Environmental Ethics: Assessing Scale- Analysis of Morgan-Knapp and Goodman

‘There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem.’- Eldridge Cleaver

In ‘Consequentialism, Climate Harm and Individual Obligations’, Christopher Morgan-Knapp and Charles Goodman critique the argument that abiding by act-consequentialism assumes that individual emissions don’t matter because they are too minuscule. Building off their arguments, I am going to analyze the relevance of their theories and examples with the lens that climate changes disproportionally affects poorer, indigenous, and marginalized communities and conclude with a test that suggests the optimum size of an industry is based on the relationship between its emissions and the number of people dependent on it and what an environmentally oriented government should do.

Morgan-Knapp and Goodman start by stating the commonly held view that act-consequentialism cannot provide any moral reason for individuals to voluntarily reduce their emissions because individual emissions are so minuscule compared to the vast scope of the planet's meteorological system. They refute this claim because a world in which individuals reduce emissions is better than if they don’t, even if the delta of an individual’s actions is immeasurable. They also argue that the initial interpretation of act-consequentialism doesn’t include other costs in terms of ‘time, economic costs, social costs, and professional costs’. 

They quote several philosophers like Sandler, Johnson, and Sinnott-Armstrong who argue that the act of driving on a Sunday afternoon, for example, has no conceivable effect on climate change hence individuals have no obligations to alter their decisions based on that. Apart from the arguments that the authors get into, one that I feel wasn’t fully developed as a counterclaim to the right to a Sunday drive is the misperception of the scale of one’s actions. The emissions from one afternoon’s drive aren’t enough to pin any sort of environmental damage to because that action is insignificant but I think it should be looked at as a broader picture. If these Sunday drives are a weekly indulgence, they must be viewed as such and hence is not necessarily an unimpactful set of events. If a husband suggests a drive and his wife says that they shouldn’t because she is worried about net carbon emissions, he is going to look at her like she is crazy. This is a problematic attitude where individual emissions have been so normalized that the alternative of taking a walk doesn’t seem like the automatic, go-to, best option. In the context of individual actions, the phrase ‘It doesn’t matter’ implies minuscule degradation is not relevant enough on the surface (which in and of itself is wrong) but really it’s a phrase that acts as a pacifier for guilt to those who don’t want to feel burdened by the realization of their actions and its role in the bigger picture. It does matter, if not the amount of emissions alone but the attitude, especially since it’s commonly held.

Morgan-Knapp and Goodman get into how the concept of act-consequentialism actually encourages reducing individual emissions by making the distinction between emissions and luxury emissions. Act-consequentialism implies that most luxury emissions are wrong because they do more harm than good. Especially if there is a better alternative, act-consequentialism dictates to take that. They say the word ‘wrong’ can be broken into a fact relative sense in terms of morality or an evidence-relative sense where it is quantitatively wrong to do so (both ‘wrongs’ are not mutually exclusive). Individual emissions often fall only in the first basket because it is hard to prove that there is correlated damage done to the earth. What is the motivation for a family of five to stop buying single-use plastic bottles (instead of buying a water filter) when they are able to wash their hands off the guilt by recycling them? I argue that this is both moral-based and evidence-based wrong. Firstly, people seem to think that recycling is the only option when they fail to realize that cutting down consumption as much as possible is the best thing to do. Where do you think the recycling bin goes? The family is still consuming an enormously avoidable aggregate amount of single-use plastic which they could’ve refrained from, to begin with, and act-consequentialism would dictate they buy a water filter. This is morally wrong but many would argue that this does not pass the second test of wrongness because it is a product that would be consumed regardless and there is no way to pin the damage done, hence is immeasurable and not quantitative. I disagree with this because even though it is hard to predict anthropogenic climate disasters, it is a well-known fact that it affects marginalized, poorer neighborhoods more than others. In Texas, there is a proven pattern of garbage dumps being near predominantly African American neighborhoods, meaning that the groundwater is probably contaminated and bottled water that seems like a necessity to the earlier family becomes an additional cost to these poorer families. We know that poorer areas have worse infrastructure and their livelihoods are disproportionately under threat of natural disasters and it’s hardest for them to bounce back. We may not know how our actions of today will affect our future generations but we know that it is affecting people of color more now and will affect their future generations the most. 

