Walter SinnottArmstrong Its Not My Fault Global Warming

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “It’s Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligations” Power. Point prepared by Andrew Jeffery, Green River College, December, 2015

Sinnott-Armstrong’s Thesis • Even if global warming is occurring, and • Even if its costs will be staggering, and • Even if governments must do something about it – • It is still not clear what moral obligations fall to individuals like you and I.

Assumptions of Fact 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Global warming will increase over the next century Global warming is anthropogenic Global warming will create serious global problems The poor will be hurt most of all Governments are able to mitigate global warming It’s too late to stop global warming Steps to mitigate global warming will be very costly Major governments, especially the United States, have an obligation to address global warming BUT STILL…

It is not clear what the Individual’s obligation is(!) • Governmental obligations do not always entail individual obligations – The Bridge example – The Education example • How does the obligation to do something about global warming compare to these other analogies? • S-A picks the example of recreational SUV use, and asks: what moral principle might entail that it was obligatory to forgo it?

Sinnott-Armstrong considers a number of different kinds of moral principles that might support the conclusion that he shouldn’t drive the SUV… • Actual Act Principles—These include a number of familiar consequentialist ideas • Internal Principles—These include Kantian and Virtue-ethical principles • Collective Principles • Counterfactual Principles

Actual Act Principles • The Harm Principle—we have a moral obligation not to perform an act that causes harm to others. • The Indirect Harm Principle—we have a moral obligation not to perform an act that causes. . . someone [else] to carry out acts that [harm] others. • The Contribution Principle—We have a moral obligation not to make problems worse. The Gas Principle—We have a moral obligation not to expel greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. • The Risk Principle—We have a moral obligation not to increase the risk of harms to other people.

The Harm Principle • • Principle: we have a moral obligation not to perform an act that causes harm to others. “The problem is that such driving does not cause harm in normal cases. ” S-A argues: 1. 2. 3. 4. That his driving the SUV is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for global warming, and that no individual person or animal is made worse off by his driving. Superfluous contribution: helping push the car off the cliff when it would have gone over anyway is still culpable when: a. The intent is to harm, and b. The act is unusual But harm is not the intention of the joyride, nor is the act unusual, and it is counterproductive to condemn agents who are acting no worse than average, as this undercuts the “incentives for the worst offenders to better. ”* Analogy to pouring a quart of water into a flooding river. The dis-analogy with famine relief. A recurring theme here is Sinnott-Armstong’s causal atomism: he keeps pointing to the lack of a causal chain that runs directly from the action of his recreational SUV-use to the harm of some particular individual, instead of considering incremental contributions to harm of the whole ecosystem.

The Indirect Harm Principle • Principle: we have a moral obligation not to perform an act that causes. . . someone [else] to carry out acts that [harm] others. • S-A replies – I’m not that influential – “David” wasn’t influenced by me, and doesn’t influence anyone else, but still has the same obligation, if there is one – Creating a bad habit, undermining one’s environmentalism, setting a bad example still doesn’t cause climate change.

The Contribution Principle • The Principle: We have a moral obligation not to make problems worse. • S-A claims, “The problem with this argument is that my act of driving does not even make climate change worse. . . There is no individual person or animal who will be worse off if drive than if I do not drive my gas guzzler just for fun. Global warming and climate change occur on such a massive scale that my individual driving makes no difference to the welfare of anyone. ” The reasoning here is reminiscent of Hardin’s description of the “tragedy of the commons. ” It is a kind of collective action problem: if each individual wasteful driver reasons this way, collectively their driving habits do make a difference.

Internal Principles • The Universalizability Principle—We have a moral obligation not to act on any maxim that we cannot will to be a universal law. S-A’s description of the “maxim” acted upon seems obviously dishonest; see notes. • The Means Principle—we have moral obligation not to treat any other person as a means only. • The Doctrine of Double-Effect—we have a moral obligation not to harm anyone intentionally (either as an end or as a means). • The Virtue Principle—we have a moral obligation not to perform an act that expresses a vice or is contrary to virtue. S-A’s skepticism about whether wasteful driving is vicious deserves a whole separate frame.

The Virtue Principle • The Principle: we have a moral obligation not to perform an act that expresses a vice or is contrary to virtue. • S-A’s Arguments – Driving the SUV expresses a desire for fun. There is nothing vicious about having fun. Thus, there is nothing vicious about driving the SUV. – Having fun is vicious only if it is harmful or risky. But it has already been established that driving the SUV is not really harmful, and therefore not risky either.

Collective Principles • The Ideal Law Principle—We have a moral obligation not to perform an action if it ought to be illegal. • The Group Principle—We have a moral obligation not perform an action if this action makes us a member of a group whose actions together cause harm

Counterfactual Principles • The General Action Principle—I have a moral obligation not to perform an act when it would be worse for everyone to perform an act of the same kind. • The General Permission Principle—I have an obligation not to perform an act whenever it would be worse for everyone to be permitted to perform an act of that kind. • The Public Permission Principle—I have an obligation not to perform an act whenever it would be worse for everyone to know that everyone is permitted to perform an act of the kind. • The Contractualist Principle—I have an obligation not to perform an act whenever it violates a general rule that nobody could reasonably reject as a public rule for governing action in society.

What is Left?

Questions