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Text
THE 'FIGHT FOR THE FORESTS' AFFAIR
Authors:
Richard & Val Routley.
R. Routley has been since 1971
Senior Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Research School of
Social Sciences, A.N.U.;
the position is tenured with a 5 year
bar, at that time passed more or less automatically. V. Routley
is author of a number of published papers both on philosophy and
on environmental subjects.
Title & Contents:
'The Fight for the Forests' (1st edition 1973,
290 pages) looked at the situation of Australian forests, especially
proposed and progressing industrial development of the forests such
as in pine and woodchip schemes;
it discussed economic, ecological
and social aspects of these schemes and of the planning which
underlay and justified them, as well as associated issues in the
foundations of economics and environmental decision-making.
Qualifications to write the book: These were of a reasonable
generalist kind. As philosophers we were well acquainted with the
theory of scientific methodology~ probability and decision theory,
as environmentalists and keen amateur naturalists we had a reasonable
general knowledge of the biological and ecological aspects involved.
The foundations of economics is also an area of academic research
and interest.
The local forestry literature is .neither very copious
nor very specialised, so that it is fairly easy · to become more or
less completely acquainted with it. Most of it is fairly easily
understood by people with~ut professional forestry training.
'The
Fight for the Forests' laid major emphasis on reasoning and on
methodological considerations in planning and prediction, and on \,
bringing outunderlying or hidden assumptions - especially value
assumptions - in these areas.
This is an area in which we were
well qualified to w.~ite. Given the very large range of areas involved
in discussing forestry as a social phenomenon, rangi n g from scientific
methodology and decision theory through sociology, social science,
economics and many areas of biology and ecology, our own special
areas of academic interest and in-depth knowledge were at least as
generally relevant to the issues concerned as most of those involved
in a conventional forestry training.
Care was taken to provide
full references to background work in cases where specialist areas
of knowledge were involved, so that no one had to rely simply on
our authority for claims made.
The book attempted then to present
an integrated picture of the forestry situation in Australia on
the basis of detailed knowledge of some areas relevant to the field,
as the work of foresters themselves often does,* and much of i.t
consisted of what is now known as 'applied philosophy'.
* These points should help dispel the professionalist myth, propagated
commonly by foresters, that only people with professional forestry
training are qualified to write about the forests.
Often such
foresters also advocate a closed decision-making system in which
they; as the 'relevant professionals' have sole rights of decision .
However, forestry issues raise many questions of social values which
are of general concern and shou d be widely discussed.
As well, as
noted, a very wide range of discipline areas are involved, and some
of the most important for the fate of the forests lie right outside
(continued on next page)
�2.
Character of Book: . 'The Fight for the Forests' was not a very
radical book politically but apparently offended mainly because it
attac~ed cherished programs and because of its strong emphasis on
the control of forests by the large forest industries, the close
connections of these industries with state forest services who were
allegedly employed in the public interest, and the role of professional
foresters in promoting ecologically destructive forestry developments
which were in the interests of industry. At that time the forestry
profession was a sacred cow, virtually beyond criticism, and the
book, rather predictably, was the object of intense hostility from
professional foresters (including academic foresters).
Its main
specific contentions, concerning the excessive nature of the pine
program and overestimation in planning for this program, the destructive environmental effects and uneconomic nature for the public of
pine and woodchip schemes in public forests, were at the time
controversial but have been subsequently vindicated by events and
by a number of later studies by others. The book tended to receive
unfavourable reviews from foresters, but received many favourable,
often highly favourable, reviews from non-foresters.
What happened:
Funds for printing the book were obtained, more or
less by chance, from RSSS, which at that time had a substantial
end-of-triennium surplus, without going through any refereeing system.
After final typing for photo-offset printing WfiS completed and just
a few weeks before the book was due to go to the printer, professional
foresters and sympathisers within the university appear to have got
wind of its likely contents.
(An article on pines published the
previous year, in Australian Quarterly 1972, had a substantial impact*·* l
and provided a good idea of the book's general stance). The then
Vice Chancellor, Professor R.M. Williams, suggested that printlng
should not proceed unless the book was given to the head of the
Forestry School at A.N.U., to be revised in ~ccordance with his
comments.
(Given the attitudes, beliefs, and connections of
professionals in general and this head of Department in particular,
this would almost certainly have crippled or destroyed the book.)
Footnote p.l
continued
conventional forestry training. For example, the major and most
influential papers underlying the original planning for the pine
program in the late sixties (papers which were heavily criticised
in our work) were the product of a botanist, Dr. M.R. Jacobs,
although they were primarily concerned ~ith qti~stions of planning
and decision.
But forconsidering these questions (e.g. the popular
planning methodology of overestimating future demand
and population
to 'play safe'), it is more helpful to understand, say, methodology
and decision theory than it is to understand, say, the patterns
of seeding of various eucalypts.
No one complained about Dr. Jacobs
going outside his 'area of competence', nor was his work suppressed
or subjected to censorship on this ground, because he was covered
by the professional umbrella.
There are many similar cases, which
reveal the arbitrariness with which field restrictions are commonly
applied to restrict inquiry.
** 1
After the article appeared there was for the first time parliamentary
questioning of the pine p ogram, with some strong speeches against
it,
and an increasingly critical attitude was
taken in the press.
�3.
Fortunately, the acting-Director of RSSS at the time was Professor
G. Sawer, who resisted this suggestion, and also kindly read
through the manuscript to check on liability to legal action;
(in the fuss preceding publication it had been suggested also that
publication should not proceed because of possible liability to
such legal action). He suggested a few minor changes of a few lines
at one or two points to safeguard against this.
Publication proceeded. The first edition of the book in 1973
sold out within a few months, and two further editions, revised and
updated, (1974, 1975) also sold out shortly after printing, making
it one of the best selling books ever distributed by A.N.U. Press.
Harassment from irate professionals and their sympathisers
within the university was not over however. We were left in no doubt
that the book had been 'an embarrassment to the university'.
In 1974
the author with library rights was prevented on order from the acting
head of the Forestry School, Professor Carron, from using the
Forestry School library.
As this contains.most forestry publications
and material, this constituted a direct attempt to block further work.
This ban was later overturned as a result of intervention from the
Biological Sciences Library Committee.
Later, RSSS, apparently in response to criticism of certain
school publications, set up a committee to review publications
procedure.
Shortly afterwards we were informed that there would be
no funding available for a further edition o f the book or f o r a
a reprint o f the book. No reasons were given. We were not informed
that the book was the subj e ct of a revi e w (as t he re were at that
time no proposals by us for a further edition) . We were given no
opportunity to nominate referees, to supply relevant information,
or to influence the outcome of the review in any way. Subs e quently
the school adopted a different procedural system in which the
departments and authors concerned nominate suitable referees. There
is little doubt that, had we been given the opportunity to follow
the regular system, suitable referees could have been found to provide
favourable reports.
Meanwhile, orders ~or the now out-of-print book
continue to arrive, and it continues to be favourably reviewed and
mentioned, both in Australia and overseas.
There is little doubt
that a further edition or reprint could have been sold. Attempts to
prevent publication were, therefore, ult.Lmately successful.
As a sequel, the production
publications by School presses one - was a major ground used by
take over the School presses and
For the time being, this attempt
of certain unspecified 'controversial'
of which our book was, reportedl½
ANU Press in its recent attempt to
gain central control over publication.
has failed.
General comments:
The situation in the forestry profession showed,
at the time we were working in the area at least, a very high degree
of suppression and professional cohesiveness, and an exceptional
degree of conformity and absence of critical .voices. This probably
is so pronounced because of the great control and influence exerted
by a highly restricted body of employers, namely, a few large forest
industries and the state forest services. For the same reasons perhaps,
there was a high degree of secrecy and control of information.
�4.
We encountered many severe cases of suppression in the forest~y
profession (applyi·n g in a·cademic, research, bureaucratic and state
forest service areas) and in related biological areas. This
included action by state forest services to terminate the research
projects (in state forests) of those who made public statements
unfavourable to them, or who supplied information or were associa.t~d
with those who did, and many other .- adverse effects on the careers
or prospects of potentially critical professionals. The influence
of state forest services reached within the university (ANU).
Suppression was so regular and pronounced that we believe it is
probably true that no one inside the profession or discipline
could have, at that time, written a book similar to 'The Fight
for the Forests'.
Such criticism could only appear where it slipped
past :· the usual professional c9ntrol and suppression mechanisms,
as our book did.
The general suppression mechanism illustrated by this case
then appears to be:
a combination of indoctrination and intimidation,
plus well-developed professional loyalty, ensures that significant
criticism does not originate from inside the profession or
discipline itself, or does so only in a rare, muted and easily
ov~rlooked form;
at the same time the professionalism mystique
and the discipline system is invoked, as it was in our case, to
ensure that no one outside the profession _can make such criticism
in a way which needs to be treated seriously (e.g. through publication
in a university series), and even to ensure that such criticism ~Y
potentially dangerous outsiders is silenced altogether. The
fragmentation of knowledge, like the fragmentation of work, is
thus used as a method of control.
It's a neat system, which nicely
protects a particular set of doctrines and interests.
R. & V. Routley
Research School of so c ial Sciences
Australian National University
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Draft Papers
Description
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Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed.
Text
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THE 'FIGHT FOR THE FORESTS' AFFAIR
Authors:
Richard & Val Routley.
R. Routley has been since 1971
Senior Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Research School of
Social Sciences, A.N.U.;
the position is tenured with a 5 year
bar, at that time passed more or less automatically. V. Routley
is author of a number of published papers both on philosophy and
on environmental subjects.
Title & Contents:
'The Fight for the Forests' (1st edition 1973,
290 pages) looked at the situation of Australian forests, especially
proposed and progressing industrial development of the forests such
as in pine and woodchip schemes;
it discussed economic, ecological
and social aspects of these schemes and of the planning which
underlay and justified them, as well as associated issues in the
foundations of economics and environmental decision-making.
Qualifications to write the book: These were of a reasonable
generalist kind. As philosophers we were well acquainted with the
theory of scientific methodology~ probability and decision theory,
as environmentalists and keen amateur naturalists we had a reasonable
general knowledge of the biological and ecological aspects involved.
The foundations of economics is also an area of academic research
and interest.
The local forestry literature is .neither very copious
nor very specialised, so that it is fairly easy · to become more or
less completely acquainted with it. Most of it is fairly easily
understood by people with~ut professional forestry training.
'The
Fight for the Forests' laid major emphasis on reasoning and on
methodological considerations in planning and prediction, and on \,
bringing outunderlying or hidden assumptions - especially value
assumptions - in these areas.
This is an area in which we were
well qualified to w.~ite. Given the very large range of areas involved
in discussing forestry as a social phenomenon, rangi n g from scientific
methodology and decision theory through sociology, social science,
economics and many areas of biology and ecology, our own special
areas of academic interest and in-depth knowledge were at least as
generally relevant to the issues concerned as most of those involved
in a conventional forestry training.
Care was taken to provide
full references to background work in cases where specialist areas
of knowledge were involved, so that no one had to rely simply on
our authority for claims made.
The book attempted then to present
an integrated picture of the forestry situation in Australia on
the basis of detailed knowledge of some areas relevant to the field,
as the work of foresters themselves often does,* and much of i.t
consisted of what is now known as 'applied philosophy'.
* These points should help dispel the professionalist myth, propagated
commonly by foresters, that only people with professional forestry
training are qualified to write about the forests.
Often such
foresters also advocate a closed decision-making system in which
they; as the 'relevant professionals' have sole rights of decision .
However, forestry issues raise many questions of social values which
are of general concern and shou d be widely discussed.
As well, as
noted, a very wide range of discipline areas are involved, and some
of the most important for the fate of the forests lie right outside
(continued on next page)
2.
Character of Book: . 'The Fight for the Forests' was not a very
radical book politically but apparently offended mainly because it
attac~ed cherished programs and because of its strong emphasis on
the control of forests by the large forest industries, the close
connections of these industries with state forest services who were
allegedly employed in the public interest, and the role of professional
foresters in promoting ecologically destructive forestry developments
which were in the interests of industry. At that time the forestry
profession was a sacred cow, virtually beyond criticism, and the
book, rather predictably, was the object of intense hostility from
professional foresters (including academic foresters).
Its main
specific contentions, concerning the excessive nature of the pine
program and overestimation in planning for this program, the destructive environmental effects and uneconomic nature for the public of
pine and woodchip schemes in public forests, were at the time
controversial but have been subsequently vindicated by events and
by a number of later studies by others. The book tended to receive
unfavourable reviews from foresters, but received many favourable,
often highly favourable, reviews from non-foresters.
What happened:
Funds for printing the book were obtained, more or
less by chance, from RSSS, which at that time had a substantial
end-of-triennium surplus, without going through any refereeing system.
After final typing for photo-offset printing WfiS completed and just
a few weeks before the book was due to go to the printer, professional
foresters and sympathisers within the university appear to have got
wind of its likely contents.
(An article on pines published the
previous year, in Australian Quarterly 1972, had a substantial impact*·* l
and provided a good idea of the book's general stance). The then
Vice Chancellor, Professor R.M. Williams, suggested that printlng
should not proceed unless the book was given to the head of the
Forestry School at A.N.U., to be revised in ~ccordance with his
comments.
(Given the attitudes, beliefs, and connections of
professionals in general and this head of Department in particular,
this would almost certainly have crippled or destroyed the book.)
Footnote p.l
continued
conventional forestry training. For example, the major and most
influential papers underlying the original planning for the pine
program in the late sixties (papers which were heavily criticised
in our work) were the product of a botanist, Dr. M.R. Jacobs,
although they were primarily concerned ~ith qti~stions of planning
and decision.
But forconsidering these questions (e.g. the popular
planning methodology of overestimating future demand
and population
to 'play safe'), it is more helpful to understand, say, methodology
and decision theory than it is to understand, say, the patterns
of seeding of various eucalypts.
No one complained about Dr. Jacobs
going outside his 'area of competence', nor was his work suppressed
or subjected to censorship on this ground, because he was covered
by the professional umbrella.
There are many similar cases, which
reveal the arbitrariness with which field restrictions are commonly
applied to restrict inquiry.
** 1
After the article appeared there was for the first time parliamentary
questioning of the pine p ogram, with some strong speeches against
it,
and an increasingly critical attitude was
taken in the press.
3.
Fortunately, the acting-Director of RSSS at the time was Professor
G. Sawer, who resisted this suggestion, and also kindly read
through the manuscript to check on liability to legal action;
(in the fuss preceding publication it had been suggested also that
publication should not proceed because of possible liability to
such legal action). He suggested a few minor changes of a few lines
at one or two points to safeguard against this.
Publication proceeded. The first edition of the book in 1973
sold out within a few months, and two further editions, revised and
updated, (1974, 1975) also sold out shortly after printing, making
it one of the best selling books ever distributed by A.N.U. Press.
Harassment from irate professionals and their sympathisers
within the university was not over however. We were left in no doubt
that the book had been 'an embarrassment to the university'.
In 1974
the author with library rights was prevented on order from the acting
head of the Forestry School, Professor Carron, from using the
Forestry School library.
As this contains.most forestry publications
and material, this constituted a direct attempt to block further work.
This ban was later overturned as a result of intervention from the
Biological Sciences Library Committee.
Later, RSSS, apparently in response to criticism of certain
school publications, set up a committee to review publications
procedure.
Shortly afterwards we were informed that there would be
no funding available for a further edition o f the book or f o r a
a reprint o f the book. No reasons were given. We were not informed
that the book was the subj e ct of a revi e w (as t he re were at that
time no proposals by us for a further edition) . We were given no
opportunity to nominate referees, to supply relevant information,
or to influence the outcome of the review in any way. Subs e quently
the school adopted a different procedural system in which the
departments and authors concerned nominate suitable referees. There
is little doubt that, had we been given the opportunity to follow
the regular system, suitable referees could have been found to provide
favourable reports.
Meanwhile, orders ~or the now out-of-print book
continue to arrive, and it continues to be favourably reviewed and
mentioned, both in Australia and overseas.
There is little doubt
that a further edition or reprint could have been sold. Attempts to
prevent publication were, therefore, ult.Lmately successful.
As a sequel, the production
publications by School presses one - was a major ground used by
take over the School presses and
For the time being, this attempt
of certain unspecified 'controversial'
of which our book was, reportedl½
ANU Press in its recent attempt to
gain central control over publication.
has failed.
General comments:
The situation in the forestry profession showed,
at the time we were working in the area at least, a very high degree
of suppression and professional cohesiveness, and an exceptional
degree of conformity and absence of critical .voices. This probably
is so pronounced because of the great control and influence exerted
by a highly restricted body of employers, namely, a few large forest
industries and the state forest services. For the same reasons perhaps,
there was a high degree of secrecy and control of information.
4.
We encountered many severe cases of suppression in the forest~y
profession (applyi·n g in a·cademic, research, bureaucratic and state
forest service areas) and in related biological areas. This
included action by state forest services to terminate the research
projects (in state forests) of those who made public statements
unfavourable to them, or who supplied information or were associa.t~d
with those who did, and many other .- adverse effects on the careers
or prospects of potentially critical professionals. The influence
of state forest services reached within the university (ANU).
Suppression was so regular and pronounced that we believe it is
probably true that no one inside the profession or discipline
could have, at that time, written a book similar to 'The Fight
for the Forests'.
Such criticism could only appear where it slipped
past :· the usual professional c9ntrol and suppression mechanisms,
as our book did.
The general suppression mechanism illustrated by this case
then appears to be:
a combination of indoctrination and intimidation,
plus well-developed professional loyalty, ensures that significant
criticism does not originate from inside the profession or
discipline itself, or does so only in a rare, muted and easily
ov~rlooked form;
at the same time the professionalism mystique
and the discipline system is invoked, as it was in our case, to
ensure that no one outside the profession _can make such criticism
in a way which needs to be treated seriously (e.g. through publication
in a university series), and even to ensure that such criticism ~Y
potentially dangerous outsiders is silenced altogether. The
fragmentation of knowledge, like the fragmentation of work, is
thus used as a method of control.