Peter Singer brings up his concept of market threshold, saying that your decision to cancel your flight to Europe may be the tipping point for the airline to cancel the flight and not burn jet fuel to fly another plane to Europe. Maybe your conscious decision not to buy a pack of 30 bottles of water might be a deliberate decision that others are also trying to make. That decision to stop the habit might end up being a trend that is noticed by Dasani or Aquafina and they will produce less in response to the falling demand, leading to less plastic waste. If every decision is made by assuming that it is unique to you, then making that decision seems less impactful when in reality, the more people to do it, the more likely more people are to do it. Buying that water filter may be expensive at first but will save that family money down the line and will improve the livelihoods of those especially affected by climate change. Luxury emissions aren’t just jet skis or hot tubs, they are also buying bottled water every day and the phenomena that those who are rich, white or male are more likely to emit in such ways and those who are poorer, indigenous, or people of color are more likely to face the brunt of it makes climate change less unpredictable and this is my main argument against individual emissions (especially avoidable ones) being meaningless and hence permissible.

Frank Arntzenius and David McCarthy wrote a paper that deals with a fictional experiment where a patient is administered electric shocks with such small, incremental increases that they cannot possibly tell the difference between one level of shock and the next. Applying this to climate change, they say that the difference between individual emissions cannot be perceived. It basically doesn’t exist and we can go on emitting the way we want. Morgan-Knapp and Goodman disagree with him, detailing an experiment with a Bangladeshi woman saying that minor perceptible differences across individuals matter. Adding on to the authors, a point they failed to explore is the intra-generational aspect of climate change. It is not simply enough if the Bangladeshi woman’s quality of life changed throughout her 60+ years on the planet. It’s about whether she has a similar quality of life as her great-grandmother did and it’s about ensuring that her granddaughter doesn’t need to worry about the bay of Bengal flooding into their house during the August monsoon. It’s about whether her great-grandson needs to skip school because of malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that is especially a problem when there is stagnant water. It’s about whether her children’s family has a sense of food security and doesn’t need to worry about their crop not growing because of anthropogenic unpredicted rainfall. It is hard to empathize or even conceive the issues faced by countries that predominantly rely on natural resources and agriculture for their livelihood. Climate change isn’t something that just happens over 50 years, it’s compounded over generations and exponentially degrades a family's quality of life.

I would like to assert that unfortunately this is removed from an individual's power and this example is not something that can be pinned to any one person. That said it can be roughly blamed on profit-oriented corporations that have created and normalized the need for an exorbitant and unsustainable individual lifestyle. The best thing that one can do knowing that their actions do not directly affect other less-fortunate communities, yet are very much part of the problem, is to trust that living one's life trying to be cognizant of this is definitely a step in the right direction. Consuming less and finding more sustainable ways to live will influence your friends around you to care, it will inculcate a sense of responsibility in your children which can be passed down for the rest of your lineage. It will be part of a movement that will seem to be not as popular but with more education will definitely evolve to grow bigger. The only way that I can see this movement being a strong enough priority for individual actions to have an evidence-based rightness is through a strong governmental push towards it.

In an alternative universe, there is a government that would see the situation we are in now as a top priority problem to fix, and with that agenda in mind, I propose a test. There is guaranteed to be a certain amount of anthropogenic emissions and the lowest possible level is one we should strive for without compromising on it for profit. Doing so would force individuals to live in a less aggregately destructive way. One of the main reasons that the norm is non-sustainable options is because of lack of education and access to a better system- a government push to the right balance will help individuals have access to better choices and make them feel like their actions matter. In every industry (transport, agriculture, meat-industry, water, energy, etc) there is some optimal balance between the scale of operation (and its corresponding emissions) and the number of people dependent on it. Finding and prioritizing that balance will help minimize the tragedy of commons and benefit the country’s citizens and the environment. If every country were to do this assessment it would help reduce the transboundary aspect of climate change that is a macrocosm of the relationship between the consumption of the rich and the brunt faced by the poor. For example, the rise in sea level caused by the greenhouse effect of excess CO2 in the atmosphere is not any one country’s fault yet lesser developed countries like Indonesia are facing catastrophic flooding that particularly affects poorer neighborhoods where streets are flooded for weeks and children can’t go to school. Lesser developed countries are facing the repercussions of climate change; it’s important to note that the top emitters are China and the US, both developed nations that can handle such a catastrophe. 

