So within environmental ethics there are some key debates, key questions, and these have
to do with different ways in which nature itself is viewed,
so if nature were used as instrumental that is as a means to an end, means to human ends,
then that leads to certain ways in which ethical questions might be framed.
On the other hand nature can be viewed as something that is intrinsic value, and if
nature has intrinsic value then that changes the way in which one might want to address
environmental concerns, for instance a classic question is what should the last man, that
is the last human survivor of a global catastrophe, what should that person do?
In other words if there's a chance that the earth could, the earth's ecosystems other
than humans could survive should that person, does a person have a responsibility to make
sure that those ecosystems survive, these are not easy questions to address, but how
one answers those questions depends on whether one uses an intrinsic or instrumental approach
to nature.
Now human-centered approaches are based on the premise that the environment itself has
no intrinsic value, so it's an instrumental view of nature, and there you can have the
type of person the ethical agent could be an egoist or libertarian, could be egoist
around groups of humans or utilitarian,
utilitarian meaning again you’re thinking in terms of the net costs and benefits of
human action, they are also what are known as expanded circle approaches, and expanded
utilitarianism is an example of that where one is considering not just this pain and
or happiness of humans but also of all sentient beings, so animals suffering for instance
would also be included in expanded utilitarianism, Peter Singer is a good example of an expanded
utilitarian philosopher.
Biocentrism is yet another expanded circle approach, and here the idea is that all living
beings are considering or deserving of moral consideration, and egocentrism is a sort of
a version of that where the whole earth is also known as the Gaia hypothesis is seen
as deserving moral consideration, and even here you have what are known as individualistic
ethical theories versus holistic theories, and again these are variants of a fairly involved
in complex set of ethical questions around the environment.
Now deep ecology is one of the expanded circle approaches, and it's really spawned a movement
whose you know adherence are quite widespread around the world, the idea behind deep ecology
is that the flourishing of human life and cultures is something that is compatible with
a substantial decrease of the human population, that the human population is not the what
one needs to be concerned about, but nature itself or all life on earth.
The flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease that's one of the considerations
of deep ecology, also suggest that a significant change of life conditions for the better requires
change in policies and these would affect economic technological and ideological structures,
so rather transformative change is what is proposed in deep ecology, and the ideological
change would mainly be that of appreciating life quality dwelling in situations of intrinsic
value rather than adhering to a high standard of living, so deep ecology has these principles
formulated largely by this Norwegian philosopher called Arne Naess,
and one of the other things he says is those who subscribe to these points have an obligation
directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.
Another variant of environmental ethics is ecofeminism, and ecofeminism again these are
all very broadly portrayed,
there are lots of variants within these the strains, ecofeminism argues that while there
is no central way in which this can be eco-feminist theories can be formulated, the large, the
central idea there is that it is a feminist approach to environmental ethics, eco-feminists
broadly see the oppression of women and the domination of nature as being interconnected,
and as a movement eco-feminist theorists use a framework that confronts issues of gender,
race, class and nature, so eco-feminists are also see themselves as being sympathetic to
a view that's also called intersectionality that is trying to see oppression everywhere
of nature, of human beings, in general and so on.
Now here are some assumptions in ecofeminism,
so first of all as I mentioned there are important connections between the oppression of women
and the oppression of nature, it's not accidental that patriarchy exists side by side, the domination
of nature they also assume that understanding these connections is important in order to
have a better understanding of the oppression of women and the oppression of nature, and
feminist theory in practice must include an ecological perspective that is not enough
to argue against patriarchy, but one should also think about the domination of nature
as feminists and that solutions to ecological problems must therefore include a feminist
perspective.
Karen Warren is one of the proponents of this eco-feminist position, now around Ramchandra
Guha has developed a third world, what he calls as a third world critique of deep ecology
and he argues that the deep ecology perspective is flawed for a variety of reasons, because
the primary threats to ecological integrity around the world are actually have to do with
overconsumption and militarism, so it's not overpopulation that needs to be targeted but
it's really the way in which there's a skew and the distribution of resources and that
greater militarization of the world, so he also suggest that simply emphasizing wilderness
is harmful to third-world people because in the third world in developing countries people
live among in the wilderness, the wilderness is not a vast uninhabited area, and so focusing
and putting placing too much emphasis on preserving ecological zones would be harmful to people
because it would displace and alienate people.