It's a neat system, which nicely
protects a particular set of doctrines and interests.
R. & V. Routley
Research School of so c ial Sciences
Australian National University
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Box 70, Item 1: Draft of The 'fight for the forests' affair
Subject
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Printout of draft, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Plumwood V (1986), 'The "Fight for the Forests" affair', in Martin B, Baker CMA, Manwell C and Pugh C (eds) Intellectual suppression: Australian case histories, analysis and responses, Angus and Robertson, Sydney.
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a>
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
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Box 59: Nuclear
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/9f9cd664a357631422c0407999af2f49.pdf
f27e006c59271d6af13259b01440ea8f
PDF Text
Text
THE IRREFUTABILITY OF ANARCHISM
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and non~ecognition of what is
commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed.
The parallel,
drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
While
the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe
that there are no states:
none are legitimate.
on the contrary, there are all too many, though
The important parallel is as to arguments.
The
agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed,
and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe
that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fencesitting position.
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are
arguments, or at least solid considerations, against.
So it is with soundly
based anarchism, which can both fault arguments for the State
and produce
a case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin; is that of State and Church.
This institutional
comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many
very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of
the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an
organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually
answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as
business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent
threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church
used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of
them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have
come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but
as a necessary evil.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will
be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove
that God exists.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as
costly
and
typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other
respects, it should be superseded.
social arrangements.
And it can be succeeded, by alternative
�2
2.
THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED: THE REPLACEMENT
ARGUMENT.
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the
collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by
alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State
activity being dispensed with.
The argument is not a straight substitution
argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything
accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements.
There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship
of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State
activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft,
corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land
and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or
environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear ·. future, without state assistance and
subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forestdestructive pine planting and woodchip projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argument, implicit
in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of
the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest
and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions,
and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the
powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions
which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required.
For why should
people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their
collective interest?
Such functions can be performed, and performed better,
without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the
accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves".
The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case
2
form, considering each function in turn.
In each case the function is carried
out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the
people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements.
Consider, for
example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building
programs, or self ma~aged welfare, housing or environment services, or community
access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently either starved
of infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally
�3
held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the
operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of
being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals
and powerful agencies.
Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal
types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to
apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community
welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are
privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private
individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the
collective interest, coercion will normally he required for the performance of
those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation.
But
those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective
interest.
In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is
retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached.
State services that are _concerned with order, in the general sense, may
be similarly removed or replaced.
These services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services,
securitt.y, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to
make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it.
do not.
They
Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by
communities themselves without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great
many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence
of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of
3
the State's propping up of gross inequalities. A community which seriously
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
grossinequalitiesin the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for
many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving
violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal violence.
Such a left-leaning anarchism is
also quite invulnerable 'to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the
State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution.
As all
too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argument for anarchism.
The argument has
however been challenged, both by historical
�4
and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
3.
THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
LIKE.
The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for
anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the
Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where
individuals will not agree or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to
maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can
4
furnish.
In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain
advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others'
contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from
others' restraint).
The claim is that only the State with its backing
of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed.
A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type,
including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the
Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.
5
Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have
been separately imprisoned.
A State representative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while
his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while
the accomplice gets 8 years.
It so happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence.
if both confess they would each receive 4 years.
But
The "game" can be summarised
in the following "payoff" matrix:Prisoner 1
Strategies
s
S (ilence)
C(onfess)
-1, -1
-8, 0
Prisoner 2
C
o,
-8
-4, -4
The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free
at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in
each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other
does: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also
in fact a minimax strategy).
For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes
free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
confessing.
But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain
an inferior outcome to that which wou:ld have resulted by what is tendentiously
called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent ..
�5
4.
FOILING THE PRISONERS" DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma
alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene,
forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an
6
Of course
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma.sis
inessential, as is much else from the example.
But some features of the
prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption
that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate
or really cooperate.
Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation
assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in
their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests -are opposed.
The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited. 7
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect
that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference.
It is claimed
that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate,
that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of
the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement'
(Taylor, p. 5).
Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is
very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently
encouraged privatisation
of life, the extent of cooperation and trust would
undoubtedly be much higher. 8 The argument has to depend crucially then on
substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings,
e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people
were that
- unreliable and devious , many State arrangements involved in
providing public goods would not succeed either).
That such assumptions
are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the
first,suppose the priso~ers have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they
are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours
and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism
involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the
other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences
and the
extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is
fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated
political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a
preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count
�6
is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings
of others nor on the social context in which that human _operates.
While the
individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy
the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through. advertising, education, popular
media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure
towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence.
And having sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a . small community
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilennna situations that appear to count in favour of the State-. 9
5.
WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED. What the Dilemma-based case
for .the State has to show - what never has been shown·- is that there are
outstanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention,
and only so (optimally) resolved. Finally it has to be shown that in the
course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situations than those
that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot
be satisfied, of they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question
begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is
important, damaging, optional, worse) and involve considerations about which
reasonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an
example of such: after all there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of family violence or feuds) which
are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be
satisfied at all.
For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilennna games,
Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the
Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just
of a single game but of a sequence of · such games, to be more adequately
represented by what is called a superg~e.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
. h pure 1 y egoistic
.
. interests.
.
, lO For wh at sequentia
. 1
separa t e d payers
wit
1
games permit that isolated games exclude, is th.at players' actions may be
dependent upon past performance of other players.
This dependence effectively
removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma
situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from
past social interaction.
In such supergames then, no intervention is required.
�7
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing
the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that
they can really cooperate.
Equally important, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so
the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate. 11
Informational input may also. be important, e.g. news that each prisone_r has
J_to agreements
a good record of adherin~h or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor
is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal
strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives
they be required in recalcitrant cases), and
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas
are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations
can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they
are not already catered for.
And in fact communal and cooperative organisation
did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in
the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
There are no important Dilemma
situations, it seems, where the State is essential.
The State has been thought
to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example,
that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour
is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart
from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective
goods - is through State control. 1 2 But it is quite evident that there are
other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional
markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations
13 ·
.
·
.
h as very extensive
e ff ects, -many
o f t h em negative,
soth at t h e gains
ma d e,
any, in so resolving Dilemma
1· f
situations, appear to be substantially outweighed
by the costs involved.
For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State
to put in the balance.
As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with
its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as i ri the cas e of the
prisone rs,br differently with the State as a further player (since the State .
may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.).
also to further arguments against the State.
These points lead
�8
6.
THE SECOND WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBLEM RECURRENCE.
The solution
by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more
dangerous form the very problems introduction of the State was designed to
solve, including new Dilemmas.
Suppose, for instance, the secular State ·really
were introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas - introduced as opposed
to inherited from the religious State and the Church, and maintained to prop
up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests then the array of States generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas, which there is no
Super-State to resolve by coercion.
Suppose, as the myth has it, the State
really were introduced in _the interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the arrays of States resulting more than negates these advantages,
with instability, disorder and violence on a grander scale than before the
emergence of modern secular States. 14
7.
THE THIRD WAY: THE OVERSHOOT ARGUMENT,FROM THE INADEQUACY OF
INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON STATE POWER.
Having ceded a monopoly on power to
the State, in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an
inequitable distribution of power, what controls or balances the power of the
State?
A Super-State.
And its power?
There is a
vicious infinite regress
if the reply to the question "What controls the controller?" is "a further
15
The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes
controller".
lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism - is by having the first of these
controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly
established, those of the society or group of communities it controls.
implies democratic methods of some kind.
This
Others go further: 'democracy [is]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which
16
we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.
In this event, control has mostly failed.
Democracy is extremely attenuated,
even in those states that claim to practice it.
The exercise of power in modern
"democratid' states - much increased power reaching deep into peoples' lives,
power which has passed to certain political elites and is directed at the
attainment of such objectives as economic growth and material "progress" - is
often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term' 17 In any case, indirect democratic and other
institutional checks are tenuous in as much as
they depend ultimately on the
toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State.
Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as
democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are
broadly in accord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared
�9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
checks which operate only insofar as a
system
But institutional
acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those "checked~' are not really checks at all.
The problem of controlling the power of the State, and preventing
the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its
mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the
first place.
The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the
anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
8.
THE FOURTH WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY.
responsible for actions deliberately undertaken.
A person is
This premiss can be derived,
if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking · responsibility
for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about
h;such
what to do on eac~A occasion oneself, not acting simply on direction from outside,but
determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision
over to someone or something else.
It implies, that is, moral autonomy.
Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom.
For the
autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles ~ is not subject
to the will of another.
another so directs.
Even if it does what another directs, it is not because
In being free, not of constraints (both physical and
self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous
being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon
them.
Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and
with freedom.
An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some
imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State.
In sum, being a person,
as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority
of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on
personhood implies, i f t he argument is sound , anarchism. 18
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State",
one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy.
But such a "State", with no
independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism o
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
�10
9.
THE FIFTH WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
The replacement
argument enables construction of a model · of a society functioning without the
State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State
is not necessary.
But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom
or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of
real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable.
The gap may be closed by
appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various
times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked.
Examples of such
Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are,
19
anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,
and
there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic
arrangements within the State structure. 20
10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION.
The arguments
outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State
and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on.
For example, spontaneous
anarchism - according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution
without any prior organisation-is a position which is not viable and could
not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends.
The sort of anarchist society
which these theoretical arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the
organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures
(and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening
of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct
democracy.
The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin
sometimes pictured it.
It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised
connnunities, for otherwise such arrangements as connnunity replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilennnas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Connnunities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
connnunity there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
and property, and no highly concentrated economic property and power.
community wilt be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
cennnunally owned or not owned at all.
A ·
�11
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, they offer
no detailed blueprint.
Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of
anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives.
11. STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETY: THE FOREST SUCCESSION
MODEL OF REPLACEMENT BY AN ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURE.
The main strategy, emerging.
from the First Way, is that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist
social order proceeds by replacement or aooption of the more satisfactory State
organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more
anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer
necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements.
Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change
and succession as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such
a model is in turn very suggestive.
To make the model more definite, and
to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical
rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism
replaces a Statist society.
There is certainly a marked change in structure,
typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact
closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and
a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms.
A forest is not
merely a set of trees, but trees in structura J arrangement and interdependence,
not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects,
seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure
include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and
bacterial content.
The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced
evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is
clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest.
(Strictly,
there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary
and revolutionary, and various different revolutionary strategies; and the
standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.)
Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be
very slow by human time scale~ may require some (management) practices, else
evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue.
For example, seeds
for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been
stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion,
in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas,
methods, arrangements, etc.).
And rainforest evolution may not be able to
�12
continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by State officers, in
which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning
(suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance
perpetuated.
Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by intro-
ducing seeds, or planting rainforest trees in poorly seeded areas (i.e.
setting up alternative social arrangements) under the eucalypt overstorey,
or even by some careful culling of eucalypts. But even without culling there
will be much for anarchist management to do.
As the rainforest cover begins to grow up through the eucalypt forest,
the forest begins to change structurally.
Younger eucalypt poles die, and
their replacement by eucalypts is generally precluded owing to low light
intensities near the forest floor (in something the same way conditions for
capitalist entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist
society).
Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts
emerge through the canopy, and in time these fall to the forest floor, to
rot and not to be replaced - unless the climax rainforest is subject to
catastrophe, such as fire or cyclone.
Catastrophic methods, such as clearfalling the eucalypt forest, replanting
with rainforest, protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth,
are much more problematic.
To be applied they require either a large workforce
or much mechanical power (so it is with violent revolutions which require
a large support basis not available in advanced capitalist and state socialist
countries, or else access to means of perpetrating violence comparable to
that of the State).
There are often similar requirements for success;
otherwise the area may be choked by rapidly growing weeds or the rainforest
plants may be suppressed by eucalypt seedlings and a pioneer eucalypt stage
recur.
Moreover, a eucalypt overstorey sometimes affords good conditions
for rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, occasional
frosts, and drying winds, better moisture retention conditions,and so on.
(_Similarly anarchist organisations can sometimes use the environment afforded
by the State to get started.) But under some conditions, such as excessive
interference (as happens to alternative arrangements in highly repressive
States where local conditions also commonly favour revolutionary succession),
there may be little or no alternative t o clearfelling practices.
But just as
clearfelling the eucalypt forest can create favourable conditions for weeds,
so violent revolutions can only too easily create the conditions for a new
(State) elite, controlling the concentrated power generated for the overthrow
of the older regime.
�13
12. APPLYING THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL.
How to apply the model is
not difficult to see in broad outline, and many of the further details
have been filled out by work that can be described as indicating how
allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to
alternative social arrangements and life-styles built on self-management
and mutual aid.~
The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted,
anarchist (nonStatist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts
made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by
democratization of present institutions and development of nonStatist
and noncapitalist . alternatives.
Some of the practices are familiar:
anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc.
are slightly less familiar:
Others
avoidance of State influence by arrangements
beyond State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges
of goods and services, action directed at removing decision-making from
State departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and
ultimately, to decentralized local communities.
In this sort of way
worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively
transferred from the State, and returned to the community and to people
more directly involved.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973,
especially p. 139.
Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction
between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of
generally beneficial state activity~ there is only a
(relative:1-y small) finite number to consider - and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
course uniquely determined.
Replacement is not of
Lines such replacements can tfke are
indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature,
consider especially but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields, Factories and
Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest
of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin_'s Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited
S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff.; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary.
For recent discussion
of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law
court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone,
'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', Anarchism, (reprint of
Nomos _ XIx),New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
4.
Arguments of this typ.e are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State' (M. Taylor,
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
To cover all
arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants
of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of
Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's
Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are
not merely egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such
games are iterated.
As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate,
there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of
the same logical form - those where people do not contribute to
supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a
"collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum"
quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons,
�2
unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness).
That received arguments
of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the
wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere.
An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter
of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1980.
5.
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance
of population size in the arguments for the State.
But size is not
decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided
(or relocated) by organisation into
smaller communities.
The figures
given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which
suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State
alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of
social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, 'Social
Theories, Self Management, and
Environmental Problems' in
Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS,
Australian National University, 1980.
8.
As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence
has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges
from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The SelfManaging Environment, Allison & · Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332.
Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situations.
'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game
approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy
even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'.
Abrams, op. cit., p. 308.
9.
Cf.
the discus$ion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
�3
10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of
critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially
chapter 5.
11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal
prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the "adversaries".
12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife,
in modern economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition)
in Taylor.
For a
further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit.,pp.250 ff.
13. For instance, a certain social escapism: one escapes
one's social roles
and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and
often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover
the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
regions.
15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent
of his Third Man argument.
16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II.
Fourth edition
(revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127.
The ~vershoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the
dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State•, 'upon which'
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view' (p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 (1978)., 199-217: seep. 209 and p. 21l.
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. Wolff,
In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York., 1970.
No argument
is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute.
argument, for example,is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
Wolff's
�4
19. Documented in The Anarchist Collectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions,
New York, 1974.
20. As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of _self-management and
alternative lifestyles are many and significant.
And these
alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and
experience to support
operates.
their superiority over the present way society
The obstacles to self-management and alternative life
styles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to
change', Changing the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979,
p. 6.
21. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley,
p. 284 ff.
�Richard Routley lives and works. in the NSW forest.
He is sponsored
in pursuit of his research interests - in arguments and theories especially by the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (a
state-supported and state-supporting institution, holding 20,000 shares in the
uranium industry).
His main published work is in metaphysics and alternative
logics and in forestry and environmental philosophy.
preparation of this article by Val Routley.
He was helped in
�The following has been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions.
Cutting (photocopy) Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'The irrefutability of anarchism', Social
alternatives, 2(3): 23-29. (7 leaves)
�
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THE IRREFUTABILITY OF ANARCHISM
1.
GOD, THE CHURCH, AND THE STATE.
The State is like God:
the
anarchist is like the atheist in disbelief and non~ecognition of what is
commonly assumed, mostly as a matter of faith, to be needed.
The parallel,
drawn by Bakunin, has its weaknesses as well as its strengths.
While
the atheist believes that God does not exist, the anarchist does not believe
that there are no states:
none are legitimate.
on the contrary, there are all too many, though
The important parallel is as to arguments.
The
agnostic does not believe that the arguments for the existence of God succeed,
and so adopts a "neutral" stance; similarly the State-agnostic does not believe
that the arguments for the State work, and likewise tries to adopt a fencesitting position.
Soundly based atheism goes further than agnosticism, not
only faulting the arguments for, but taking it for granted that there are
arguments, or at least solid considerations, against.
So it is with soundly
based anarchism, which can both fault arguments for the State
and produce
a case against the State.
A more obvious comparison, appreciated from Reformation on and again
emphasised by Bakunin; is that of State and Church.
This institutional
comparison enables several relevant features of the State to be emphasised;
for example, how, as the Church used to, the State assigns to itself many
very extensive powers, such as a monopoly on the production and control of
the main medium of exchange, currency, and an ultimate monopoly an
organised violence, all other internal security arrangements being eventually
answerable to its police and military; how it is of the same category as
business organisations such as multinationals, which now to some extent
threaten it but by and large collaborate with it; how, as again the Church
used to, it has nominal support of most of its "subjects", though many of
them are little better than Sunday believers, and an increasing number have
come to see the State as in many respects evil and inevitably corrupt, but
as a necessary evil.
Whether the State is inevitably evil or not, it is unnecessary, so it will
be argued, in a way parallelling the famous Five Ways of Aquinas designed to prove
that God exists.
Since the State is unnecessary, as well as
costly
and
typically at least evil in many of its practices and undesirable in other
respects, it should be superseded.
social arrangements.
And it can be succeeded, by alternative
2
2.
THE FIRST WAY OF SHOWING THAT THE STATE IS NOT REQUIRED: THE REPLACEMENT
ARGUMENT.
