I have often argued that sustainability is an ethical issue. Ethics, most broadly, concerns the choices we make that affect the interests of others, and the basis upon which we judge those choices to be good or bad. Environmental ethics broadens ethical questions to consider the interests of non-humans, and most broadly, the entire environment. But it is human choices that ethics concerns, since we do not ascribe sufficient foresight to other creatures to expect them to make ethical choices. One could plausibly make an argument that the most ethical choice for humans would be to go extinct and therefore stop inflicting such harm on the environment. But this really misses the point.
Unlike environmentalism, I argue that sustainability is a strongly anthropocentric concept that places the future interests of the human species at its core. It is only because we now understand that the entire environment is crucial to human survivability that the ethics of sustainability generally aligns with environmental ethics. But the long term considerations of sustainability aligns more with the concept of intergenerational justice.
I have always considered myself to be a utilitarian. Indeed, despite the word often conveying a disparaging tone, especially from religious quarters, most people tend to be utilitarians to a significant extent. People make many decisions, including ethical considerations, by evaluating the likely future outcomes that will flow from the alternative choices. True utilitarians will evaluate the outcomes in terms of the interest of all persons, and will choose the action that produces 'the greatest amount of good for the greatest number' (Jeremy Bentham). Needless to say, many people do not follow this criteria but instead seek to maximise good for themselves (egoism) or those closest to them (tribalism etc.). They can rightly be criticised as acting selfishly, and hence, unethically.
Criticisms of utilitarianism often focus on the difficulty of predicting the outcomes most likely to flow from particular actions, in rather the same way that proposed actions to address sustainability challenges are criticised because the outcomes are uncertain. But when making significant public policy decisions we have a clear ethical duty to evaluate the likely future outcomes of alternative choices, based upon the best available evidence. As we see in the climate change debate, the existence of uncertainty within the broad scientific consensus is sufficient to allow detractors to avoid and delay necessary actions that will likely produce a better long term outcome. However, uncertainty should never be a justification for inaction, although ongoing re-evaluation should certainly be required as new evidence emerges.
The concept of 'the greatest amount of good for the greatest number' has lead to other attacks on utilitarianism, generally in terms of its apparent justification of some very bad outcomes for a few provided that these are outweighed by good outcomes for the many. There are numerous examples, although real life is rarely as simple as the examples might suggest. One seemingly black and white example is whether authorities should shoot down a hijacked aircraft flying towards a densely populated city, apparently with the intention of deliberately crashing. The utilitarian argument is that the 'bad' loss of several hundred lives is outweighed by the 'good' outcome of tens of thousands of lives saved.
What has this to do with sustainability? Certainly choices regarding sustainability will clearly have 'bad' outcomes for some people and 'good', or at least 'better' outcomes for others. Beyond the challenges of predicting likely future outcomes of alternative actions, sustainability demands that we consider the interests of many people who may not even exist yet - future generations. It is likely that in terms of pure numbers, the interests of future generations will far outweigh the interests of those alive today. However, I would argue that when Bentham proposed 'the greatest good for the greatest number', he was simply trying to encodify the concept of maximising good.
A core issue in sustainability is population size and carrying capacity. It is almost certain that humans have already overshot the earth's long term carrying capacity for humans, certainly at a level of affluence of western society. So from an utilitarian perspective, greater happiness is more likely to result from a reduced population far into the future. In this sense, the simple 'greatest happiness for the greatest number' formula needs to be re-considered.
Furthermore, current actions that may have 'bad' outcomes for some may indeed be necessary to maximise overall happiness in the long term. For example, providing emergency aid to people who are starving, ostensibly because they have grossly exceeded an area's carrying capacity, may be counter-productive in the longer term if those people simply go on to continue to reproduce at rates that will just lead to further famine. That is not to say that all emergency aid is 'bad', but if it not part of a wider strategy to produce a sustainable outcome, which implies stablising population, then it is difficult to justify from a long term ethical standpoint.
On the other hand, western societies have an unhealthy obsession with needless consumption. Regardless of the uncertainties of carrying capacity analysis, there is little doubt that we would need several earths if the entire current human population of more than 7 billion lived like Americans or Australians. Yet it is not clear that long term happiness will be maximised by seeking to have us all live like Ethiopians. Notwithstanding that much western consumption is indeed needless, and probably reduces happiness, there are many aspects of western affluence that clearly do enhance happiness. Travel and exposure to other cultures and places of beauty is but one example. I would argue that overall happiness will be enhanced if a greater proportion of a smaller global population can enjoy the benefits of such happiness.
Nevertheless, all societies should have access to the basic necessities that western societies mostly take for granted - clean water and sanitation, food security, housing, medical care and education. But again, extending these necessities to to the third world must be part of a larger strategy to stablise and in most case reduce populations to long term sustainable levels. Fortunately, experience shows that provision of these necessities does generally lead to a more modest birth rate, but it is doubtful whether the third world can survive the kind of demographic transition that the west has largely completed, because the population in many third world countries will continue to rise for many decades before it begins to stablise and fall.
So now I have revealed a core focus of my views on achieving a sustainable future - population. Almost any action that leads to a smaller human population will be ethically superior to one that leads to a larger population. Clearly there are many ways of achieving a smaller population and some will be ethically indefensible, such as genocide. But actions which purport to improve the lives of many while allowing populations to grow are also ethically indefensible, since long term happiness will clearly deteriorate as greater numbers of people face impoverished lives as a result of having to share the earth's limited resources with more people. Similarly, based on the broad ethical principle of equity, a large population living in conditions of similarly squalor may achieve better overall happiness than a world of gross inequality such as exists today. But a smaller population living in conditions of similar affluence surely achieves much greater overall happiness and therefore should be the long term goal of sustainability.
No comments:
Post a Comment