And a third point he makes is that the deep ecological approach diverts attention from
real, what he calls a real environmental problems having to do with access to fuel, fodder,
and the challenges of water and soil erosion, water quality, water quantity, soil erosion
and pollution,
and a stronger part of his argument suggests that deep ecology is not really that radical
at all, it just wants wilderness areas for aesthetic appreciation and as an antidote
to our modern society and it really is a kind of perversely an extension of our own consumer
society, it's not really concerned with equity issues and local community driven environmental
issues and therefore he suggests that we should lose this distinction between anthropocentric
and bio-centric views.
So that's a quick summary of some of the positions, some of the ways in which debates around environmental
ethics have been construed, and as you can tell and again there's a lot of variance among
these you know few archetypes that I've mentioned and there are many other positions of course.
Now with respect to climate change in particular one can take multiple, ethical responses it's
common to take a utilitarian perspective largely because economists who tend to take on utilitarian
political philosophy very seriously have dominated the conversation,
and among the economists who have looked at climate change from an ethical perspective
the prominent ones are Nordhaus, Lomborg, and Stern, and they have very different positions
but a lot of their argument really, principally is determined by how they treat the long term,
how values in the long term might change or not, so in the case of William Nordhaus he
assumes that in the future, the future in present terms is to be valued less than what
it would be if one were living in the future, and whereas Nicholas Stern takes on the view
that the future shouldn't, the way we value the future in the present should be almost
exactly is the way we would value it in the future, meaning the discount rate that he
chooses for his, the social discount rate that he chooses in his assessment is very,
very low, of course there are multiple questions for all utilitarian responses to climate change,
one is how do we think about costs and benefits, can we adequately capture all of them?
And how do we make a comparison between approaches to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and approaches that simply focus on how we adapt to climate change, and how do we think
about you know which takes priority, if everything is converted to the same monetary terms there
may be some missing elements, so that's one of the ways in which people who are not utilitarians
non-economists might respond to the utilitarian approach to climate change.
Now surely there are also deontologists and virtue ethicists who speak to climate change
and one of the most important ways in which they think about it is through the precautionary
principle, and here Henry Shue and Stephen Gardner are proponents of this view,
that the no harm principle and rights to physical security must be ensured, and must be implemented.
Henry Shue and Singer, Peter Singer who I mentioned was actually utilitarian in some
ways but here he takes on a kind of a deontological approach, both of them suggest that the polluter
should pay and that polluter pays principle must be applied, meaning those who have emitted
the most greenhouse emissions need to take that, make the deepest cuts in the way in
which they respond to climate change.
Others who sort of try and take on a virtue ethicists approach suggest that it's important
to sort of think about conservation, conservatism, simplicity, moderation and consumption and
these other virtues humility, encourage in terms of responding to climate change.
Now go a little deeper into this question of climate change and you know what are the
features of climate change that are relevant to ethicists of people concerned about ethics,
the first feature is what one might call a disproportionate accumulation and this has
to do with the fact that one set of groups around the world have used up overtime a disproportionate
amount of the world's limited carbon budget,
meaning there's only so much carbon one is allowed to emit in order to have a safe climate
and much of that carbon budget has already has been used up by the industrialized countries
of the world.
Further complicating an element is that earlier emitters of carbon-dioxide have contributed
more significantly to temperature increases compared to late emitters,
and this has to do with a particular feature of the atmosphere which I won't go into right
now, but if you look at global emissions growth over the years you can see that it is accelerated
during the 20th century the second half of the 20th century, and these countries the
United States, the European Union, and the Russian Federation, Japan have really contributed
more than half of the emissions that have accumulated in the atmosphere.
Another way of looking at it is through this map and where these countries in orange can
be seen to occupy much greater area and that's the area is sort of proportional to the amount
of emissions that they have contributed to the atmosphere or over the 20th century, in
the course of the 20th century.
Now you can see the whole of Africa contributes only about 2.5% of these total emissions,
and clearly, they're largely developing region and they need more room to grow and the same
is true in Central America and to some extent the rest of Asia.
This cartoon seems to kind of depict this in pictorial terms, it's basically showing
how the global South has been, has edged off the ecological space by the global North,
in other words whatever protection that the South might expect increasingly getting depleted
because much of the atmospheric carbon budget has been used up by the global North, so that
was disproportionate accumulation.