The core of the argument is simple and persuasive: everything in the
collective interest accomplished by the State can equally be accomplished by
alternative arrangements such as voluntary cooperation, the remainder of State
activity being dispensed with.
The argument is not a straight substitution
argument, for it is not as if a rational person would want to have everything
accomplished by the State replicated by alternative arrangements.
There is much
the State does or supports that is at best rather indifferent, e.g. sponsorship
of pomp and ceremony and of junkets by VIPs; and a great deal of typical State
activity is positively evil and not in the collective interest, e.g. graft,
corruption, brutality, maintenance of inequitable distribution of wealth, land
and other resources, and encouragement or protection of polluting or
environmentally destructive industries (e.g. without state sponsorship we should
not be well embarked on a nuclear ·. future, without state assistance and
subsidization Australia would not be burdened with its extensive forestdestructive pine planting and woodchip projects).
The modern State has however many other functions than repressive or
damaging ones, functions of community welfare or of otherwise beneficial kind.
This does not upset the replacement argument for anarchism.
The argument, implicit
in the works of the classical anarchists, goes like this:- The functions of
the State can be divided into two types, those that are in the collective interest
and generally beneficial such as community welfare and organisational functions,
and those that are not (but are, presumably, in the interests of some of the
powerful groups the State tends to serve).
But as regards functions of the first type, the generally beneficial functions
which are in the collective interest, no coercion is required.
For why should
people have to be coerced into carrying out functions which are in their
collective interest?
Such functions can be performed, and performed better,
without the coercion which is the hallmark of of the State, and without the
accompanying tendency of the State to pervert such functions to the maintenance
of privilege and inequality of power, and to remove power from those it "serves".
The detailed argument that such functions can be performed takes a case by case
2
form, considering each function in turn.
In each case the function is carried
out through alternative arrangements, such as voluntary cooperation by the
people directly concerned, which replace State arrangements.
Consider, for
example, the operation of mutual aid or self help medical services or building
programs, or self ma~aged welfare, housing or environment services, or community
access communications (e.g. radio), most of which are presently either starved
of infrastructure or hindered by the State.
Such beneficial services would in
general be reorganised so that all the relevant infrastructure became communally
3
held, and those wishing to arrange or use the service would manage the
operation themselves, taking the operation into their own hands instead of
being the passive recipients of favours meted out to them by professionals
and powerful agencies.
Coercion is unnecessary because, in more communal
types of anarchism, the basic infrastructure and many resources (other than
individual labour) are already held by the community, so there is no need to
apply coercion to individuals to extract these resources needed for community
welfare projects, as there is in the situation where wealth and resources are
privatised and coercion is required to wrest resources from unwilling private
individuals.
As for the second type of functions, those which are not in the
collective interest, coercion will normally he required for the performance of
those functions, and is thus an essential part of the State's operation.
But
those functions are better dispensed with, since they are not in the collective
interest.
In this way, while the good part of the State's operation is
retained and improved upon, the bad part - especially the evils of brutality,
corruption and other abuses invariably associated with the coercive apparatus is detached.
State services that are _concerned with order, in the general sense, may
be similarly removed or replaced.
These services, which include reduction of
violence to persons and redress for such violence, quarantine services,
securitt.y, orderly operation of traffic, and so on, have often been said to
make for especial difficulties for anarchism, or even to refute it.
do not.
They
Firstly, disputes can be settled and offences dealt with directly by
communities themselves without intervention by the State.
Secondly, a great
many of these problems are created or enhanced by the State, e.g. violence
of which the State is the main purveyor and which is often the outcome of
3
the State's propping up of gross inequalities. A community which seriously
limits (or dispenses with) the institution of private property and removes
grossinequalitiesin the distribution of wealth thereby removes the need for
many "welfare" services and the basis for a great many offences involving
violence: virtually all those involving violence to private property and
many of those involving personal violence.
Such a left-leaning anarchism is
also quite invulnerable 'to further familiar, but ludicrous, arguments for the
State, such as those from the fairer distribution of land, property and wealth
that is alleged to be achieved by State enforcement of redistribution.
As all
too many people are aware, a major function of the State is to maintain and
police inequitable distribution.
This then is the main classical argument for anarchism.
The argument has
however been challenged, both by historical
4
and more recent objections, which are designed to show that people cannot
act in their collective interest without coercion.
3.
THE CASE AGAINST REPLACEMENT FROM PRISONERS' DILEMMA SITUATIONS AND THE
LIKE.
The main arguments designed to rebut the replacement argument for
anarchism and to buttress the State status quo, are based on variants of the
Prisoners' Dilemma, to the effect that there are important cases where
individuals will not agree or cooperate to provide themselves with (or to
maintain) collective goods without coercion, such as only the State can
4
furnish.
In such "dilemma" situations each individual will hope to gain
advantage, without contributing (or exercising restraint), from others'
contributions (or restraint), by freeloading on others (or profiting from
others' restraint).
The claim is that only the State with its backing
of force can resolve such situations: anarchistic replacement cannot succeed.
A basic ingredient of a considerable variety of arguments of this type,
including Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State, the "Tragedy of the
Commons" argument, and recent economic arguments for State intervention to
secure collective goods, is the single Prisoners' Dilemma game with just two
players.
5
Two prisoners, 1 and 2, taken to be accomplices in a crime, have
been separately imprisoned.
A State representative makes the following offers
separately to each: if the prisoner confesses and becomes a State's witness while
his or her accomplice remains silent, he or she will be released at once while
the accomplice gets 8 years.
It so happens that if both prisoners remain
silent the State has only enough evidence to impose a 1 year sentence.
if both confess they would each receive 4 years.
But
The "game" can be summarised
in the following "payoff" matrix:Prisoner 1
Strategies
s
S (ilence)
C(onfess)
-1, -1
-8, 0
Prisoner 2
C
o,
-8
-4, -4
The game is not intended to present a moral dilemma, that each can only go free
at the cost of the others' freedom, but the following dilemma:- It is in
each prisoner's private interest to choose strategy C no matter what the other
does: strategy C is, in the jargon, each players' "dominant" strategy (and also
in fact a minimax strategy).
For if 2, for example, remains silent, then 1 goes
free by confessing, while if 2 confesses, then 1 halves his or her sentence by
confessing.
But if both prisoners choose their dominant strategy they obtain
an inferior outcome to that which wou:ld have resulted by what is tendentiously
called "cooperating", by their both remaining silent ..
5
4.
FOILING THE PRISONERS" DILEMMA ARGUMENT.
It is bizarre that a dilemma
alleged to show the necessity of the State - which is supposed to intervene,
forcibly if required, to ensure that the prisoners "cooperate" to obtain an
6
Of course
optimal outcome - should be set up by the State's own operative.
the State's presence in arranging (or accentuating) some such dilemma.sis
inessential, as is much else from the example.
But some features of the
prisoner's relations are essential, in particular the separability assumption
that the prisoners are isolated, and so have no opportunity to communicate
or really cooperate.
Similarly, in the more general argument, a privatisation
assumption is smuggled in in the way the dilemma is formulated, that we are
dealing with self contained individuals who, like the prisoners, act only in
their own narrowly construed private interests and whose interests -are opposed.
The applicability of the dilemma to the human condition is accordingly
seriously limited. 7
A cursory aside is often added to the Prisoners' Dilemma to the effect
that the segregation of the prisoners makes no real difference.
It is claimed
that even if the prisoners could meet and discuss and even agreed to cooperate,
that would make no difference, since neither could trust (the sincerity) of
the other (Abrams, p. 193), 'neither has an incentive to keep the agreement'
(Taylor, p. 5).
Experimental and historical evidence indicates that this is
very often not so - and in a more cooperative social setting than the currently
encouraged privatisation
of life, the extent of cooperation and trust would
undoubtedly be much higher. 8 The argument has to depend crucially then on
substantially mistaken assumptions about human propensities in various settings,
e.g. that purely egoistic interests are always pursued, backed up by a large
measure of scepticism about the reliability of other people (but if people
were that
- unreliable and devious , many State arrangements involved in
providing public goods would not succeed either).
That such assumptions
are operating can be seen by elaborating the situation; e.g., to bring out the
first,suppose the priso~ers have a common bond, e.g., they are friends or they
are political prisoners with a shared social commitment, or they are neighbours
and face a future in the same community; to bring out the philosophical
scepticism
involved, suppose the prisoner with a tarnished record offers the
other security against default, and so on.
The question of the character of human interests and preferences
and the
extent of their determination by the social context in which they occur is
fundamental to the whole question of social and economic arrangements, and
also accordingly to arguments for the State on the basis of human propensities.
A major assumption underlying prevailing (non-Marxist) economics and associated
political theory, is that the interests and preferences, as summed up in a
preference ranking or utility function, of each human that is taken to count
6
is an independent parameter, which depends neither on the preference rankings
of others nor on the social context in which that human _operates.
While the
individuals and firms of mainstream economic theory do, by definition, satisfy
the independence requirements, and while there is very substantial cultural
pressure on consumers to conform (through. advertising, education, popular
media), very many humans do not conform, and the extent of cultural pressure
towards privatisation itself belies the naturalness of this independence.
And having sufficiently many interest-interdependent people in a . small community
(which is not thoroughly impoverished) is normally enough, given their social
influence, to avoid or resolve, by cooperation, the types of Prisoners'
Dilennna situations that appear to count in favour of the State-. 9
5.
WHY THE DILEMMA ARGUMENTS CANNOT SUCCEED. What the Dilemma-based case
for .the State has to show - what never has been shown·- is that there are
outstanding Dilemma situations, which are relevant and important, and also
damaging if unresolved, and that they are resolvable by State intervention,
and only so (optimally) resolved. Finally it has to be shown that in the
course of so resolving these Dilemma situations, worse situations than those
that are resolved are not thereby induced.
These complex conditions cannot
be satisfied, of they can be satisfied at all, in a way that is not question
begging. For several of the conditions are value dependent (e.g. what is
important, damaging, optional, worse) and involve considerations about which
reasonable parties can differ.
The selection of Dilemmas itself provides an
example of such: after all there are many such Dilemmas (e.g. as to environmental degradation, of overexploitation, of family violence or feuds) which
are considered beyond the sphere of the State or not worthy of State attention.
There are now grounds for concluding that the conditions cannot be
satisfied at all.
For many of the arguments using Prisoners' Dilennna games,
Hobbes' and Hume's arguments for the State and Hardin's "Tragedy of the
Commons" for instance, turn out when properly formalised to consist not just
of a single game but of a sequence of · such games, to be more adequately
represented by what is called a superg~e.
But in many such sequential
Prisoners' Dilemma games, rational "cooperation" can occur, even assuming
. h pure 1 y egoistic
.
. interests.
.
, lO For wh at sequentia
. 1
separa t e d payers
wit
1
games permit that isolated games exclude, is th.at players' actions may be
dependent upon past performance of other players.
This dependence effectively
removes one extremely unrealistic self-containment assumption from Dilemma
situations, that individuals act in totally isolated ways, not learning from
past social interaction.
In such supergames then, no intervention is required.
7
Undoubtedly some Dilemmas are resolved by "intervention", e.g. by allowing
the prisoners to get in touch so that they find they are neighbours or that
they can really cooperate.
Equally important, and equally independent of the
State, is the matter of breaking down the adversary, or game, situation so
the prisoners do not act as competitors but are prepared to cooperate. 11
Informational input may also. be important, e.g. news that each prisone_r has
J_to agreements
a good record of adherin~h or if not is prepared to stake collateral, etc. Nor
is force or threat of force required as an incentive to guarantee optimal
strategies : a range of other inducements and incentives
they be required in recalcitrant cases), and
gifts, deprivation, social pressure, etc.
is known (should
is used even by the State, e.g.
But at no stage is the State
required to make these arrangements: much as some real Prisoners' Dilemmas
are resolved by work of Amnesty International, so voluntary organisations
can be formed to detect and deal with Prisoners' Dilemma situations where they
are not already catered for.
And in fact communal and cooperative organisation
did resolve Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations historically, for example in
the case of the Commons.
In sum, here also replacement works.
There are no important Dilemma
situations, it seems, where the State is essential.
The State has been thought
to be essential because of certain influential false dichotomies; for example,
that all behaviour that is not egoistic is altruistic (but altruistic behaviour
is uncommon, and "irrational"), that the only way of allocating goods, apart
from profit-directed markets - which tend to deal abysmally with collective
goods - is through State control. 1 2 But it is quite evident that there are
other methods of allocation, both economic (e.g. exchange, through traditional
markets, based on supply costs) and social (e.g. by cooperatives, clubs).
Lastly, introduction of the State to resolve some Dilemma situations
13 ·
.
·
.
h as very extensive
e ff ects, -many
o f t h em negative,
soth at t h e gains
ma d e,
any, in so resolving Dilemma
1· f
situations, appear to be substantially outweighed
by the costs involved.
For there are the many evil aspects of the typical State
to put in the balance.
As regards Dilemma situations, entry of the State with
its authority showing may not help but may worsen some situations, and more
important, new Dilemmas may be initiated by State activity, as i ri the cas e of the
prisone rs,br differently with the State as a further player (since the State .
may engage in whaling, have access to a commons, etc.).
also to further arguments against the State.
These points lead
8
6.
THE SECOND WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBLEM RECURRENCE.
The solution
by the State to problems of social organisation repeats or generates in more
dangerous form the very problems introduction of the State was designed to
solve, including new Dilemmas.
Suppose, for instance, the secular State ·really
were introduced in order to solve Prisoners' Dilemmas - introduced as opposed
to inherited from the religious State and the Church, and maintained to prop
up privilege and foster objectives that are not in its communities' interests then the array of States generates new Prisoners' Dilemmas, which there is no
Super-State to resolve by coercion.
Suppose, as the myth has it, the State
really were introduced in _the interest of order and stability and to curb
violence; then the arrays of States resulting more than negates these advantages,
with instability, disorder and violence on a grander scale than before the
emergence of modern secular States. 14
7.
THE THIRD WAY: THE OVERSHOOT ARGUMENT,FROM THE INADEQUACY OF
INSTITUTIONAL CONTROLS ON STATE POWER.
Having ceded a monopoly on power to
the State, in order to resolve some dilemmas, some of them arising from an
inequitable distribution of power, what controls or balances the power of the
State?
A Super-State.
And its power?
There is a
vicious infinite regress
if the reply to the question "What controls the controller?" is "a further
15
The only promising way of avoiding this problem - other routes
controller".
lead (even more) directly to totalitarianism - is by having the first of these
controllers, the State, answer back to those in whose interests it is allegedly
established, those of the society or group of communities it controls.
implies democratic methods of some kind.
This
Others go further: 'democracy [is]
the only known means to achieve this control, the only known device by which
16
we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of political power'.
In this event, control has mostly failed.
Democracy is extremely attenuated,
even in those states that claim to practice it.
The exercise of power in modern
"democratid' states - much increased power reaching deep into peoples' lives,
power which has passed to certain political elites and is directed at the
attainment of such objectives as economic growth and material "progress" - is
often channelled through 'non-elected authority' and 'is not democratic in the
traditional meaning of the term' 17 In any case, indirect democratic and other
institutional checks are tenuous in as much as
they depend ultimately on the
toleration of those who have direct control of the forces of the State.
Experience seems to show that such toleration will only be shown so long as
democratic procedures deliver results that are not too disagreeable, that are
broadly in accord with what those who control the coercive power are prepared
9
to accept.
(Toleration of such a tamed democracy then brings benefits to
those who hold power, especially the cover of legitimation).
checks which operate only insofar as a
system
But institutional
acceptable to the powerholders
is not seriously challenged, and which depend ultimately upon the toleration
of those "checked~' are not really checks at all.
The problem of controlling the power of the State, and preventing
the State once established from usurping further power and exceeding its
mandate, is only satisfactorily solved by not ceding power to the State in the
first place.
The best way of avoiding the evils of accumulated power is the
anarchist way, of blocking its accumulation.
8.
THE FOURTH WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY.
responsible for actions deliberately undertaken.
A person is
This premiss can be derived,
if need be, from the notion of a person as a moral agent.
Taking · responsibility
for one's actions implies, among other things, making the final decision about
h;such
what to do on eac~A occasion oneself, not acting simply on direction from outside,but
determining how to act, what ought to be done, oneself; not handing that decision
over to someone or something else.
It implies, that is, moral autonomy.
Autonomy in turn implies, what responsibility requires, freedom.
For the
autonomous being, endorsing its own decisions and principles ~ is not subject
to the will of another.
another so directs.
Even if it does what another directs, it is not because
In being free, not of constraints (both physical and
self-determined), but of the constraints and will of others, an autonomous
being is morally free.
A necessary feature of the State is authority over those in its territory
(under its de facto jurisdiction), the right to rule and impose its will upon
them.
Such authority backed by force is incompatible with moral autonomy and
with freedom.
An autonomous being, though it may act in accordance with some
imperatives of the State, those it independently endorses, is bound to reject
such (a claim to) authority, and therewith the State.
In sum, being a person,
as also being autonomous and being free, implies rejecting the authority
of the State, and so not acknowledging the State; that is, each condition on
personhood implies, i f t he argument is sound , anarchism. 18
It is possible to combine autonomy with an extremely attenuated "State",
one based on on-going unanimous direct democracy.
But such a "State", with no
independent authority, is not really a state, since any participant can dissolve
it at any time, and so constitutes no threat to anarchism o
On the contrary,
such direct democratic methods are part of the very stuff of anarchistic
organisation.
10
9.
THE FIFTH WAY: THE ARGUMENT FROM ANARCHIST EXPERIENCE.
The replacement
argument enables construction of a model · of a society functioning without the
State, of a practically possible Stateless world; which shows that the State
is not necessary.
But it can always be claimed - even if the claim can seldom
or ever be made good - that the modelling leaves out some crucial feature of
real world circumstances, rendering it inapplicable.
The gap may be closed by
appeal to the independently valuable argument from experience, that at various
times and places anarchism has been tested and has worked.
Examples of such
Stateless organisation suffice to show that crucial real world features have
not been omitted.
