Sustainable Development

Climate Change

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Topics
• The Environment: Traditional vs contemporary views
• Environmental Ethics
• Climate change

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The Environment: the traditional view
• Nature exists for the benefit of mankind
• Human beings are the only morally important species of this world
• Nature itself is of no intrinsic moral value to mankind’s well-being
• Plants and animals are only instrumental to furthering mankind’s
well-being
• Preservation of Nature is only because it furthers mankind’s well-
being.

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Criticism of CBA
• Silo’ed knowledge
• Environmental issues like pollution, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity are
typically examined from legal, technical, scientific, economic perspectives.
• Market-based preferences
• Environmental issues require decisions that involve our beliefs and values.
• These are not measured by the market which focuses on wants and
preferences.
• Economic analysis, based on economic markets cannot be the sole basis for
making macro strategic decision regarding the environment.

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… criticism of CBA
• Moral values
• Economic analysis only measures the intensity with which we hold certain
beliefs and values, but does not examine the legitimacy, validity, merit,
morality of the same.
• People as citizens
• People are not merely consumers interested only in pursuing personal wants
and interests, as economists reduce people to.
• People are also citizens - people with free will to choose their future-in-
common (shared future) with fellow citizens - they pursue public interests
and live a shared identity.

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 The problem with measuring success is that
not everything that matters can be measured.

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Future Generations
• Nature should be preserved for future generations to enjoy
• Even if we don’t know their preferences
• Even if we are uncertain if they will ever be borne
• Future generations should have the same freedoms as ourselves
• To decide on their preferred options
• To pursue happiness for their own circumstances
• As long as we ourselves do not face an existential crisis.

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Moral consideration
• Human beings count for moral consideration
• Possess life
• are sentient (feel pain, pleasure, happiness, or joy); capable of moral reasoning; possess
moral autonomy
• Capable of forming and fostering emotional relationships
• Animals
• Possess life, and different degrees of awareness
• Humans do form different degrees of emotional attachment to their pets, and even
animals kept for food
• Plants
• Are living things;
• Limited evidence of plants being sentient
To what degree should mankind extend moral consideration to other
living things?

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Reverence for living things
• We should respect every living thing ‘that is pursuing its
own good in its own unique way’. [Paul Taylor, American
philosopher]
• ‘It is good to maintain and cherish life; it is evil to destroy
and to check life. We should show the same reverence for
life towards all (things which have the) will-to-live, as
towards my own’. [Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, humanitarian,
Nobel Peace Prize winner]

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Deep ecology
• The well-being of human and non-human life both have intrinsic
value, independent of their usefulness for human purposes
• Richness and diversity of life forms constitute this intrinsic value
• Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to
satisfy vital needs
• The preservation of the wellbeing of non-living objects is also
necessary because they form an integral part of the biosphere
• Makes more sense applied to the species level than to individual
organisms.

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Environmental ethics

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Climate change
• Human activity is pervasive and globalized
• Human activities are changing the planet’s climate
• action in one locale harms others far away because of the shared biosphere
• Global temperature rise
• Warming nearer the poles, drought and desertification in equatorial regions
• Sea-level rise and loss of arable land and groundwater sources
• Loss of animal and plant biodiversity as ecosystems are compromised
• More intense storms and rainfall
• Loss of habitat, migration of people, animals and insects
• Spread of tropical diseases.

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Strategies
• Enough and as good
• In sharing a common resource, we should leave ‘enough and as good for others’.
[John Locke]
• Clearly, mankind’s use of a renewable resource has exceeded Nature’s ability to
renew it
• Polluter pays principle
• Share allotted takes into account past actions
• Share of allowable carbon emission allotted by proportion of population extended
from an equal per capita basis
• Equal share of the atmosphere for each person
• Cap and trade: Cap total carbon emission per period and trade ‘right to pollute’
between nations that have surplus rights and those in deficit
• Carbon tax: Tax emissions and reward reductions in carbon footprint of a country.