The second feature of the climate system is called delayed effects,
and delayed effects means that the climate system itself is a slow-moving beast, and
so it'll take several decades if not essentially a longer for the concentration of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere to manifest themselves fully in terms of their impacts, so we're
still waiting for the worst impacts of the emissions that are already there in the atmosphere
to manifest themselves, and this is something that cruel prospect if you think about it,
so no matter what we do now it seems likely that the earth will warm by another degree
Celsius by the end of the 21st century that means we could easily cross or be close to
2 degrees of warming by the end of the century, and this means that already committed to experiencing
further warming due to historical emissions,
this shows us that CO2 emissions reside in the atmosphere for a long time,
so the emissions that, emissions from close to a century ago you know about a 100 years
ago some of them are still there in the atmosphere, and there's evidence to show that, you know,
about one fifth of the emissions that were emitted a century ago or are being emitted
now will stay on for another thousand years in the atmosphere.
The third feature of climate change has to do with a symmetrical impacts and this has
to do with the fact that poor countries and especially the poor, living in poor countries
are likely to be much more vulnerable to climate change than those who are wealthy and who
live in rich countries, so the impacts of worse in Sub-Saharan Africa, small islands
in the pacific, deltaic regions of South and South-East Asia and so on,
and this has to do with multiple reasons one of the facts, one of the reasons being that
in poor countries, poor countries already lie within climate sensitive parts of the
world, and the second is poor countries don't have the resources to do very much about these
impacts, so this is of course one of them has to do with what I’ve mentioned was inherently
unequal features relating to, was geography and so on, and second of course the lack of
institutional scientific and technical capacity to adapt.
So even though absolute warming will be largest in the high latitudes in the temperate regions
of the world, the warming that will occur in the tropics is larger when compared to
the historical range of temperature and extremes to which human and natural ecosystems have
adapted and coped, so the challenges in the global South are going to be quite severe
and this is true across the globe certainly South-Asia, China, Pacific Islands, Africa,
Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are likely to be perhaps worse effected than many countries
in the global North.
And in terms of agriculture to these impacts are going to be quite severe,
sea level rise is likely to be 15 to 20% larger in the tropics then global means a sea level
and this again has to do with the rotation of the earth and the fact that you know there's
going to be greater increase in sea levels near towards the equator, also tropical cyclones
intensity is going to be felt disproportionately higher in the low latitude regions,
so and also aridity and drought, so clearly these ethical challenges have been recognized
by the global community and the United Nations framework convention on climate change article
3 of the convention it takes cognizance of these particularly asymmetrical impacts and
disproportionately accumulation,
and it says that the party should protect the climate system for the benefit of present
and future generations of humankind on the basis of equity and in accordance with their
common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.
Accordingly developing country party should take the lead in combating climate change
in the adverse effects there off, so that's article 3.1 and then also mentions parties
have a right to and should promote sustainable development, parties and measures to protect
the climate system against human and induced change should be appropriate for the specific
conditions of each party and should be integrated with national development programs taking
into account that economic development is essential for adopting measures to address
climate change.
So the UNFCCC has taken into account these ethical challenges and has proposed an adequate
response but the politics of climate change negotiations has been such that many of these,
at least these two principals have not been fully implemented.
Now the importance of making the right value choice you know to achieve emissions reductions
is also illustrated in the kinds of priorities that the global community might want to make,
so right now then large number of SUV’s in the United States whose emissions are certainly
much higher than those of regular cars and this particular graphic illustrates that if
in the United States alone the standards for SUV’s, the emission standards for SUV’s
were the same as those as of smaller vehicles the net reductions in emissions from that
policy change would be sufficient to offset the increase in emissions one might have in
the developing world by simply providing basic electricity access to 1.6 billion people,
so you see how these value choice is placed or described in these kinds of ways sort of
start to make sense about for policy makers as to which choices or to be made,
there is also a whole series of other considerations this map shows an example from South Korea
where a freeway on the left was replaced by a river that used to exist, so a river was
restored and so you have less emissions, fuel cars on the stretch but you also have greater
recreational facilities and better aesthetics in the city, so these are in some ways choices
that require information but also require an ethical stance in order to make these choices.
Now unfortunately the whole question of equity in climate change negotiations as this cartoon
shows has been more or less disregarded, equity is not a big consideration in the climate
dialogue notwithstanding article 3.1 in the UNFCCC, and so these questions of taking ethics
into account has not been a priority.