There are many examples of nonindustrialised societies which were, or are,
19
anarchistic, there is the rich experience of the Spanish collectives,
and
there is much localised experience of self-management and small-scale anarchistic
arrangements within the State structure. 20
10. THE EMERGING CHARACTER OF ANARCHISM AND ITS ORGANISATION.
The arguments
outlined, predominantly theoretical, inform the practical, revealing the
options open for anarchism, courses of action in superannuating the State
and for transition to a stateless Society, and so on.
For example, spontaneous
anarchism - according to which organisation is unnecessary and social arrangements will arise spontaneously, and will be ushered in during the revolution
without any prior organisation-is a position which is not viable and could
not endure, because it makes none of the requisite replacements upon which
durable supersession of the State depends.
The sort of anarchist society
which these theoretical arguments delineate will certainly be organised, but the
organisation will not be compulsory, and will eschew authoritarian measures
(and, by the overshoot argument, will reject transition by any strengthening
of the centralised State), relying heavily on voluntary cooperation and direct
democracy.
The society which emerges will be much as Bakunin and Kropotkin
sometimes pictured it.
It will be based on smaller-scale decentralised
connnunities, for otherwise such arrangements as connnunity replacement of
State welfare arrangements, control of their environment, removal of
Prisoners' Dilennnas, and participatory democracy, will work less satisfactorily.
Connnunities will be federated and control will be bottom-up, not merely by
representation and subject to a downward system of command.
Within each
connnunity there will not be great discrepancies in the distribution of wealth
and property, and no highly concentrated economic property and power.
community wilt be a rather equalitarian group, sharing in much that is
cennnunally owned or not owned at all.
A ·
11
While theoretical arguments help outline the general shape of social and
also economic arrangements they do not determine them completely, they offer
no detailed blueprint.
Accordingly what emerges is not a particular form of
anarchism, for instance anarchist communism, but a more experimental and
pluralistic anarchism, such as was instituted in the Spanish collectives.
11. STRATEGIES FOR TRANSITION TO ANARCHIST SOCIETY: THE FOREST SUCCESSION
MODEL OF REPLACEMENT BY AN ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURE.
The main strategy, emerging.
from the First Way, is that of replacement: transition to a new anarchist
social order proceeds by replacement or aooption of the more satisfactory State
organisations and structures by organisations and structures of a more
anarchistic cast, and by removal or phasing out of remaining no longer
necessary or unsatisfactory State arrangements.
Replacement and supersession suggest a biological model, of such change
and succession as occurs where one forest type succeeds another; and such
a model is in turn very suggestive.
To make the model more definite, and
to give it some local colour, consider forest succession where a sub-tropical
rainforest replaces a eucalypt forest, as analogous to the case where anarchism
replaces a Statist society.
There is certainly a marked change in structure,
typically from a tall forest with a fairly open canopy to a more compact
closed forest with more layers of vegetation, much more local diversity and
a richer variety of life forms, especially floral forms.
A forest is not
merely a set of trees, but trees in structura J arrangement and interdependence,
not merely on one another but on other life forms such as pollinating insects,
seed-carrying birds and animals, and so on; and the changes in structure
include changes in microclimate, in soil moisture levels and humus and
bacterial content.
The change of forest type may be by evolution, by hastened or induced
evolution, or by catastrophe (revolution) as when a eucalypt forest is
clearfelled and artificially succeeded by planted rainforest.
(Strictly,
there is a spectrum of practices and replacement strategies between evolutionary
and revolutionary, and various different revolutionary strategies; and the
standard evolutionary-revolutionary contrast presents a false dichotomy.)
Even reliance on predominantly evolutionary methods, which tend to be
very slow by human time scale~ may require some (management) practices, else
evolution towards rainforest will not begin or continue.
For example, seeds
for rainforest species may not be available if adjoining areas have been
stripped of suitable seed trees, e.g. by clearing or eucalypt conversion,
in which case it will be necessary to introduce seeds (of anarchist ideas,
methods, arrangements, etc.).
And rainforest evolution may not be able to
12
continue because the area is burnt occasionally, e.g. by State officers, in
which case protection against fire will be required: for with burning
(suppression) regimes rainforest seedlings are killed and eucalypt dominance
perpetuated.
Furthermore, evolution can be hastened or induced by intro-
ducing seeds, or planting rainforest trees in poorly seeded areas (i.e.
setting up alternative social arrangements) under the eucalypt overstorey,
or even by some careful culling of eucalypts. But even without culling there
will be much for anarchist management to do.
As the rainforest cover begins to grow up through the eucalypt forest,
the forest begins to change structurally.
Younger eucalypt poles die, and
their replacement by eucalypts is generally precluded owing to low light
intensities near the forest floor (in something the same way conditions for
capitalist entrepreneurs to flourish are excluded in an emerging anarchist
society).
Gradually, as the rainforest grows, only scattered giant eucalypts
emerge through the canopy, and in time these fall to the forest floor, to
rot and not to be replaced - unless the climax rainforest is subject to
catastrophe, such as fire or cyclone.
Catastrophic methods, such as clearfalling the eucalypt forest, replanting
with rainforest, protecting the new forest, and removing eucalyptus regrowth,
are much more problematic.
To be applied they require either a large workforce
or much mechanical power (so it is with violent revolutions which require
a large support basis not available in advanced capitalist and state socialist
countries, or else access to means of perpetrating violence comparable to
that of the State).
There are often similar requirements for success;
otherwise the area may be choked by rapidly growing weeds or the rainforest
plants may be suppressed by eucalypt seedlings and a pioneer eucalypt stage
recur.
Moreover, a eucalypt overstorey sometimes affords good conditions
for rainforest growth, e.g. plant protection from excessive sun, occasional
frosts, and drying winds, better moisture retention conditions,and so on.
(_Similarly anarchist organisations can sometimes use the environment afforded
by the State to get started.) But under some conditions, such as excessive
interference (as happens to alternative arrangements in highly repressive
States where local conditions also commonly favour revolutionary succession),
there may be little or no alternative t o clearfelling practices.
But just as
clearfelling the eucalypt forest can create favourable conditions for weeds,
so violent revolutions can only too easily create the conditions for a new
(State) elite, controlling the concentrated power generated for the overthrow
of the older regime.
13
12. APPLYING THE FOREST SUCCESSION MODEL.
How to apply the model is
not difficult to see in broad outline, and many of the further details
have been filled out by work that can be described as indicating how
allegiance can be shifted in practice from where we mostly are to
alternative social arrangements and life-styles built on self-management
and mutual aid.~
The seeds of anarchism should be broadcast or planted,
anarchist (nonStatist) arrangements instituted or strengthened, and efforts
made to replace or modify vulnerable Statist arrangements, e.g. by
democratization of present institutions and development of nonStatist
and noncapitalist . alternatives.
Some of the practices are familiar:
anarchist groups, clubs, pamphlets, broadcasts, newsletters, etc.; (anarchist)
cooperatives, exchanges, neighbourhood groups, rural communities, etc.
are slightly less familiar:
Others
avoidance of State influence by arrangements
beyond State reach such as costless (or alternative currency) interchanges
of goods and services, action directed at removing decision-making from
State departments, such as forest services, and into citizen hands, and
ultimately, to decentralized local communities.
In this sort of way
worthwhile State arrangements can be replaced, and power can be progressively
transferred from the State, and returned to the community and to people
more directly involved.
FOOTNOTES
1.
Bakunin on Anarchy (edited S. Dolgoff), Allen & Unwin, London, 1973,
especially p. 139.
Much else in this paper, e.g. the distinction
between the State and Society, also derives from Bakunin.
2.
That is, proper elaboration of this argument takes each facet of
generally beneficial state activity~ there is only a
(relative:1-y small) finite number to consider - and shows how it
can be replaced in one way or another.
course uniquely determined.
Replacement is not of
Lines such replacements can tfke are
indicated in much anarchist (and self-management) literature,
consider especially but not uncritically, P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
New York University Press, 1972, and also his Fields, Factories and
Workshops, second edition, Nelson, London, 1913, and The Conquest
of Bread, Chapman and Hall, London, 1913.
3.
On these points see, e.g. Kropotkin_'s Revolutionary Pamphlets (edited
S. Baldwin), Dover Publications, New York, 1970, p. 206 ff.; also
P.J. Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary.
For recent discussion
of, and practical examples of, replacements for arbitration and law
court procedures (but for right-leaning anarchism), see C.D. Stone,
'Some reflections on arbitrating our way to anarchy', Anarchism, (reprint of
Nomos _ XIx),New York University Press, 1978, pp. 213-4.
4.
Arguments of this typ.e are sometimes said to represent 'the strongest
case that can be made for the desirability of the State' (M. Taylor,
Anarchy and Cooperation, Wiley, London, 1976, p. 9).
To cover all
arguments of the type, and to avoid repetition of the phrase 'variants
of' and disputes as to whether certain arguments such as those of
Hume and of Olson involve Prisoners' Dilemma situations, 'Prisoner's
Dilemma' is used in a wide sense to include not merely single n-person
Prisoners' Dilemma games, but for example, games where the payoffs are
not merely egoistic (as with both Hobbes and Hume) and where such
games are iterated.
As the bracketed clauses in the text indicate,
there are two types of case, not sharply separated and both of
the same logical form - those where people do not contribute to
supply themselves with, or with "optimum" quantities of, a
"collective good" (e.g. security, order, sewage), and those where
people do not restrain themselves to maintain, or maintain "optimum"
quantities of, some already available "collective good" (e.g. commons,
2
unpolluted streams, whales, wilderness).
That received arguments
of all these types involves Prisoners' Dilemma situations (in the
wide sense) is argued, in effect, in Taylor, op. cit. and elsewhere.
An easier introduction to the material covered by Taylor, which also
surveys other important literature, is given in the final chapter
of R. Abrams, Foundations of Political Analysis, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1980.
5.
An important matter the two player game does not illustrate is the relevance
of population size in the arguments for the State.
But size is not
decisive (see, e.g., Taylor, chapter 2), and the issue can be avoided
(or relocated) by organisation into
smaller communities.
The figures
given in the matrix are illustrative only; for inequalities which
suffice for a Dilemma situation, see Taylor, p. 5.
6.
It is similarly bizarre that there should be outcomes that the State
alone is said to be able to arrange, but not mere social cooperation,
when the State is (as on many theories) the result or reflection of
social cooperation.
7.
This important point is much elaborated in V. and R. Routley, 'Social
Theories, Self Management, and
Environmental Problems' in
Environmental Philosophy (edited D. Mannison and others), RSSS,
Australian National University, 1980.
8.
As a result of G. Hardin's "Travesty of the Commons", historical evidence
has been assembled which reveals how far Hardin's "Commons" diverges
from historic commons; see, in particular, A. Roberts, The SelfManaging Environment, Allison & · Busby, London, 1979, chapter 10,
but also Routley, op. cit., p. 285 and pp. 329-332.
Similar points
apply as regards many other Dilemma situations.
'In the experimental studies of the prisoner's dilemma game
approximately half of the participants choose a cooperative strategy
even when they know for certain that the other player will cooperate'.
Abrams, op. cit., p. 308.
9.
Cf.
the discus$ion in Taylor, op. cit., p. 93.
3
10. This important result is established in Taylor, op. cit., for a number of
critical cases, though not generally; see, e.g. p. 32 but especially
chapter 5.
11. Such moves have proved valuable in reducing the State's role in legal
prosecution, and in eliminating courtroom procedures, including
cases where the State is one of the "adversaries".
12. Both the false dichotomies cited are commonplace, not to say rife,
in modern economic and political theorising.
Both are to be
found in Abram's final chapter, for example, and the first (with an
attempt to plaster over the gap with a definition)
in Taylor.
For a
further criticism of such false dichotomies, see Routley, op.cit.,pp.250 ff.
13. For instance, a certain social escapism: one escapes
one's social roles
and is enabled to concentrate on private affairs or just to laze.
Or so it may appear: for in reality anyone who works, works long and
often alienated hours to pay for this apparent escapism and to cover
the high costs of frequently inadequate State activity.
14. The argument, to be found in Bakunin, is elaborated a little in Taylor, op.
cit., chapter 7.
A related argument, also in Bakunin, is from the way
in which emergence of the State compromises and even closes off
nonstate solutions to problems of social organisation in adjoining
regions.
15. The question is in effect Plato's question, and the regress is reminiscent
of his Third Man argument.
16. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II.
Fourth edition
(revised), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962, p. 129 and p. 127.
The ~vershoot) problem is, according to Popper 'the most fundamental
problem of all politics: the control of the controller, of the
dangerous accumulation of power represented in the State•, 'upon which'
Marxists never had 'any well-considered view' (p. 129).
17. V. Lauber, 'Ecology, politics and liberal democracy', Government and
Opposition 13 (1978)., 199-217: seep. 209 and p. 21l.
18. The argument, outlined by Bakunin, is much elaborated in R.P. Wolff,
In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row, New York., 1970.
No argument
is however without assumptions, which are open to dispute.
argument, for example,is disputed by G. Wall, 'Philosophical
anarchism revised' Nomos XIX, op. cit., p. 273 ff.
Wolff's
4
19. Documented in The Anarchist Collectives (edited S. Dolgoff), Free Life Editions,
New York, 1974.
20. As B. Martin boldly asserts, 'The advantages of _self-management and
alternative lifestyles are many and significant.
And these
alternatives are entirely feasible: there is plenty of evidence and
experience to support
operates.
their superiority over the present way society
The obstacles to self-management and alternative life
styles are powerful vested interests and institutional resistance to
change', Changing the Cogs, Friends of the Earth, Canberra, 1979,
p. 6.
21. As sketched in some of the material already cited, for example, Routley,
p. 284 ff.
Richard Routley lives and works. in the NSW forest.
He is sponsored
in pursuit of his research interests - in arguments and theories especially by the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (a
state-supported and state-supporting institution, holding 20,000 shares in the
uranium industry).
His main published work is in metaphysics and alternative
logics and in forestry and environmental philosophy.
preparation of this article by Val Routley.
He was helped in
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�—
?HUMAN CHAUVINISM AND.ENVIRONMENTAL.ETHICS*
Richard and Vai Routley
/
*
.
*
Class chauvinism has been and remains a cardinal weakness of most
.
moral codes - including, so it will°be argued, Western ethics.
*
A most
serious failure 6f Western ethics is its human chauvinism or anthropo^centricism - a chauvinism which emerges in a refined, and apparently more
reds&n*able, form as person chauvinism in much modern ethical theory.
*
w
What is chauvinism?
$
*
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is
sz^Etant^aZ-Z-z/ differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment (by
sufficiently many members of the class) for items outside the class, for
which there is not enff-ZcZen^ justification.
Pnwan chauvinism is class
chauvinism where the class is humans, wuZ-e chauvinism where the class is
human males, an-Z/zzaZ. chauvinism where the class is animals, etc.
It would be bazf, to say the least, if Western ethics, in its various
strands, were to turn out to rest on human, or person, chauvinism.
For
Western ethics would then have no better foundation than, and be open to
the same sorts of objections as, moral codes based on other sorts of
chauvinisms, e.g. on familial, national, sexual, racial or socio-economic
class chauvinism - in particular it would be open to the objection that
This paper (which considerably elaborates R. Routley 'Is There a need
for a new, an environmental, ethic?', Procee^-Znps of Zz/ze XPt/z ^orZ^
Ccnpress of PTz^Z-cscp/zz/, 1 (1973), pp.205-10), was drafted in 1973 and
read in 1974 at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, at Notre Dame
University, and at the Conference on The Good Society held at the
University of Victoria, Canada. Since the main virtue of the paper has
been that it'has generated much interesting discussion, the original
form has been retained, though the authors are no longer especially
happy with the form, and many theses remain insufficiently developed or
defended. But in order not to remove the previous and continuing
criticism, no substantial deletions have been made, even though the
paper has been raided and segments of it presented in improved form
elsewhere, especially (a) R. and V. Routley, 'Against the inevitability
of human chauvinism', in MoraZ P/z-ZZosopTzz/ an<7 t?ze Tzjentp-F-Zrst Centnrz/
(edited by K. Goodpaster and K. Sayre), Notre Dame University Press,
1979, and (b) R. and V. Routley, 'An expensive repair-kit for
utilitarianism', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preferences CTzo^ce
an<i FaZzve, RSSS, Australian National University, 1977. However some
sizeable additions have been made, with a view to increasing the
intelligibility and enlarging the scope of the original draft, and meet
ing some of the many objections.
1
�it discriminated against nonhumans in a prejudiced and unwarranted way,
and would thereby stand condemned.
For it is hard to see how an ethic
based on simple spoo-Zes loyalty could have any greater claim to absolute
ness or deserve any more respect than moral codes based on simple loyalty
to national, sexual, or racial classes.
Such an ethic could no more
command allegiance - once the facts are brought into clear view - than
other normally-deplored examples of localised class chauvinism, such as
the Mafia or protection agencies or rackets or enclaves of slavery.
Unfortunately prevailing Western ethics appear to be of just this sort.
§1.
THE WESTERN CASE FOR ITS HUMAN (OR PERSON) CHAUVINISM:
THE FIRST LINES OF DEFENCE
It is important, then, for defenders of the Western ideology to be
able to show - *Zf it can be shown - that an ethic which discriminates
strongly in favour of humans, as Western ethics apparently does, is not
chauvinistic.
Otherwise the ethic stands condemned.
Of course not every
distinction in treatment qualifies as chauvinistic - the distinction in
treatment may not be substantial or systematic, and there may be an
adequate and explicable basis for the distinction, so that some discrimin
ation is warranted.
In order to escape the charge of human chauvinism,
it has to be shown how and why the drastic and general discrimination in
favour of humans sanctioned and enjoined by modern (as by historical)
Western ethical systems is warranted, and that it has an adequate basis.
The extent of this chauvinism, especially with respect to animals, is at
last - after centuries of a priori prejudice and gross distortion of the
characteristics of wild animals and wilderness - beginning to be spelt
1
out.
It is at least clear from the outset that an adequate justification
cannot be provided which simply selects all and only these members of the
species human (i.e. /zowo sap*Zo?zs) as zoologically defined.