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… strategies
• Luxury, subsistence, development emissions
• On the basis of justice, differentiate between the carbon emissions depending on
the level of development of the country
• Double effect doctrine
• It is only justifiable to knowingly cause harm if a) the harm is unintentional, b) the
goal is sufficiently important to outweigh the harm and c) and there is no other way
of achieving the goal without causing at least as great a harm
• ‘Aggression’ by developed countries
• Developed countries have refused to take on a larger share of carbon reduction in
spite of benefiting from burning fossil fuel in the past for their own development.
• This has been termed as ‘aggression’ by less developed countries who need capital
and resources to develop but see their natural resources harmed by climate change.

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Collective action
• Each person stealing a little from each place will still make us all
impoverished
• Do not ignore small contributions because they add up in the end
• Be aware of system feedback loops
• Small actions may lead to a large change in system behavior if the system is at
a tipping point, or we chance on a system leverage point.
• Tragedy of the commons
• The act of each person, drawing from a common shared resource but placing
importance only on his own selfish interests, contributes to the collective
destruction of the resource.

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Tipping points don’t always need big drama

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… collective action
• Complicity principle
• I am accountable for what others do when I intentionally participate in the
wrong that they do or the harm they cause
• Individual actions at reducing consumption don’t have much effect
on a system with large inertia
• Effect policy change
• Coordinated policy changes driven by a change in mindset is the most
effective approach!

Greta Thunberg - Save the world by changing the rules

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmmUIEsN9A

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 System Leverage points
1. Based on the idea of feedback loops
2. +ve reinforcing, and –ve balancing loops
3. Loops connect stocks and flows of resources
4. Real systems have many interconnected loops.
Together, these drive the behavior we
observe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points
D.H. Meadows
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Basic principles
• Success should not be in terms of fulfilling materialistic needs
• Instead, develop one’s abilities and achieve real happiness
• Reject extravagance and conspicuous consumption in favor of a frugal
life
• Proceed with caution if there is potential to cause harm and if the
evidence for safety is scarce or uncertain
• Do not deny others the chance to develop their own abilities and
achieving real happiness.

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I need not blow out another’s candle
in order to make my own shine .

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Precautionary principle
• A strategy for approaching issues of potential harm when extensive
scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking
• emphasize caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations
that may prove disastrous
• (Principle 15) Where there are threats of serious or irreversible
damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason
for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental
degradation. [Rio Declaration, 1992]

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… Precautionary principle
• Decision-makers need to anticipate harm before it occurs
• it is the responsibility of the proponent to establish that the proposed activity
will not (or is very unlikely to) result in significant harm
• They also need to consider
• the proportionality of the risk and the cost and feasibility of the proposal.

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Case study

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Jakarta sinks
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-
reads/article/3079146/jakarta-sinks-and-indonesian-government-prepares

https://youtube.com/embed/iFUrOmJrkbM?start=55&end=123

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Fleeing climate change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl4Uv9_7KJE&feature=youtu.be

https://youtube.com/embed/cl4Uv9_7KJE?end=928
https://youtube.com/embed/cl4Uv9_7KJE?start=1663&end=2545
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Peter Singer: The ethics of what we eat
https://www.youtube.com/embed/UHzwqf_JkrA?end=1683

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Articles
• Fleddermann, C.B., Engineering Ethics, 4e, Ch. 7, Prentice Hall, 2012.
• Martin, M.W. and Schinzinger, R., Introduction to Engineering Ethics, 2e,
Ch.9, McGraw-Hill, 2010.
• The Ethics of Climate Change
https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_ethics_of_climate_change

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Media
• Greta Thunberg - Time's 2019 Person of the Year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCVQdr9QFwY
• Greta Thunberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKTQW5i9_p8
•Peter Singer - The Ethics of Climate Change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz8w8z__-R8
•Inter-generational justice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCWU_7OdtkM

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Questions
1. Do we have a moral responsibility to help others cope with the effects of
their polluted environment?
2. Which is the cause of environmental degradation - overpopulation or
overconsumption? or is the blame on poor resource management? What
role does poverty play?
3. Do we have a moral responsibility to help others cope with climate
change?
4. Should we sacrifice our own pleasure to help others?
5. Do we have a direct moral responsibility to the environment?
6. What is a reasonable course of action if the future is uncertain, especially
w.r.t. the specific impacts of global warming and climate change?

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