DIY Carbon Mitigation

A recent study found that the US could cut carbon emissions by 7% using off-the-shelf technology and for little cost or payback for up-front  costs—and little in the way of lifestyle changes. There were 17 well-known actions included in the model, such as

• driving a fuel-efficient car
• insulating existing homes
• installing energy-saving lightbulbs
• installing low-flow showerheads
• changing furnace filters at the recommended time
• line-drying clothes when possible
• driving the speed limit
• carpooling when possible

According to the news report on this paper,

Until now, no study has calculated the total amount of carbon emissions that would be slashed via these measures, the likelihood that people will undertake them, and how many households have already implemented each item.

Even figuring widespread resistance to some of the advice–such as obeying speed limits and carpooling–these ordinary measures, if universally adopted, could trim U.S. carbon emissions by over 100 million metric tons–more than 7%–within a decade. Given that the United States contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other country except China, even this much change would be significant.

Fun with Paradoxes

In Chapter 3, Garvey relates the difficulty with assigning responsibility for the current climate change crisis to the sorites paradox, also called the paradox of the heap.

The general idea is that when something is made up of many, many little things, it’s difficult (if not logically impossible) to say that just one of those little things is what makes the big thing itself or, in another context, if very many minor actions cause something, then how causative is each of the little actions.

For example, if you have a few grains of sand, then it’s not a heap, but if you have millions of grains of sand, it’s definitely a heap. Say I take a heap of sand and start removing one grain at a time, at what point is the heap no longer a heap?

In the context of climate change, Garvey points out that what seems to absolve us individually from responsibility is that none of our individual actions is really contributing very much at all to the climate problem. In fact, this reason is sometimes given as a reason for inaction because if just one person stops adding to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, their individual action won’t do much of anything to curb the problem. However, since the heap is made up of individuals, the only way to face up to the problem is to somehow address the collective.

Here’s a funny, if weird, comic about the sorites paradox. Or maybe it’s really about something else…

Source: Dinosaur Comics

And a Philosophical Film

Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

And so presumably the examined life is worth living, and the film Examined Life ought to be worth seeing! It’s a documentary about philosophers and received rave reviews.

The film features Peter Singer discussing the article we read last week, and Slavoj Zizek visiting a garbage dump to talk about environmental responsibility. Here’s the trailer:

 

Singer’s Postscript on Famine and Foreign Aid

Thanks, Chris, for the link to the article’s postscript.

Due to copyright restrictions (and your attention spans), I can’t reprint the whole thing, but here are excerpts that seem to address the objection that James and others raised in class. Peter Singer writes:

There are, however, some matters of emphasis that I might put differently if I were to rewrite the article, and the most important of these concerns the population problem. I still think that, as I wrote then, the view that famine relief merely postpones starvation unless something is done to check population growth is not an argument against aid, it is only an argument against the type of aid that should be given.

I would now, however, have given greater space to the discussion of the population problem; for I now think that there is a serious case for saying that if a country refuses to take any steps to slow the rate of its population growth, we should not give it aid. This is, of course, a very drastic step to take, and the choice it represents is a horrible choice to have to make; but if, after a dispassionate analysis of all the available information, we come to the conclusion that without population control we will not, in the long run, be able to prevent famine or other catastrophes, then it may be more humane in the long run to aid those countries that are prepared to take strong measures to reduce population growth, and to use our aid policy as a means of pressuring other countries to take similar steps.

I should also make it clear that the kind of aid that will slow population growth is not just assistance with the setting up of facilities for dispensing contraceptives and performing sterilizations. It is also necessary to create the conditions under which people do not wish to have so many children. This will involve, among other things, providing greater economic security for people, particularly in their old age, so that they do not need the security of a large family to provide for them.

One other matter that I should now put forward slightly differently is that my argument does, of course, apply to assistance with development, particularly agricultural development, as well as to direct famine relief. Indeed, I think the former is usually the better long-term investment. Although this was my view when I wrote the article, the fact that I started from a famine situation, where the need was for immediate food, has led some readers to suppose that the argument is only about giving food and not about other types of aid. This is quite mistaken, and my view is that the aid should be of whatever type is most effective.

One thing I think is particularly interesting is that this discussion translates so well from 1972 to 2009. Although the fortunes of particular countries have shifted, we remain concerned about famine and about population control, and if anything are more aware now of the limits of our global natural resources.

Lester Brown’s Plan B

I found two interesting news stories in the NPR archive about Lester Brown and food security. These links have transcripts and downloadable audio.

4/14/08: Aid Groups Target Poor Nations as Food Prices Soar

10/2/09: Could Climate Change Topple Modern Civilization?

From looking at some of the comments, I get the impression that some of you feel like we are doing nothing but talking about gloom and doom and are feeling quite pessimistic about the future.

It’s worth trying to move beyond those thoughts to have some other, richer responses. Some ways to react to these readings:

1. Find out more and evaluate their message: What sorts of evidence have been presented? How does the evidence hang together? Are the doom-and-gloom scenarios realistic? How soon? How will they affect different groups of people?

2. Notice the solutions that are on offer. There are many. Some individual but most policy-based. Many of these solutions build on rather than undermine each other. In hearing the negative examples, we may lose sight of the many places where food aid helped, where population growth rates have slowed, where educational levels and wealth have increased.

3. Focus on the moral arguments, and try to understand the various assignments of responsibility, obligation, and consideration.

Light Bulbs

The Ultimatum Game

In class, we’ve distinguished between descriptive theories and prescriptive (or normative) theories.

Psychological egoism is descriptive: it says that people act selfishly (as a matter of fact). We can disprove this thesis when we give examples of people acting unselfishly.

Ethical egoism is normative: it says that people should act selfishly (whether they actually do or not). Acting to further one’s own self-interests becomes the way to define morality for the ethical egoist. An ethical egoist believes that an altruist is not living up to the highest standards of integrity. The egoist believes that the altruist is manipulated and weak for not pursuing egoism.

Looking at actual behavior does not necessarily tell us much about how people ought to behave. If morality were nothing more than always following our intuitions, there would be no point to having either moral codes or ethical theories.

However, I do think (and many other philosophers agree) that we can learn something from studying actual behavior. For example, we can learn whether people find it easy or difficult to act in ways they believe are moral.

I used the example in class of the ultimatum game, which shows that many people value fairness above self-interest. Studies by economists and psychologists have shown that while extreme acts of altruism are rare, altruism that meets the following criteria is quite common:

1. People are willing to sacrifice their own material well-being to help those who are being kind.

The attempt to provide public goods without coercion departs from pure self-interest. Experiments show that people cooperate to contribute toward a public good to a degree greater than would be implied by pure self-interest. Individually optimal contribution rates, as defined by the standard utility model, are close to 0 percent. However, in experiments, the willingness for an individual to contribute to a public good is highly contingent on the behavior of others.

2. People are willing to sacrifice their own material well-being to punish those who are being unkind.

Evidence is provided by the ultimatum game, consisting of two people, a proposer and decider, splitting a fixed amount of money. The proposer offers a division of the money, then the decider decides if he or she refuses or accepts the proposal. If the decider says yes, they split the money according to the proposer’s offer, but if the decider says no, neither person gets any money. The standard utility model would find that any offer proposed to the decider should be expected if it is greater than zero because utility should increase with any increase in income. Along the same lines, the standard utility model would predict that the proposer would offer the smallest amount of money possible to the decider in order to maximize his or her own utility. However, data shows that deciders are willing to punish any unfair offer and proposers tend to make fair offers.

3. Both motivations 1 and 2 have a greater effect on behavior as the material cost of sacrificing becomes smaller.