There is
nothing about the characteristic of TzMwazzZZp itself (as distinct perhaps
from its accompanying properties) which could provide a justification for
overwhelmingly favourable treatment for humans (and unfavourable treatment
for nonhumans)
as opposed to other possible, and possibly some actual,
nonhuman creatures.
Once again, an adequate ethic and justification can
not possibly be based on blind and unthinking species loyalty.
The same
1 See, e.g., S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds),
Mor azzd
Morals.
-Z^Zo Z/ze zzzaZ^roat/TzozzZ of yzorz-ZzMwaMS, Gollancz,
London, 1971;
P. Singer, ?l?z-Z7na:Z f-Z^oraf-ZoM.
pzezj o^/z-Zos for OMr
of azz*Z/??aZs, Cape, London, 1976; S.R.L. Clark, y/zo A7oraZ
of ^H-ZwaZs, Clarendon, Oxford, 1977.
2
�CB
objection applies against the simple
need's argument:
the commonly
assumed domination of human needs over all else (e.g. over all environ
mental considerations) has, if it is to have any merit, to be based on
more than speciesism.^
We shall have to look then for some other not
merely taxonomic characteristic to provide the sought justification.
It
will emerge however, that any such characteristic is held or may be held
by nonhumans, and is not held, or potentially not held, by all items of
the species human.
Of course there are many characteristics which can, as a contingent
matter, be used to distinguish human beings as a general class from other
higher animals - although in fact with increasing knowledge of animals it
is no longer clear that some of these characteristics distinguish as
clearly as was assumed a priori in the past.
For example, humans have a
language, and a culture of a certain sort and even various logics.
And,
as we are accustomed to have people point out, other terrestrial animals
do not conduct philosophical discussions on environmental ethics.
However
not only is participation in these activities potentially available to
nonhuman creatures, and these characteristics possibly possessed by some,
but these activities are not generally engaged in even by humans
(particularly the power elite), many humans lack the requisite competence,
and even among those who do qualify, such activities are carried out to a
very varying extent. We run the risk, then, in applying such demanding
criteria, of ruling out, of classing as deserving of "sub-human" or "sub
person" treatment, a considerable class of human beings — items most
humans would consider as worthy of better treatment than that normally
accorded by humans to nonhuman animals.
What is more important however is that such criteria as human
language, culture, human civilization, human intentionality, or whatever,
appear to provide no satisfactory
for the substantially
unfavourable treatment allotted those falling outside the privileged
class.
should there be such strong discrimination in favour of
creatures having a (certain sort of)^ language or a higher level of
intelligence and against creatures or items which do not, in favour of
things with a certain sort of culture or a certain logic and against
those without?
Especially when some of these criteria are clearly, and
2 As McCloskey remarked (in a letter dated 5.7.77 containing many helpful
comments) 'talking about needs does little but obscure the problem, as
needs, to be normatively relevant, involve reference to goods;
and
that merely transfers the problem'.
3
On next page.
3
�*3
unjustifiably,loaded in favour of human interests, achievements and
By
contrast the very many respects in which some
or sorts of animals
are
superior bo bMfnans (many are noted in V.B. Droscher, Tbe
abilities (cf. the cultural loading of various intelligence tests).
4?ibmaZ Parcaptbo^, Allen, London,
of tbe Sassos.
1969) are rarely considered;
yet some of these features would, if taken
in the same serious way as some respects in which humans excell, justify
a reverse chauvinism (which could be reflected as, for exampZ-e, in the
Hindu treatment of cows).
The only sort of justification for the discrimination that might
appear convincing - that those who have the given characteristic (e.g.
those that are more intelligent, or more rational, or richer) are more
valuable or worth special treatment - is vitiated by the fact that were
it accepted by Western ethics it would warrant similar discrimination
humans (or persons).
For how do we show that the allegedly
warranted discrimination is sufficiently different from making substantial
(class) distinctions between humans in terms of their level of intelli
gence, linguistic or logical ability, or level or kind of cultural
achievement - so that those with "lower" levels of these valued abilities
are treated in a consistently inferior way and regarded as available for
the use of the others?
In short, these characteristics do not provide
adequate justification for the substantially inferior treatment accorded
those not having them, and so the charge of chauvinism is not escaped by
producing them.
A similar set of points applies against a number of other criteria^
traditionally or recently proposed to distinguish the privileged class.
Often these are propounded in terms of personhood and criteria for being
a parson (the class marked out for privileged treatment being the class
of persons) rather than criteria for being bz^wan - in order to escape
difficulties raised by young, senile, decrepit, stupid, irrational,
3 For undoubtedly many mammals, birds and insects can communicate, some
times in ways analogous to language, even if the honorific term
'language' is withheld (see - to select an unfavourable source
the
discussion in E.O. Wilson, SocZobboZ-opp.
Belknap,
Cambridge Mass., 1975, chapter 8 ff.).
It is becoming increasingly
evident, however, that the ascription of some linguistic ability, and
of elementary languages, to nonhuman creatures should not be withheld,
see e.q. the details assembled in E. Linden, 4p<2s_,
Penguin,New York, 1976.
(But contrast Wilson, op. cit., pp.555 59,
and to set this in proper perspective, consider Wilson s discussion of
ethics and aesthetics a few pages later, pp.562-65.)
4 Many of the criteria that have been proposed are assessed, and found
wanting, in Routley (a).
4
�damaged and defective humans, extraterrestrial creatures, and super
animals;
to avoid the merely contingent connections between being human
and having requisite person-determining characteristics (such as ration
ality or knowledge) supposed to warrant discriminatory treatment;
and t
defeat, though it is a pyrrhic victory, the charge of human chauvinism
(or
equivalents of the charge, such as anthropocentricism or
speciesism).
But much the same problems then arise in terms of criteria for
u person, and the chauvinism problem reappears as the problem of furnish
ing criteria which are suitably clearcut, and do separate persons from
assumed nonpersons, and which would provide an adequate justification for
substantially privileged treatment for persons and inferior treatment for
nonpersons.
Unless such a justification is forthcoming the charge of
person
is not escaped.
Most of the criteria proposed for
personhood fall down in just these sorts of ways, e.g. being autonomous,
the having of projects, the producing of junk, the assessing of some of
one's performances as successful or not, the awareness of oneself as an
agent or initiator.
Not only does it appear that (the more worthy of)
such criteria apply (or could apply) to many nonhuman animals - thus
animals are generally more autonomous (in main senses of the term) than
humans, many animals have projects (e.g. home and nest building), and they
are well aware of themselves, as opposed to rivals, as initiators of
5
projects - and that they do not apply uniformly to humans or indeed to
persons in any ordinary sense; but again it is extremely difficult to
see what there is in these characteristics which would warrant or justify
the vast difference in treatment between the privileged and nonprivileged
classes, or justify regarding the non-privileged class as something
available for the
of the privileged class.
Similar objections can be lodged against the proposal that knowledge
or the possession of knowledge, provides
feature.
(or u crMc^uZ) distinguishing
It can hardly provide the appropriate filter, since it not only
gives no sharp cut-off point,but does not even always rank humans or
persons above nonhumans or nonpersons.
Moreover, taken seriously it
should lead to substantial moral differentiation between persons, a
person's moral rating also fluctuating during his lifetime.
In any case,
For example, the shiftless intelligent person, or the primitive person,
who has no projects and engages in no moral reflection, and thus offends
protestant ethics, is not thereby deregisterable as a person, any more
than an intelligent animal with projects can join the union.
On next page.
5
�4
why rank knowledge so highly:
for (pace Socrates) knowledge is not the
foundation of virtue, but is frequently turned to evil ends, and even
where it is meritorious it is not the sole (or even a crucial) criterion
of worth.
Similar difficulties apply too to the historic criterion of
ratZozzaZZZp, along with the added problem that it is -very difficult to say
what it is in any clear or generally acceptable way, or to prevent it from
degenerating into a simple "pro" word.
If a hallmark of rationality is
commitment to the consequences of what one believes and seriously says,
then many humans fail the test.
If, on the other hand rationality i^, for
example, the ability to discover and pursue courses and actions likely to
achieve desired goals (direct action toward goals), ability to solve
problems concerned, etc., then plainly many animals have it, and possibly
to a greater extent than humans in some cases (and of certain humans in
almost all cases).
If it were the ability, e.g. to do ZopZc (say propositional calculus) or to assess reasoning verbally, then the (biassed)
criterion would be far too strong and rule out many humans.
Again, why
should one make such a marked discrimination on this basis? What is so
meritorious about this characteristic, that it warrants such a marked
distinction?
Nothing (at least in the ordinary academic's view, or
logicians would receive more favoured treatment).
Other criteria, which yield an analytic connection between being a
person and enjoying freedom or having rationality, in part beg the
question.
For in D?zat respect is it that persons - or worse, just
persons - are free.
Also the justificatory problem, as to how the
claimed freedom or rationality warrants such differential treatment,
remains.
Characterisations of parsons vary enormously, from so strong
that they rule out suburban humans who are not "self-made" enterpreneurs,
to so weak that they admit very wa^z/ animals. An (unintentional) example
of the latter is the following:
persons, that is, ... beings who are not only sentient but also
capable of intensional autonomous action, beings that must be
ascribed not only states of consciousness but also states of
belief, thought and intention (A. Townsend,
'Radical vegetarians ,
4zzstraZasZa?z JoMrzzaZ of P/zZZosop/zz/, 57 (1979), p.89).
6 in addition, the relation "a has at least as much knowledge as b is
only a partial ordering.
For example, a dog's and a child s knowledge
may be incomparable, because they know about different matters how to
do quite different sorts of things, etc.
(The idea that knowledge is
the key to moral discrimination, that it is what makes humans rank t
way Western ethics ranks them, may be found in C.B. Daniels,
PaaZMaZZoK of FZTzZcaZ T/zoorZes, Philosophy in Canada Monograph, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 1975.)
6
�O)
Most rats and rabbits satisfy the conditions:
conscious animals that have intentions
they are sentient,
(e.g. to get through some barrier
such as a floor or a fence), beliefs and thoughts (e.g. that there is
For his further argument Townsend
preferred food beyond the barrier).
shifts - without notice, but in a way that is quite typical of this
scene - to wzzcTz stronger requirements upon being a person (such that one
who does not meet them is incapacitated as a person) which rule out many
humans, e.g.
'The person must recognise canons of evidence and inference
warranting changes in his beliefs, and be capable of changing his beliefs
7
accordingly' (op. cit., p.90).
In meeting hypothetical objections, Townsend slips in a further require
ment of rationality, but the characterisation of person given does not
include any such requirement. Subsequently, however, Townsend commits
himself, without argument, to the thesis that 'a fairly high degree of
rationality is prerequisite' to attributing 'intensionality' (as dis
tinct from 'intentionality'). This is not going to help much.
For,
firstly, rationality is very much a notion which admits of degrees,
without the relatively sharp cut-off stages required for person as a
notion of orthodox moral relevance, or possessed by the notion of /zzzwczzz
to which Townsend sneaks back in his chauvinistic conclusion (p.93).
Secondly, Tzozj high a degree is prerequisite for being a person? If
only enough to satisfy the conditions for being a person, then the
animals that are persons have it.
If more, then either the initial
characterisation of a person fails or the thesis breaks down.
The much stronger requirements upon being a person that Townsend sub
sequently appeals to are said to derive from S.I. Benn.
But, if any
thing they strengthen one of the stronger of several zzozze^zz-Zz^uZezzf
characterisations of (zzatz^raZ) person - none of them equivalent to
/zzzzzzuzz - that Benn has at various times offered. While Benn's weaker
characterisations appear to admit at least many "higher" animals, e.g.
that of a
natural person as a chooser, conscious of himself as able to make
a difference to the way the world goes, by deciding to do this
rather than that, having projects, therefore, of his own, whose life
experience may consequently be understood, not simply as a chronicle
of events, but as an enterprise, on which he puts his own construct
ion ((a) 'The protection and limitation of privacy, Part I',
^MstraZ-Zazz Lazj JozzrzzczZ, 52 (1978), p.605);
the stronger characterisations which invoke (rather vaguely specified,
and cZ-Z//ere?zt) minimum conditions of rationality in belief and action said to imply respoTzs-Zb-ZZ-Ztz/ on the part of the person for what s/he
does, though they do zzcf - exclude many of the creatures admitted by
weaker characterisations. For such stronger characterisations see
'Individuality, autonomy and community' in CozzzzzzMzz-Ztz/ (ed. E. Kamenka)
Edward Arnold (forthcoming) and (c) 'Freedom, autonomy and the concept
of a person', ProceecZ-Zzzps o/ t?ze ^r-Zs^oteZ-Zuzz Society, 76 (1976),
pp.109-30.
7
�D
The foregoing points, taken together, support our contention that it
is not possible to provide criteria which would
distinguishing,
in the sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have prefer
ences or preferred states.For such criteria appear to depend upon the
mistaken assumption that moral respect for other creatures is due only
when they can be shown to measure up to some rather
and
tests for membership of a privileged class (essentially an
elitist view), instead of upon, say, respect for the preferences of other
creatures.
Accordingly fka skarp woraZ
ethics by philosophers and others alike,
commonly accepted m
aZZ
ofkar
a^-fmaZ speafas, Zacks a safZsfacforz/ cokarazif bcsZs.
The distinction,
which historically rested on the assumption that humans possessed a soul
(or higher reason) but that other animals, brutes, did not, appears to
have been uncritically retained even after the religious beliefs or
philosophical theories underpinning it have been abandoned.
Given that the distinction underlying human chauvinism fails, is
there anywhere satisfactory demarcations of moral relevance can be made
among things? Yes, several divisions^ of mcraZ
can be made;
but
of these coincides with a division into human and others.
Consider, first, the question of consideration fiards others, and the
matter of which offers are to be taken into account in cases where
others' interests and preferences are affected by some action. Insofar
as moral consideration for others (among sentient items) is based on
analogical
(empathetic, and essentially inductive) principles, such as
taking account of their worthwhile preferences, objectives, interests etc.,
8 There are of course further arguments for the contention, for example
from the anatomical and physiological affinities of human and other
animals, from their common evolutionary history, and so on. The
arguments are of varying force;
for example, evolutionary arguments
can be arrested, temporarily, by the claim that there was a quantum
jump" in human evolutionary development which did not occur with other
creatures with a previously shared evolutionary history (cf. Wilson,
op. cit.).
9 Although the divisions may be conceptually sharp enough, they are any
thing but sharp when applied in the field to the variety of creature
and circumstances that occur.
For example, preference-havers is, so
far at least, sharp enough, but it is far from clear which creatures
qualify, e.g. which, if any, Crustacea? For the present most of t ese
potential decision cases are cases for cheerful indecision; _ u ,
alternatively, the divisions may be viewed - perhaps better
not a
sharp boundaries, but as gradation states, as where two colours m a
rainbow meet.
8
*
�c-
it is difficult to see how such consideration can fail to apply to all
(including nonhuman) preference-having creatures;
and one does not need
to apply criteria such as linguistic ability, navigational ability,
intelligence, piano-playing, hunting skill, etc., to obtain a basis for
such consideration (indeed one cannot).
The /zuzzz^zz^ a/* pr^yerezzces
(and
of preferences revealed through choices) is however a quite sufficient
basis for z^/zz^s
of consideration and concern.
It is at this point,
we suggest, that the requisite, important and non-arbitrary distinction
is to be drawn which marks out the class of creatures towards which
obligations may be held;
that is, the usually recognised principles of
consideration towards others (of the privileged class) properly extend or
should be generalised to consideration for other creatures having prefer
ences, and t/ze correspazz^zzy pezzaraZ
zza^ to putt afTzars
a/zZ-^pa^azz pr^zzc^pZ-e
("at/zer preyerezzce-TzuzJersJ tzzto a c%spreyerra<^ stato y*ar
zza paa<i raasazz.
Insofar as moral behaviour is based on consideration for others and
not harming others, preference-having provides an adequate basis, and
does appear to provide a sufficient justification for substantially
different treatment for preference-having over non-preference-having
items - because items without preference cannot (literally) be put into a
dispreferred state.
Thus preference-having appears to tie in with an
important basis for moral obligation, and appears to provide a superior
criterion, for a
sort of moral consideration, to other criteria
sometimes proposed such as sentience - or, differently, intelligence -
especially since in the absence of preferences such notions as /zurzzztzz^
something (in a way that does affect it) and damaging its interests
become difficult of application (not to say nonsignificant, except in
extended senses).
The unsatisfactoriness of the sentience criterion for
what one can hold obligations ^azJarzis can be grasped from the case of the
sentient machine or purely sentient creature which does not have preferen
ces, does not care what state it is in or whether it is destroyed,etc.
The sentience criterion is often converted by utilitarians into a suffer
ing criterion, by taking pain as a paradigm of sentience:
but plainly
the two criteria diverge since some sentient creatures may never feel
pain or suffer.
Suffering is even less satisfactory than sentience;
for
suffering is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in a dispreferred
state (consider masochists who suffer but are not in a dispreferred state,
and well-treated workers who are in a dispreferred state but do not
suffer).
Preference-having provides a lower bound;
it is a sufficient but
zzat zzecassurz/ condition for being an object of this sort of moral
9
�consideration and concern.
That it is not necessary is revealed,
independently of environmental examples, by the following sorts of cases:
the treatment of "human vegetables", successful stoics, and science
fiction cases in which people are brain-washed into performing certain
goals and having no dispreferred states apart from the programmed goals.
In all three cases the question of dispreferences does not arise, but
relevant moral issues can.*^
The necessary condition, that corresponds
to preference-having as a sufficient condition, appears to be capability
at some time (e.g. previously, when developed) for preference-having.
It has been taken for granted that many animals (from species higher
on the evolutionary scale) have preferences, make choices, and the like.
This is the merest commonsense, which can be readily confirmed in a
scientific way.
For example, some of the preference-rankings of a black
tail wallaby as to types of foliage to eat are readily established by
observation, and it is fairly straightforward verifying that bushrats
prefer cheese to soap, this preference being revealed by regular choices.
