane to present
public policy decisions?
• Discussion question #1:
– Are decisions about what constitutes “dangerous
anthropogenic interference with the climate” value
judgments which necessarily reach beyond scientific
sources of evidence? (IPCC 2001)
• Discussion question #2:
– Do you agree with Gardiner’s contention that “…the
temptation to defer to experts in other disciplines
should be resisted. Climate change is fundamentally
an ethical issue”?
Philosophy is not a luxury …
“…the public and political debate surrounding
climate change is often simplistic, misleading,
and awash with conceptual confusion. Moral
philosophers should see this as a call to arms.
Philosophical clarity is urgently needed.”
(Gardiner 2004, 595)
The “fact-value” distinction
• Science aims at description; evaluative
judgments aim at prescription
• Belief-guiding inquiry vs. action-guiding inquiry
– Difference in “direction of fit” between beliefs and
decisions or intentions
• “Bridge concepts” (e.g., health/disease,
sustainability, natural)
The “fact-value” distinction
• David Hume’s challenge:
“Reason is, and ought only to be, a slave of the
passions.”
Can passions be more or less reasonable?
• Preferences derived from unreasonable
inferences
• Perverse preferences
• Imprudent preferences (neglect of “future self”)
• Mere preferences vs. preferences about what to
prefer (higher-order preferences)
Conclusion: Difference between mere passions
and value judgments susceptible to reasoning
The domain of ethical value
• Many domains of value; many reasonable ways
to assess what should matter or has value
• How often is climate change approached from a
distinctively ethical perspective?
• Some marks of the ethical:
–
–
–
–
–
Impartiality of reasons
Equality of persons
Universalizability of reasons (role-reversal tests)
Promotion of benevolence, concern for common good
Certain types of emotional responsiveness…
New Orleans, September 2005
Apply to discussion questions …
• Discussion question #1:
– Are decisions about what constitutes “dangerous
anthropogenic interference with the climate” value
judgments?
• Discussion question #2:
– Is Gardiner correct that climate change is
fundamentally an ethical issue”?
Uncertainty
• Decision-theoretic risk vs. uncertainty
• Are the possible harms of global climate change
risks, or are they uncertainties?
• When is it reasonable to act in the face of
uncertainty (not mere risk)?
Acting in the face of uncertainty
• Inaction is not, in general, a reasonable
response to genuine uncertainty
• Acting in the face of uncertainty is fairly common
• Various components of uncertainty:
– What kind of information is missing?
– What is the relationship between the uncertainty and
one’s deepest values? What is at stake?
– What are the respective time-frames for resolving the
uncertainty and for taking appropriate action?
The maximin principle
• Def: Act so as to maximize well-being should
the worst-case scenario occur; act so as to
prioritize reasonable protection for the worst-off.
The maximin principle
• Circumstances when maximin is reasonable:
– Probability estimates highly unreliable
– Very high stakes: what is at stake has grave
importance; some outcomes would be unacceptable
– Reasonable to care little about potential gains beyond
securing tolerable worst-off case
• Do these conditions apply, given current level of
information about climate change (cf. 577)?
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA)
• Two kinds of cost-benefit comparisons:
– Cost-effectiveness, where social goals have been set
– CBA as basis for setting social goals [e.g., adopt
those goals most likely to maximize net social benefit]
• Ethical problems with exclusive reliance on CBA:
– Lack of relevant information about long-term effects
– Equal costs aren’t necessarily equivalent ethically
– Social discount rates function as unethical bias
toward the present (“presentism”?)
• Total value of land in Denmark, over 500 years (572, n.53)
CBA (cont.)
• In practice, CBA ignores many kinds of costs,
benefits (due to anthropocentrism; econocentrism)
• Some costs are beyond price ethically …
Historical considerations
• Do industrialized nations ethically have the
responsibility to take the lead? (Cf. Kyoto)
– “Fair shares” are partly shaped by past actions, past
distributions of benefit and burden
• How important should fairness – as opposed to
efficiency – be in determining future-oriented
policies?
Special ethical status of climate?
• Basic conditions for the habitability of the planet
may be at issue
• Persistent, intergenerational dilemma: “a
seriously tragic structure” (595)
• Lost sense of the planet as gift; “the end of
nature” (Bill McKibben)
– Analogy with value of preserving wild places