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; econo-centrism)

• 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