One-fifth of carbon emissions in the US are from vehicles. The balance in the scenario would be the government providing a well-connected railway system around the US. Hypothetically if there were bullet trains connecting states and a subway system within each state, it would make travel more affordable for U.S. citizens, it will minimize the tragedy of the commons by providing this public service that disincentives personal vehicles. Bullet trains run on electromagnetic force so there would be almost no emissions and could take over the highly pollutive airline industry. More people relying on this would make roads less congested and the streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and animals that wander. Like the EU, people would be able to travel and learn from experiences. It would open up an entire sector of employment which could benefit those who are trapped in minimum wage jobs or those who are unemployed. The scale of the transport industry is currently small in terms of each person needing to rely on their own means to get places (and the emissions add up) but this will shift it to a larger scale where they can rely on a railway system that can be shared with thousands of people every day (and the emissions are shared).

Another industry that needs to find equilibrium is the agriculture and meat industry (10.5% of emissions in the US). The system that we are currently in is broken in several ways but scaling it down from large corporate farms to smaller local farms will solve most of those problems. Smaller farms will give individuals significant access to the right to play into a beneficial system. Most of us don’t have the choice to buy from local farms because the most affordable and accessible option is large-scale products. In doing so, we ignorantly support the slew of side-effects that come with large scale operations including high levels of methane and CO2 emissions, over-cultivation of arable land, monopolies putting other families out of business, extreme animal abuse that comes with the common practice of feeding corn to grass-eating cows (causing methane to build up) and keeping them cooped up all day, the antibiotication and harmonization of cows, fertilizer and herbicide/pesticide runoff into water bodies and the overproduction of corn which is a huge source of a variety of problems often hidden from the public attention. A government push to scale down production will allow individuals to buy and directly support their local farms. It will create massive job opportunities and there will be a better sense of community when one is buying fresh produce from their local farmer and the farmer is making a livelihood supporting their neighborhood. People will eat healthier and local small-scale farmers will not need to resort to chemicals to keep up with the stress of high demand. It will no longer be on the individual to worry about their decisions if the government provides a system of good choices and they have faith that businesses are kept in check. 

In terms of the energy industry, it is not necessarily only about the scale but also about evolving it. Fossil fuel emissions used for electricity, manufacturing, vehicles, and heating contribute to 75% of US emissions. Investing in research and development on more sustainable energy sources can help us veer away from coal and natural gas. Homes and office buildings can be equipped with solar panels so they are self-sustaining households. More dams for hydroelectricity and windmills can be built. To me, this seems like the hardest and most expensive transition to make but it seems like going in this direction will be less expensive compared to the price of repairing the environmental destruction that will come if we don’t. No matter how environmentally conscious an individual is, they are going to need heating and electricity as part of their livelihood, and government projects to provide alternative power sources can help individual consumption be less polluting.

In these scenarios, it will prove that individual actions do matter because they will be assessed in an aggregate sense. There is often guilt that gets placed on people about using reusable bags and recycling etc. While it is important to do that, it is also important to create a system where individuals can interact with it in a non-problematic way. It has become too convenient to live unsustainably because it can be hard to find motivation in a broken system where individual actions seem inconsequential. It is also hard when the most accessible options are often playing into a worse system. By restructuring the scale of the systems, it will normalize sustainability and governments will provide the resources that we are often forced to bear the individual brunt of. It will also be a step towards trying to fix the tendency of the repercussions of climate change falling on marginalized communities whose voices are constantly silenced. Christopher Morgan-Knapp and Charles Goodman debate about whether individual consumption matters enough to make ethical decisions about it and that is an important conversation to have when consumption plays into the larger system of deterioration but if we restructure the framework, we will find that individual consumption does matter and can be a tool to uplift the system.