It has however been claimed by some recent philosophers, for reasons
apparently different from those offered by traditional philosophers such
as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes,that animals do not have intentions,
or at least do not have them in a full sense.
It is unclear whether these
intentions, which are taken to include thoughts and beliefs and, perhaps,
desires, include preferences; but it is hard to see how preferences,
which are intentional, are excluded if desires are included in intentions.
The recent arguments to show that animals do not really have intentions,
which do not bear much investigation even in such central cases as
belief,12 appear extremely feeble when applied to preference. For the
arguments start from the claim that we cannot say zjTzat it is that animals
As N Griffin, who supplied the examples, remarked a similar thing
happens also in less extreme cases of the type brought in to prominence,
e.q. by the women's movement:
that it is possible, by means of
indoctrination, to limit the range of someone's dispreferences;
treatment of such persons may still remain immoral even when it does
not place them outside the (artificially widened) range of their
preferred states.
11 The traditional reasons look slight also in the case of preferences
and choices.
It would have been claimed - the theory forces the claim
Interestingly, choices
- that animals' choices could not be rational,
of many animals conform to behavioural criteria for rationality pro
posed in economics.
(forthcoming)
12 See J. Bishop, 'More thought on thought and talk',
and R Routley, 'Alleged problems in attributing beliefs to anima s ,
paper'prepared for the B.Ztef conference, University of Queensland,
1979.
10
�believe (of course very often we can, and unproblematically) and fall back
on the claim that animals lack concepts of a fit sort.
In the case of
preferences, however, there is often no problem in saying what it is
animals prefer, or in confirming the claim.
Nor is it that we cannot
attribute propositional-style preferences to animals;
if black-tail
wallabies prefer, as they do, new foliage to old then they prefer the
foliage's being new over the foliage's being old. As for the concept
claim, in the sense in which
is delineated in psychology, animals
have concepts.
And if a philosopher's notion of "concept
gets in the
way of the claim that free dogs prefer bones to carrots (or other
vegetables) then it is not the claim that requires revision, but the
philosopher's notion.
The preference-having criteria appear to distinguish non-arbitrarily
and sharply enough between higher animals and other items, and to rule out
of the relevant class elementary animals, trees, rocks and also some human
items, e.g. human kidneys.
The criteria plainly exclude inanimate objects,
and they separate animate objects.
For while living creatures such as
plants and elementary animals can be said in an extended sense to have
and also optimal living conditions, e.g., for healthy develop
ment, and in
sense to have preferred states or environments, they do
not have preferences, and cannot be put into states they disprefer.
All
that is required for an 'interest' or 'welfare' in the broad sense is a
telos or life-goal, as possessed by living things, or an equilibrium or
system goal, as possessed by living ecosystems.
At the same time the criteria indicate another important division.
For in a wider sense, animate objects which do not (significantly) have
preferences or make choices, are sometimes said to have
or 'preferred environments'
(as, e.g., in 'the plant prefers a sunny
frost-free location with a well drained soil').
us say that the
or
preferred states
To avoid confusion let
of animate objects and also such
biological items as ecosystems can be affected in one way or another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.For instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it can be reduced to zero by
sandmining, and it can be seriously threatened by pumping waste detergent
13 in this broad sense too, living things, things that participate in the
growth process, have interests.
However under a narrower and more
common determinate of the slippery term 'interests', only preference
havers have interests (again sentient creatures do not provide the
boundary). Because the term 'interests' so readily admits of high
redefinition, and the infiltration of chauvinism, its use is better
limited (or even avoided), in favour of other more stable terms.
11
�There is a general obligation principle
into the nearby ocean.
corresponding likewise to this more comprehensive class of welfare
bearers, namely,
sz/sf67??s
ohjecfs <9r
^<90<i reason.
Moral
does not of course end with what is in some way
animate, much as the class of valuable objects is not tied to what relates
suitably to central preference-havers. In suitable settings, a
(virtually) dead landscape, a rare stone, a cave, can be items of moral
or aesthetic concern;
indeed any object of value can in principle be of
such concern, and
in principle at least,
value or disvalue, and so of woraZ concern.
almost any sort of object.
<2% object of
There can then be obligations
Naturally only a fraction of the
things that exist have especial value, and only a few of the things that
exist will be things concerning which some of us have obligations.
Furthermore these sorts of obligations do not in general reduce to the
conditions or arrangements (e.g. contractual or joint welfare arrangements)
of preference-havers or some select subclass thereof (what will sub
sequently be called, as the argument is developed, the base cZass).
Just as there are relevant divisions beyond the class of preference
havers, so there are within the class.
Thus the suggestion that the class
towards which moral obligations (and a corresponding sort of moral concern
which takes account of creatures' states) may be held is bounded by the
class of preference-havers, does not of course imply that
d^st^^ot^o^s
can be made
the class of preference-havers with respect to the kind
of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example,
obligations
which by no means exhaust obligations - can only be held directly (as
distinct from by way of a representative) with respect to a much narrower
class of creatures, from which many humans are excluded. The class is
also distinct from the class of persons, at least as 'person' is usually
characterised.
What emerges is an
of types of objects of moral
relevance, some matched by types of moral obligation (described toward the
end of Routley (a)), with nested zones representing respectively different
sorts of objects - such as, objects of moral concern, welfare-having
objects, preference-havers (and choice-makers), right-holders, obligationholders and responsibility-bearers, those contractually-comnitted-and the
different sorts of obligations that can significantly apply to such
objects.
Not all the types of objects indicated are distinct, nor is the
listing intended to be exhaustive but rather illustrative.
For strictly
the labels given should be expanded, as the distinctions are categorial
ones, so that what matters is not whether an object is, for instance,
12
�contractually committed in some fashion but whether it is the sort of
thing that can be, whether it can significantly enter into or be committed
by arrangements of a contractual kind.
is to
Similarly
function as a categorial marker, that marks out the sorts of things that
can (significantly) have preferences: the assumption that preference
havers coincide with choice-makers is based on this categorial reading.
Although the annular picture is (as will become clear in §5) important
for the environmental alternative to be elaborated, and in meeting object
ions to it, the countercharge has been laid that it reintroduces chauvin
ism through its inegalitarian distinctions.
This is a mistake:
not
every sort of ethical distinction, certainly not a justified distinction,
involves chauvinism.
Chauvinism is exhibited where, for example, objects
of a favoured class are treated in a preferential way to superior items
of an excluded class,e.g. defective humans as against apes, degenerate
French against normal Pygmies.
The annular picture neither involves nor
encourages such differences in treatment:
it is neutral and unchauvinistic, for the reason that it relies only on categorial distinctions
which tie analytically with ethical notions (see the semantical analyses
of §5). It is certainly in no way species chauvinist or human chauvinist
For none of the zones of the annular picture comprises the class of
humans (or its minor variant the class of persons); for this class is
not of moral relevance. The reason is that the human/nonhuman distinction
is not an ethically significant one, and can, and should, be demoted from
its dominant, and damaging, position in ethical theory.
notion of
But dropping the
out of ethics, is only part of the ethical change that is
called for: taking due account of nonhumans is also required.
In particular - to return to the theme - what is quite unacceptable,
14
and based on a set of distinctions which are arbitrary and unjustifiable,
differential treatment enjoined nonpersons as distinct
is the ex
from persons under Western ethics, and the view that only persons or
humans have any (nonderivative) right to moral consideration and concern
as preference-havers and that there are obligations towards other creatures
such a criticism
of
chauvinism
is based firmly
14 According to Q. Gibson
----- ----.
.
.
.
'
"
This is simply
on Western ethical equality and egalitarian principles,.
___
The general argument
not so: there is no reliance on such principles,
feature -f cannot
be what justifies
the
differential
takes the form;
----- —
- . .
.
treatment of humans and nonhumans, because either f is not morally
relevant or not all humans have f or some nonhumans have f., Neither
Nei__.
equality nor substitutions based upon equality are invoked at any
stage.
13
�only insofar as these are or reduce to obligations to persons or humans.
§2.
THE EXTENT OF CHAUVINISM, AND FURTHER LINES OF DEFENCE
Western ethics are, then, human chauvinist in that they characterist
ically take humans (or, to make a slight improvement, persons) to be the
only items worthy of proper moral consideration, and sanction or even
enjoin substantially inferior treatment for the class of non-human
preference-having creatures, without - so it certainly appears - adequate
justification. The prevailing nineteenth century Western attitude to wild
creatures is evident from Judge Blackstone (quoted approvingly in
Penguin, London, 1967, pp.431):
W. Cobbett, E^raZ
With regard likewise to wild animals, aZZ rT?a%kZ%<7
arZ^ZnaZ
bz/ the
the Creator a right to pursue and take away
any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the
waters, and any beast or reptile of the field:
and this
natural right still continues in every individual, unless
where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country.
And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while
living his qualified property, or if dead, are absolutely
his own.
Prevailing Western attitudes have not shifted markedly since that time;
for example, foresters, widely regarded as socially responsible, think
nothing of dislodging from their homes and environment, or even destroying,
communities of animals which do not directly interfere with human welfare.
But there is another very important broader respect in which
Western ethics are human (or person) chauvinistic, namely in the treat
ment accorded to and attitude taken towards the broader class of natural
items such as trees and forests, herbs, grasslands and swamps, soils and
waterways and ecosystems.
Unlike higher animals such items cannot liter
ally be put into dispreferred states (and in Z/zZs obvious sense, as
opposed to the wider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare, they have no
interests), but they can be damaged or destroyed or have their
eroded or impaired. The Western, chauvinistic, assumption is that this
can only happen where human interests are affected.
The basic assumption
is that value attaches essentially only to humans or to what serves or
bears on human interests, or derivatively, to items which derive from
human skill, ingenuity or labour.
Since natural items have no other value,
there is no restriction on the way they are treated insofar as this does
not interfere with others;
as far
as ZsoZate^ natural things are con
cerned anything is permissible.
14
�It is, at base, because of these chauvinistic features of Western ethics
that there is a need for a new ethic and value theory (and so derivatively for
a new economics, and new politics, etc.)
setting out not just people's
relations to preference-havers generally but also (along with many other
things) people's relations to the natural environment - in Leopold's
words 'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it'
ct/zer essuz/s
(A. Leopold, A
Coz^/ztz/
New York, 1966, p.238).
/Uzzzu^zuc
It is not of course
that old and prevailing ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he
pleases, i.e. his relations with nature - insofar at least as they do not
affect others, as pollution and vandalism do - are not subject to moral
censure.
Thus assertions such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating
those trees' are significant and morally determinate but inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not
hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.
It is to this,
to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold,
Fraser Darling and many others, both earlier and later, take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on
prevailing views is morally permissible.
But it is not, then, as Leopold
seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing
ethics and that merely an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right in his
criticism of prevailing conduct, what is required is a change in the
ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations;
for example, what is
permissible on the prevailing ethics will be no longer permissible on the
new.
For as matters stand, as Leopold himself explains, humans generally
do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever will yield, and then move on;
and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the
moral indignation of others, and is accordingly permissible on prevailing
ethics.
As Leopold says:
A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows
into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the coi^munity creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected
member of society (op. cit., p.245).
Only recently has such behaviour begun to be seriously questioned and
become the subject of criticism,e.g. by environmentalists.
Under what
will be accounted an eyz^trozi/TzeMtuZ gtTz^c, however, such traditionally
15
�permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer
subject to proper moral criticism.
That ethics and morality are not, and never have been, restricted to
human concerns, or exclusively to relations between persons, is important
in rebutting objections to the very idea of an environmental ethic, based
on the premiss that morality just is restricted (definitionally) to human
relationships (and connected values) and is not significant beyond that.
The problem of moral relations with respect to preference-havers other
than persons and to inanimate items cannot be resolved or escaped simply
by declaring morality to apply solely,or as a matter of meaning or defin
ition only to humans (or to persons).
For first, such a solution would
run counter to the common view that humans are subject to some moral con
straints, even if comparatively minor ones, towards other creatures;
the
having of such constraints cannot be ruled out definitionally, and corres
pondingly the judgments formulating these constraints or prohibitions
cannot be ruled out as nonsignificant, yet they are surely moral. The
only way in the end, that the claim gets support is by a narrow, and no
longer acceptable, account of what is moral in terms of concern with
humans alone (cf. S6). Likewise, the question of the moral interrelations
of humans with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrial beings, even if at
present hypothetical, is certainly a meaningful one, and some interesting
and clearly moral issues of this sort are frequently raised in science
fiction.
Only if the extent of morality is, somewhat misleadingly, reconstrue
in terms of the class of constraints on the behaviour of those it applies
to - that is, in terms of limitations, as distinct from moral freedom does the claim that Western morality is restricted to humans (or persons)
begin to gain plausibility.
For it is true that beyond the favoured base
class, humans or persons, few constraints are supposed to operate (and ad
hoc ones at that) unless the welfare of members of the base class is
adversely affected.
Under an environmental ethic, such as that Leopold
advocates, this would change:
previously unconstrained behaviour would
be morally circumscribed, and in this sense the scope of morality would
be extended.
It is not evident, however, that a
ethic
ethic, an
in the case at hand, is required to accommodate even radical new judgments
seriously constraining traditionally approved conduct, i.e. imposing
limitations on behaviour previously considered morally permissible.
For
one reason it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as
a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old.
16
For,
�notoriously, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked
out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
obscure.
They are nonetheless (pace Quineans) perfectly good objects for
investigation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles
together as the one ethic:
e.g. the Christian ethic, which is an umbrella
notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems.
There are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the new principles and evaluations;
that of
an extension or modification of the prevailing ethic, and that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within
the prevailing ethic.
The possibility that environmental evaluations can
be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the not
inflexible framework of prevailing Western ethics, may appear open because
there is not a single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civiliz
ation:
on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as
infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of
principles.
Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and
even a single ethic, need not have.
The Western ethic is not so monolithic.
In particular, three important traditions in Western ethical views
n ,been mapped
.3 out:
4. 15 a
concerning man's relation to nature have recently
dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant),
and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custod
ian, and the cooperative position with man as perfector.
the only traditions;
Nor are these
primitivism is another, and both romanticism and
mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental
ethic;
for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free
to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream StoicAugustine view - it exists only for his sake^^), whereas on an
See especially (a) J. Passmore, Man's Fespons^btZ^^z/ for
Duckworth, London, 1974;
also R. Nash, ^tZderness an^ t/ze
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973.
(All further references
to Passmore's work are, unless otherwise indicated, to Passmore (a).)
The
dominant position has also been sketched in many other recent
texts, e.g. I. McHarg, Z)es^<yn
Doubleday, New York, 1969,
while the lesser traditions have been appealed to in meeting criticisms
of the Western ethic as involving the dominant view.
The masculine particles are appropriate;
so is the resulting tone.
�environmental ethic man is not so free to do as s/he pleases.
But it is
not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with
one of the lesser traditions.
Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially
when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g.
(as further considered in
§4) who is man steward for and responsible to?
However both traditions
are inconsistent with a deeper environmental ethic because they imply
policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some
worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from sub
stantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces
reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable but ecologically
impoverished European small farm and village langscape.
According to the
cooperative position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potential
ities, the test of perfection being basically
purposes;
/or
while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm
manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means
that will deliberately degrade its resources.
Thus these positions
figure among those of the shallow ecological movement (as depicted by
A. Naess,
16
'The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement', Tr^M^rz/
(1973), 95-100):
longer term.
they are typically exploitative, even if only in the
Although these lesser positions both depart from the dominant
position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of
an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible
farmer, and allow for some of the modern extensions of the Western ethic
that have been made, e.g. concerning the treatment of animals and
criticisms of vandalism, they are not well-developed, fit poorly into the
prevailing framework, and do zzof p<9 /ar orozz^Zz.
For in the present
situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they
will lead to, and enjoin the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all
natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use, implying
17
that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used
for /zzzzzzor
17 if 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for
preservation, this total use principle is rendered innocuous at least
as regards it actual effects.
Note that the total use principle, in the usual sense, is tied to the
resource view of nature (cf. (d) R. and V. Routley,
F-z^/zt /or z^/ze
Forests, Third Edition, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1975).
Such a principle, like the requirement of
economic growth, emerges directly from - it is an integral part of neoclassical economic theory.
18
�18
"humanized".
As the important Western traditions mentioned exclude an
environ
mental ethic, it would appear, at first glance anyway, that such an ethic
- not primitive, mystical or romantic - would be new alright - or at
least new from a Western perspective.
For, from a wider perspective,
which takes due account of traditional societies (such as those of some
American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, and Pygmies), there is, it will
turn out, nothing so very new about what is included in (as distinct from
the theoretical setting of) the "new" ethics. Even from the narrow
Western perspective, the matter is not so straightforward.
for the
dominant ethic has been substantially qualified, in particular by the
rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this
physically interferes with others.^ It may be that some such non-inter
ference proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary);
and that it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased vn.th natural
items would not affect others (a^oT^terfereMcg assMwpf^^).
it may, the
Be this as
appears, at least for many thinkers
to have supplanted the dominant position;
and the modified position can
undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic.
For example
the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the
grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environ
ment for no satisfactory (taxable) returns or which cause pollution
deleterious to the health of future humans can be criticised on the sort
of welfare basis (e.g. that of P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier,
18 Humanization, and humanitarian measures, may be a cloak for human
chauvinism - in which case, far from being virtuous, they may be
positively undesirable.
19 Also, as Leopold has observed, the class of
has been
ively widened, e.g. from the family group, to the tribe, to the nation
or race, even to all humans including often enough future humans
but
rarely further in the West until recently.
of
20 The assumption is not the same as its relative, Benn's
'that no one may legitimately frustrate or prevent
(or interfere with) a person's doing what he chooses to do, ^nles
there is some reason for preventing him
(Benn (c), op. cit.,
in
from (a) P.605).
The principle is said to derive from 'the notion of
a person' ^e.g. (a), p.605), but it only so derives given commission
ofPfhe fallacy of conversion of an A-proposition. Moreover even
reduced to a 'formal principle ... locating the onus of justification
(cf (a))
the principle is dubious, especially given principles of
respect for objects other than persons, with which persons may be
interfering.
It is, however, a formal principle that will help to
keep entreprenuerial humans happy.
�*
GrozjZ/z <2%^
Dgcaz/,
T/ze ^oZz^ZZc^ ^gcowgs
York, 1972) that blends with the modified position;
be criticised on welfare grounds;
and so on.
Fr^hZ^w^
New
vandalism can usually
The modified position may
even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have,
since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere
with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position
nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser trad
itions, is adequate as an environmental ethic.
chauvinism.
None moves outside human
They are all encompassed under the
t^es-Zs
- the
view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are available
for human benefit or to serve human interests, and hence that humans are
entitled to manipulate the world and its systems as they want, in their
own interests - which is but the ecological restatement of the strong
thesis of human chauvinism, according to which items outside the privil
eged human class have no value except one as instrumental value (both
theses are criticised in Routley (a)).
To escape from chauvinism, and from
its thesis, a new ethic -Zs wanted, as we now try to show.
§3.
GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST WESTERN ETHICS
The main argument is directed primarily against the modified
dominant position, but will incidentally show the inadequacy of the lesser
Western traditions.
The strategy is to locate core features of Western
ethics, and to reveal through examples their thoroughgoing chauvinism
and class bias, and in this way to provide decisive grounds for rejecting
For the general argument some more technical points have to be made
them.
first.
(An)
spgcZyZc ethic,
is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a
and a more generic notion, a
specific ethics are grouped.
under which
(As usual, a weZu-ethic is a theory about
ethics, super-ethics, their features and fundamental notions.)
An ^Z/zZcaZ sz/sZsw s
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e.
a structured set of propositions) or a theory which includes (like
individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory)
a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of
what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights and
responsibilities, what is valued, and so forth,
(On newer perceptions an
ethical system will include rather less in the way of prescriptions, of
duties, obligations and the like, and more as to what are matters of care
and of concern and for respect.)
Since an ethical system is propositional
in character, such notions as consistency, coherence, independence of
20
a
�assumptions, and the like, apply to it without further ado.
It is
evident, from a consideration of competing or incompatible values and
principles, that
are
sz/s^ews.
Moreover
appropriately general criteria for rationality will not reduce this
class to a singleton.
Accordingly, there is logical space for a^terrzaf^re
A general or lawlike proposition of a system (characterised along
similar lines to a scientific law) is a pr^Mc^pZe;
and certainly if
systems Si and S2 contain different principles, they they are different
systems.
It will follow then that an environmental ethic differs from
the important traditional ethics outlined if it differs on some principles.
Moreover if environmental ethics differ from each Western ethical system
on some core principle or other embedded in that Western system, then
these systems differ from the Western super-ethic (assuming, what seems
to be so, that that ethic can be sufficiently characterised) - in which
case if an environmental ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted.
It
would suffice then to locate a common core principle and to provide
environmental counterexamples to it.
It is illuminating (and necessary, so it will emerge) to attempt to
do a little more than this minimum, with a view to bringing out the basic
assumptions of the Western super-ethic.
Two major classes of evaluative
statements, commonly distinguished, are axiological statements, concerning
what is good, worthwhile, valuable, best, etc., and deontological state
ments, which concern what is obligatory, permissible, wrong, etc.
Now
there appear to be core principles of Western ethics on both axiological
and deontic fronts, principles, for example, as to what is valuable and
as to what is permissible.
Naturally these principles are interconnected,
because anything is permitted with respect to what has no value except
insofar as it interferes with what does have value.
A strong historical case can be made out for what is commonly
assumed, that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western
ethical systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super-
ethic.
example.
The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core deontic
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified
A recent formulation of this principle runs as
21
follows (Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., p.58):
dominant position.
On next page.
21
�The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that (D) one
should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he
does not harm others {and (2) that he is not likely to harm
himself irreparably}.
The principle, which is built into or derivable from most traditional
ethical theories, may be alternatively formulated in terms of permissib
ility, as the principle that <2 person's
(foes no^ ^n^er/ere zJ-^/z o^/zers,
^s perw^ss^&^e provt^e^
(i.e. other people, including perhaps the
A related economic principle is that free enterprise can operate
agent).
within similar limits.
It is because of these permissibility formulations
that the principle - which incorporates fundamental features of (human or
person) chauvinism - is sometimes hailed as a freedom principle;
for it
gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions
which degrade the environment and natural things) providing they do not
harm others.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to
It is worth remarking that 'harming others' in the restriction
is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others;
it is
not enough that it is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop
breathing;
you are free to breath, for the time being anyway, because it
does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to exactly what
counts as harm or interference.
Moreover the width of the principle is
so far obscure, because 'other' may be filled out in significantly
different ways:
21
it makes a difference to the extent - and privilege - of
The principle is attributed by Barkley and Seckier to Mill, though
something like it was fairly common currency in nineteenth century
European thought. It appears, furthermore, that Mill would have
rejected the principle on account of clause (2): thus, for example:
Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, ozzZz/ in respect of
those actions of each, which concern the interest of o^Zzer
people (J.S. Mill, (/^^Z^^ar^uzz^szzzj L^&gr^z/ az-z^f 7?eprese?z^az^zze
^ozz6r?z777g?z^, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, 1910, p.74,
emphasis added).
The deletion of clause (2) from (D) does not affect the general
argument: hence the braces.
(We owe this reference and the points in
the next footnote to N. Griffin.)
A similarly modified form of (D) is found in much recent Western
literature, even radical literature which purports to make due allow
ance for environmental concerns. A good example of the latter is
I. Illich, TcoZs /cr Cofz^ttz^uZ-z^z/, Calder & Boyers, London, 1973,
where Mill's (D) appears, in various forms, at several places (e.g.
p.xii, p.41). What this indicates is that Illich's "convivial society"
will not - if its principles are taken seriously - move beyond
chauvinism in its treatment of animals and the natural environment; it
will at best yield some form of resource conservation.
22
�a
the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient being';
and it
makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its
economic applicability, to which class of other persons it is intended to
apply, whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote
future others or only to nondiscountable future others, and whether to
poss^bZe others.
The latter would make the principle untestable and com
and it is generally assumed that it
pletely unworkable in practice;
applies at most to present and (some) future others, to those to whom it
would make a (fairly immediate) difference (thus excluding past others ).
For the purposes of the general argument however, the problems in specify
ing the class of others is not material, so long as the class includes no
23
more than persons that at some time exist.
Fortunately the main argument is not very sensitive to the precise
formulation of principle (D). Not only can clause (2) be deleted, and
'other' left rather unspecific, but additions can be made; then even if
the main argument does not succeed, m-z^or
succeed.
o/ t/ze zzzu^M arpz^g?^
An important case concerns the treatment of animals.
Unless (D) is construed widely (extending 'other'), or hedged by further
qualifying clauses,24 the basic principle fails to take proper account of
concern for animals, especially that one should not inflict "unnecessary
cruelty or "impermissible" harm.
animals then comes to matter;
these issues can be avoided.
What counts as per^ss^Me Tzurzzz to
and familiar conflict issues arise.
But
For the core principle (D), of basic
chauvinism, can be modified to include (historically recent) moral concern
for higher animals by adding, after 'harm others', something like 'or harm
animals unnecessarily'.
Then however the new principle succumbs to the
22 Although the interests and preferences of past others are excluded in
conventional utilitarianism, as in (welfare) economic theory and vot
inq theory, these are often respected in ethical and legal settings,
e.g. in wills, last wishes, etc.
Similarly (as N. Griffin also point
ed out), in the treatment of "human vegetables", past preferences of
the person when capable of making decisions are often taken to be
morally relevant, or even decisive, to the question as to whether to
keep the body alive.
23 if merely possible persons are included then the valuational rankings
of environmental ethics, indeed of virtually any ethics, can be
reflected in a "utilitarian" fashion. The argument of (c) R. and V.
Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory',
(accepted
for publication in 1974; still forthcoming?), can be used to show this.
24 or unless it can be made out, what seems entirely implausible, that
what is wrong with torturing animals is not what it does to them but
the way it affects other people (the Aquinas-Kant thesis).
23
�main argument - upon at most simple variation of the counterexamples to
be given.
Modification becomes more important in the case of standard ethical
theories which lead to principles conflicting with (D), such as utilitar
ianism does unless (D) and the maximisation principle of utilitarianism
are appropriately segregated, e.g. by severing connections at some point
in the chain connecting entitlement, permissibility, right, maximum
utility.
For, as in widely recognised, net utility may be increased in
ways that violate (D), e.g. by injustice to, or the infliction of suffer
ing upon, or harming, some individual by others.
Thus utilitarianisms in
the tradition of Mill, which both include (D) and characterise entitlement
in utilitarian terms, are inconsistent (as simple hypothetical cases show).
To avoid counterexamples it is not enough merely to distinguish higher and
lower utilities, though this is an initial step in what is required, namely
- ideally by constraints (as is explained in §5) - o/
unconstrained
Although qualification of utilitar
ianism principles to ensure (D), as a restriction (but not the orzZz/
restriction) on what is permissible,is the proper course, it is a course
not all utilitarians are prepared to follow.
To defeat
isms, it is not enough to adduce counterexamples to (D).
utilitarian
Counterexamples
to some other core principle of such utilitarianisms must be located;
otherwise the main argument fails against a quite standard, and important,
class of positions supporting chauvinism and the Dominion thesis.
Fortunately,
again,
neither a suitable core principle nor appropriate
counterexamples are hard to find.
The common utilitarian principle
provides such a core, and several of the examples directed against (D)
serve to counter it (in its various forms).
An axiological principle corresponding to (D)
(%72<i to some of its
variants) runs along these lines:
(A) Only those objects which are of use or concern to humans
(or persons), or which are the product of human (or person)
labour or ingenuity, are of value;
thus these are all that
need to be taken into account in determining best choice or
best course of action, what is good, etc.
Roughly, value consists in answering back to certain features of human (or
person) involvement.
No calculus of value or what is best need look
beyond human values.
According to a matching value-ranking thesis, item
a is better than b only if a serves human concerns more than b.
A
narrower version of principle (A) embedded in main forms of Marxism is
24
�the human labour theory of value.
25
Thus a corollary will be that
Marxism is certainly - unless severely modified - no direction in which
to seek an environmental ethic or social theory.
There may appear to be exceptions to principle (A) in such objects
But although values are assigned to works of art where
as works of art.
these may not positively affect human welfare, the basis for assigning
value is usually taken to be the human skill or ingenuity involved in
their production.
principle (A).
Hence such assignments do not extend, or violate,
Indeed the problem raised by natural objects which cost
nothing to produce and involved nothing human is very different from the
matter of valuing art objects.
objects rctse <2
problem.
There are also other important differences between natural objects and
works of art, apart from the characteristic
noninvolvement of humans,
namely those turning on the issues of replaceability and the reversibility
of destruction.
Human artefacts are always replaceable by similar objects,
e.g. modern cities, especially concrete jungles are all too similar and
replaceable, and using modern techniques paintings can be substanially
duplicated;
whereas there is no possibility of replicating, even remotely,
such as extinct species or real
damaged or destroyed natural objects
jungles (or lost or vanishing cultures).
In terms of replacement costs,
these are much more valuable than such human artefacts as material works
of art.
Thus attempts to assimilate natural objects to material works of
art break down.
There is an additional reason for rejecting a now familiar
approach to natural objects through works of art, namely that it is
premissed on the assumption that some sort of chauvinistic account of
works of art is adequate:
that is not so, as the (intermediate) situation
of objet trouve begins to reveal.
It is in connection with principles
qualification to
(D) and especially (A) that the
ethics (already required at several points)
becomes important for the argument;
for various non-Western ethics have
not adopted these principles, e.g. both American Indians and Australian
Aborigines appear to recognise clearly values in natural items which are
not reducible (simply or at all) to human values - and apparently not
essentially theistic (supra-human).
In any case Western ethics and
25 According to some Marxists, and apparently to Marx, the labour theory
is superceded when the period of accumulation is completed and the post
scarcity era reached.
But by the time this high-energy high-tech
stage is reached, if ever, irreparable and frequently irreversible
environmental damage will have been wreaked.
26
On next page.
25
�p
attitudes, and more comprehensively the associated ideologies, are of
critical importance;
for it is to these and Western influence that the
world's main - serious and very extensive - environmental problems can be
ascribed.
Hypothetical situations are introduced in designing counterexamples
to core principles (D) and (A).
The basis of the method lies in the
semantical analyses of permissibility, obligation and value statements
which stretch out over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even
inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some permitted
situation, what is obligatory in every such situation, and what is wrong
is excluded m every such situation.
But the main point to grasp for
the counterexamples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are
universal and are assessed over a class of situations.
Thus hypothetical
cases are logically perfectly legitimate and cannot be ruled out on one
pretext or another, e.g. as rare, as desert island cases, as hypothetical,
The counterexamples to (D) and (A) presented depend largely on
etc.
designing situations different from the actual where there are either too
few or too many humans or persons.
But alternative special situations
where interference with others is minimized or is immaterial are readily
devised.
(i) The
example.
The last man (or woman or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system sets to work eliminating, as
far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs).
What he does is quite permissible
according to principle (D) but on environmental grounds what he does is
wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to
regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly and destroying things of value (the
reason being perhaps that radical thinking and values have shifted in an
environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the
Characteristically Westerners have attempted to recast these value
systems, sometimes misleadingly, in a religious guise - probably because
it was thought that there was no non-religious way of presenting them so
as to make them intelligible or have them comprehended.
Thus they get
represented as basically chauvinistic in view of the relations of Man
and God.
On these semantical analyses, which avoid all the usual problems of
modal theories of axiological and deontic terms, see R. Routley,
R.K. Meyer, and others,
RSSS,
Australian National University, 1979, chapters 7 and 8. A sketch is
given in §5 below.
The situations or worlds with respect to which the interpretation is
made permit of different construals; e.g. instead of permitted situ
ations, the situations can be construed evaluatively as ideal
situations.
26
�3
Q
formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
The usual vandalism charge does not apply against Mr. Last Man
since he does no damage to others.
Moreover, Mr. Last Man's activities
may be toned down to avoid any vandalism charge, yet succumb to the
(extended) chauvinist charge, e.g. he may simply destroy sows environ
mentally valuable things unnecessarily (without due reason or some need).
(ii) The Zest pgopZe example.
to the last people example.
The last man example can be extended
We can assume that they know they are the
last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have
One considers the last people in
blocked any chance of reproduction.
order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or
somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet
and destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfect
ing the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting
the lesser traditions, just for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous.
They humanely
exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas,
they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining
natural forests disappear in favour of pastures or plantations,and so on.
They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying
reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people
employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their
impending extinction.
behaved badly;
of value;
On an environmental ethic the last people have
they have done what is impermissible and destroyed much
for they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural
ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform with the core
principles (D) and (A), and as well with the principles enjoined by the
lesser traditions under more obvious construals of these principles.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this extension of the last man
example is because principles (D) and (A) may, as they stand, appear to
conflict with stewardship, cooperation and perfection positions, as the
last man example reveals.
The apparent conflict between these positions
and principle (D) may be definitively removed, it seems, by conjoining a
further proviso to the principle, to the effect (3) that he does not
wilfully destroy natural resources.
But as the last people who are not
vandals do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of
28
reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate.
28
On next page.
27
�(iii) The ^reu^ eTz^repr^KeMr example.
The last man example can be
adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
industrialist;
The last man is an
he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms
which he proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among other things,
from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and
recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we do.
Of course he has
the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world
product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be
increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased
output and productivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible;
indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be
quite fine and even meets Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing
notions of being "better off".
It may be objected, however, that there is no reason or warrant for
the great entrepreneur's production and it is simply wasteful.
But we
can easily amend the example by adding consumers who want to use the out
put.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last
people, so we can extend (iii) to the
socket!/ example (iv):
the society looks depressingly like ours except for its reproductive
incapacity.
(v) The
species example.
The blue whale (reduced to a
29
mixed good on the economic picture )
is on the verge of extinction
because of its qualities as a private good, as a profitable source of oil
and meat.
whalers;
The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any
good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compen
sate the whalers if they desist;
destruction.
nor need whale hunting be wilful
(Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting
aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species
is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's
28 There are however elements in the lesser traditions - especially if
'cooperation' and 'perfection' are reconstrued in less chauvinistic
and homocentric terms - which point the way to a more satisfactory
ethic.
29 The example is adapted from Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., who nicely
expose the orthodox economic picture.
To make the example more difficult for utilitarians in the tradition
of Bentham, it can be further supposed that the killing of the whalesis
near instantaneous and painless, the whale products are very valuable
to humans and indeed irreplaceable, and that the whales led a good
life while they lived.
(Would the killing of remote groups of humans
under similar conditions be then so much worse?).
28
�*
activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The
behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale
is accordingly quite permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the free-market
mechanism did not cease allocating whales to commercial uses, as a
satisfactory environmental economics would:
instead the market system
ground inexorably (for the sorts of reasons well-explained in Barkley and
Seckier, op. cit.) along the private demand curve until the blue whale
population was no longer viable.
It has been objected that the operation of the free market is
restrained by ethical principles - or rather legally enforced copies
thereof;
for example, it would be profitable to exploit child labour,
but moral prohibitions, legally enforced, exclude such exploitation of
children.
But the case is quite different;
children, unlike young
animals such as vealers, are already shielded under the modified dominant
position.
If anything, the "objection" is a further illustration of
chauvinism at work.^O
Although the vanishing species example given does not apply decisively
against extended utilitarianisms, such as that of Bentham, which widen the
base class to all sentient creatures, the case is easily varied so that it
does:
class of tropical plant species
simply select one of the
currently threatened with extinction.
(vi) The /actorz/ /arm example.
On the farm animals of various sorts
are kept under artificial, confined conditions and simply used for the
market goods they deliver, e.g. eggs in the case of battery hens, milk in
the case of rotor cows, veal in the case of calves.
The animals are
subject to whatever conditions (e.g. forced feeding, iron deficient diets,
constant lighting) will deliver maximal quantities of desired goods for
the human commodity market.
The animals do not necessarily suffer pain
(and insofar as they do in behaviourally conspicuous ways the problem can
For the most part the operation of the free market is only constrained
by chauvinistic principles: otherwise enterpreneurs tend to undertake
whatever apparently profitable business activity they can get away with,
including substantial exploitation of animals and widespread environ
mental destruction, and their lack of concern is illustrated by such
facts as that they are generally prepared to pay taxes (e.g.
to
compensate other humans) rather than to forgo their activities in
cases such as river and lake pollution and forest removal.
In fact,
of course, fairly unfettered operation of the market tends to
encourage more restricted chauvinisms, e.g. the exploitation of cheap
foreign or female labour in the secondary labour market.
29
�be met by antibiotics), but they are imprisoned under dispreferred
conditions.
The threatment of the animals on the "farm" is perfectly
permissible according to the core principle (or at least minor adjustments
to exclude unnecessary suffering will ensure conformity), but on an
The treatment of the animals on the farm
environmental ethic it is not.
also seems to conform to the principles of the lesser traditions, insofar
as these principles are spelled out in a way that can be applied to the
example, that is so long as cooperation and perfection are construed in
intended chauvinistic fashion.
(vii) The
example.
The wilderness, though isolated and
rarely visited or thought about by environmentalists, is known to contain
nothing of use to humans, such as seed or drug supplies, that is not
adequately replicated elsewhere.
It does contain however some "low
quality" forest that could supply pulpwood on a commercial basis were the
local government to provide subsidies on the usual basis.
The logging
would destroy the wilderness in a largely irreversible way (e.g. it grows
on high sand dune country or on lateritic soils)
and kill many animals
which live in the forest.
sees
The prevailing
with the destruction of such
ethic
wrong
nothing
a wilderness, nor do the lesser traditions:
a deeper environmental ethic does.
Again the example requires variation, e.g. to a wilderness devoid of
sentient individuals, if it is to counter clearly such extensions of
Western ethics as those of animal liberationists.
For this sort of reason
we do not want to overstate or overrate the role of
as distinct from variations upon such examples.
examples -
Firstly, people deeply
committed to human chauvinism - as many, perhaps most, people are - will
find some of the examples unconvincing because they depend on non-
chauvinistic assumptions.
Secondly, there are rejoinders to some of the
examples based on the prevailing ethic.
In this case what we claim is
that there are variations on, and elaborations of the examples which meet
such considerations.
In connection with this we do not want to deny that
there are other strands supplementing the prevailing ethic which are
critical of some activities of the sort described in the examples, e.g.
anti-vandalism principles and strictures against conspicuous consumption
But, as remarked, these principles
as reflected, e.g. in sumptuary laws.
have not been adequately incorporated in the prevailing ethic in such a
way as to meet variations on the examples or to serve environmental
purposes;
and if the attempt were made to fully incorporate such princi
ples once again a new ethic would be the upshot.
(Compare the situation
before the change from an ethic which sanctioned Tzu/na??. slavery.)
30
�*
In summary,what the examples show is that core axiological and
deontic assumptions of the Western super-ethic are environmentally
inadequate;
and accordingly Western ethics should be superseded by a
more environmentally adequate ethic.
The class of permissible actions
that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on such an
environmental ethic than it is in the Western superethic, and the class
of noninstrumentally valuable objects is correspondingly wider than it is
on the Western super-ethic.
But is not an environmentalist ethic going too far in implying that
these people - those of the examples and respected entrepreneurs and
industrialists and bureaucrats, farmers and fishermen and foresters - are
behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
No, what these people do
is to a greater or lesser extent evil, since destructive of what is
valuable, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who
stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and
impermissible, so also is the destruction of the forest where the people
may live, or the slaughter of remaining blue whales, or the gross
exploitation of experimental or factory-farm animals for private profit
or as part of the latest 5 year plan.
Those who organise or engage in
such activities are (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their
mode of engagement) morally culpable.
Models of permissible respected
life styles and of the good life (for others to emulate) depend upon
what the underlying ethic accounts good and evil, permissible or not,
and so forth;
and changes with change of ethic.
A new ethic is needed not merely to accommodate the evaluations,
prescriptions and models indicated, in a way decidedly different from
Western ethics, but in order to cope with a much wider range of more
practical, and often more controversial, cases where Western ethics yield
(without epicycling, i.e. extensive resort to theory-saving strategems)
unacceptable or inadequately grounded results.
An alternative ethic is
also needed by a growing number of valuers because they have values,
interests and new concerns of ecological sorts which do not fit in with,
but conflict with, central features of prevailing Western ethics.
There
is occurring, it seems, a far-reaching cultural, and ethical change, a
change in consciousness, and in particular a change in attitudes to what
is natural and the natural environment (a change which may eventually be
as fundamental as, and partly overturn, the humanist changes of the
Enlightenment).
A new ethic is accordingly needed to reflect and formul
ate, and enable the defence and application of, a new, increasingly felt,
31
�a
but not so far well-articulated system of values, in much the same way
that a system of probability was needed and formulated to articulate and
systematise likelihood and probability principles, and relevant logic
systems required to capture pre-analytic views of entailment.
The
explication of environmental ethics is a similar theoretical concern;
again, as commonly, theory lags behind the facts of change and the felt
data.
Furthermore, just as entailment systems are not uniquely determined,
or desired or accepted by every thinker, so ezzzz*Zr<9zzwe7zfaZ.
be %%-z^MeZz/ (ie^grzzz-Zzzg^, or adopted by every valuer.
will zzct
On the contrary, as
is plain enough, their adaption and furtherance will be vigorously
resisted by many vested interests, as - to take just one instance - the
furtherance of programmes for the elimination
of environmental sources
of cancer is vigorously opposed by industrial chemical companies.
The matter of persuading other, valuers to accept values and
principles of a new ethic is of course a further and somewhat separate
issue from the question of need for such an ethic.
The procedures for
trying to effect changes in values are but variations on the usual pro
cedures, and like them are not fully effective:
excluding coercion and
education, they include, for example, argumentation, and propaganda, in
each case of many sorts.As usual, too, where there is a broad common
32
basis, especially in felt evaluations and emotional presentation,
effecting a change, or a conversion, will generally be an easier task.
In the case of transformation to environmental values, what is often
important are distinctive features regarding the factual bases of many of
the evaluations.
correcting
In particular, there is the matter of removing or
/zz^scozzcept^oTZS on a broad range of matters of
Some of these sorts are considered in more detail in (c) J. Passmore,
'Ecological problems and persuasion' in PpnaZ^fz/
ipz^erTzaz^ozzaZ u?Z(Z Comparative t/vrisprz/devce (ed. G. Dorsey) , Oceana
Publications, New York, 1977, pp.431-42.
The apposite term 'emotional presentation' is adapted from Meinong;
see especially Ov FmotiozzaZ Presentation (trans. M.L. Schubert-Kalsi),
Northwestern University Press, 1972. The notion of emotional present
ation can play an important role in the explanation of how emotions
enter into (environmental) evaluations, the objects evaluated (canyons,
mountains, giant trees) often being emotionally presented. A little
more precisely, the connections are these: A value ranking (e.g. c is
better, more valuable, than d) of a valuer is explained emotionally
through - it does not reduce to - certain preference rankings of the
valuer;
and the preference rankings have in turn dual factual and
emotional bases, in the same sort of way that an item may be preferred
or chosen in virtue of its factual features and the valuer's emotional
responses to those.
The main details of such a semantical analysis of
value, which is discussed in §5, are given in Routley (c).
32
�environmental concern;
for example, about animals, their various
behaviour, abilities, etc;
about the alleged gulf between humans and
other animals and the uniqueness of humans and each human;
about the
profitability, or desirability, or necessity, of environmentally destruct
ive enterprises;
about the inevitability of current Western social
arrangements and about the history of the way these particular arrange
ments developed.
There is, moreover, the matter of sheer information,
for example as to how free animals live together and what they do;
about
how factory and experimental animals are treated, and in the latter case
for what:
about the sources and effects of various forms of pollution
and the reasons for it;
about how natural creatures such as whales or
environments such as forests are commonly dealt with, for what products,
by what interests, for what ends.
Naturally (given a fact/value division)
none of this information is entirely conclusive support for a change in
ethic;
for many of the evaluations the data helps support can be included
in other ethics (including sometimes modifications of prevailing ethics),
while remaining evaluations can, at worst, be simply rejected (as e.g.,
those utilitarians who extend consideration just to sentient creatures are
obliged to reject versions of the last man argument where no sentient
creatures are affected).
Althouth a new ethic is needed, for the reasons indicated, and
although such an ethic can,furthermore, be a considerable asset in
practical environmental argument (e.g., as to the point of trying to
33
retain a piece of not-especially-unique near-wilderness),
for many
practical ecological purposes, there is no need to apply it or to fall
back on it.
For example, virtually the whole environmental issue of
destructive forestry in Australia can be argued without invoking any
unconventional ethical principles or values at all, i.e. entirely within
the prevailing chauvinistic framework.
environmental disputes.
The same sort of point applies to
But, it by no means applies to all.
A
corollary is an inadequacy in the presentation of environmental problems
and suggested solutions in standard (human) ecology texts
(such as P. and
JssMss
A. Erlich's
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, to select one example), which are set
34
e/zf-ZreZz/ within the chauvinistic framework.
Also, differently, in the way that theories are in enabling one to see
how to move and argue in a discussion.
Quite properly given prevailing sentiments, according to some erring
conservationists, who account themselves "realists".
33
�Since it is sometimes charged - despite all that has been said
that
an environmental ethic does not differ in practice from that of more
conventional "chauvinistic" ethics, there is point in spelling out in
Firstly, many conventional
yet other ways how it can differ in practice:
positions, in particular social contract and sympathy theories, cannot
take proper account of moral obligation to future humans (who are not in
the immediate future).
Since the usual attempt to argue, in terms of
value and benefit to humans, that natural areas
ecosystems
generally should not be destroyed or degraded depends critically on
introducing possible future humans who will suffer or be worse off as a
result of its destruction or degradation, it is plain that an environ
and
mental ethic will differ radically from such conventional positions.
That
is, the usual argument depends on the reduction of value of a natural
item to the interests of present and /nfure humans, in which reduction
future humans must play a critical role if conclusions not blatantly
opposed to conservation are to be reached. Hence there will usually be
a very great gulf between the practical value judgements of conservation
ethics and those of conventional positions which discount the (non-
immediate) future.
Secondly, as we have already seen through examples, there are
practical differences between an environmental ethic and conventional
instrumental views which do take account of the interests of past,
present and future humans, differences which emerge sharply at the
It is, however, unnecessary to
hypothetical (possible world) level.
turn to possible world examples to see that normally there would be very
great differences in the practical valuations and behaviour of those who
believe that natural items can have value and create obligations not
reducible (in any way) to human interests and those who do not, as the
following further examples show.
Example 1.
We need only consider the operation of
zJorZd, for example, the concept of damapo to a natural
item, and the associated notion of coTnpeMsafdoM for that damage.
C. Stone, for instance, in STzo^Zd Troes
^fuTid^Mp?
Thus
Towards LepaZ.
/"or ZVufMraZ- Objocfs (Avon Books, New York, 1975) notes the
practical legal differences between taking the damage to a polluted river
as affecting its intrinsic value, and taking it as just affecting human
river users.
In the one case one will see adequate compensation as
restoring the original state of the river (rectifying the wrong to the
river) and in the other as compensating those present (or future) humans
who will suffer from its pollution.
As Stone points out, the sum
34
�adequate to compensate the latter may well be much less than that
required to restore the river to its unpolluted state, thus making it
economic, and in terms of the human chauvinist theory, fair and reason
able, to compensate those damaged and continue pollution of the river.
In the first case, of course, adequate compensation or restoration for
the harm done would have to consist in restoring the river to its
unpolluted condition and will not just be paid to the people affected.
Compare here Stone's example of compensation for injury to a Greek slave;
in the instrumentalist case this will involve compensating the slave's
owner for the loss of his slave's working time;
in the other, where the
slave is regarded as not merely an instrument for his owner, it will
compensate the sZuue not the
for this compensation will also take
account of the pain and suffering of the slave, even where this has not
affected his working ability.
There is a difference not only in the
amount of compensation, but to zj/zow it is directed.
In the case of a
natural item damage may be compensated by payment to a trust set up to
protect and restore it.
Example 2.
The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary
and excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its
nonhuman inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that
there is no other human around to know the difference.
For one to whom
the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conventional utility,
however, there will be no such constraint.
He may avoid unnecessary noise
if he thinks it will disturb other humans, but if he is certain none are
about to hear him he will feel at liberty to make as much and as loud a
noise as he chooses, and this will affect his behaviour.
Examples like
this cannot be dealt with by the introduction of future humans, since
they will be unable to hear the noise in question.
To claim that the
making of noise in such circumstances is a matter of no importance, and
therefore there is no important difference in behaviour, is of course to
assess the matter through human chauvinist eyes.
question-begging.
From the intrinsic viewpoint it
So such a claim is
make a
difference, and be reflected in practical behavioural difference.
Example 3.
Consider an aboriginal tribe which holds a particular place
to be sacred, and where this sanctity and intrinsic valuableness and
beauty is celebrated by a number of beautiful cave paintings.
A typically
"progressive" instrumentalist Western view would hold the cave (and
perhaps place) to be worth preservation because of its value to the
aboriginal people, and because of the artistic merit of the human arti
facts, the cave paintings the cave contained.
35
To the "enlightened"
�Westerner, if the tribe should cease to exist, and the paintings be
i
destroyed, it would be permissible to destroy the place if this should
be in what is judged to be the best interests of human kind, e.g. to get
at the uranium underneath.
To the aboriginal the human artifacts, the
cave paintings would be irrelevant, a celebration of the value of the
place, but certainly not a surrogate for it, and the obligation to the
place would not die because the tribe disappeared or declined.
Similarly
no ordinary sum of money would be able to compensate for the loss of
such a place, in the way that it might for something conceived of as a
utility or convenience, as having value only because of the benefits it
confers on the "users" of it.
There is an enormous
or
difference between feeling that
a place should be valued or respected for itself, for its perceived
beauty and character., and.feeling that it should not be defaced because
it is valued by one's fellow humans, and provides pleasurable sensations
or money or convenience for them.
Compare too the differences between
feeling that a yellow robin, say, is a fellow creature in many ways akin
to oneself, and feeling that it is a nice little yellow and grey, basically
clockwork, aesthetic object.
These differences in emotional presentation
are accompanied by or expressed by an enormous range of behavioural
differences, of which the examples given represent only a very small
sample.
The sort of behaviour
by each viewpoint and thought
by it, the concept of what one is free to do, for example, will
normally be very different.
It is certainly no coincidence that cultures
holding to the intrinsic view have normally been far less destructive of
nature than the dominant Western human chauvinist culture.
In summary, the claim that there is no
difference,
that the intrinsic value viewpoint is empty verbalisation, does not stand
up to examination.
The capacity - no doubt exaggerated, but nonetheless far from
negligible - of Western industrial societies to solve their ecological
problems (at least to their own pathetically low standards) within a
chauvinistic framework, does considerably complicate, and obstruct, an
alternative more practical argument to the need for a new ethic,
/row
that in no other way ...
[than] prepared[ness] to accept a
"new ethic", as distinct even from adding one or two new moral
principles to an accepted common ... can modern industrial
35
societies solve their ecological problems.
On next page.
36
�Not only does the argument encounter various objections - most obviously
that many of the problems can be solved, if not within Western ethics, in
immediate extensions of them - but the case suggested would hardly be a
satisfactory basis for the type of ethic sought.
It is not so much that
it would be a chauvinistic way of arriving at a supposedly nonchauvinistic
ethic, for bad procedures can lead to good results;
rather it is that
important ecological problems, shaping environmental ethics, such as
preservation of substantial tracts of wilderness and just treatment of
animals, tend to be written off in industrial societies as not serious
problems.
But even if the argument suggested has too narrow a problem
base, and so may yield too limited a change in attitudes as compared with
the main theoretical argument, the argument merits fuller formulation and
further investigation.
The argument to need for ethical revision is as
follows:
(1)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems (of modern
industrial societies) implies (the adoption of) an alternative
environmental ethic.
(2)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems is needed.
Therefore, an alternative environmental ethic is needed.36
The argument is valid, given, what seems correct, that pimplies q implies
that p is needed implies that q is needed.
The second premiss is or can
be made analytic, on the sense of 'satisfactory'
'satisfactory' imply 'needed');
(e.g. by having
so the case is complete if the first
premiss can be established (in the same sense of 'satisfactory'), and the
conclusion is then plausible to at least the extent the premiss is. Al37
though the first premiss, or something like it, is widely endorsed,
cogent
35
Passmore (c) op. cit., p.438.
According to Passmore (p.431),
By common consent, there are four major ecological problems:
pollution, the exhaustion of resources, the destruction of
species, and overpopulation ...
To solve such problems involves finding a way either of altering
types of human conduct or of preventing that human conduct from
having its present consequences.
In what follows the assumption that 'there are four major ecological
problems' gets rejected.
36 This implies only, that a new ethic is necessary for solving
environmental problems, and not of course that it is
37 Even Passmore, though previously (e.g. in (a)) highly critical of
proposals for new ethics, gives qualified endorsement to an assumption
of this sort ((c), p.441).
... I do not doubt, all the same, that our attitudes to nature
stand badly in need of revision and that, as they stand, they form
a major obstacle to the solution of ecological problems.
37
�#
arguments for it are few and it is no simple matter rendering the
premiss plausible.
Moreover rendering it plausible involves a substant
ial detour through social theory;
for the case for the premiss proceeds
along these sorts of lines:
(3)
Unless there are (certain) major changes in socio-economic structure,
environmental problems will not be satisfactorily solved.
(4)
The major changes in socio-economic structure involve
ethic.
an alternative
A much stronger thesis than (3) has been argued for using systems analysis,
namely that without very extensive socio-economic changes, modern
industrial society will collapse;
but several of the assumptions made
in the analysis are doubtful or disputed.
independently of that stronger thesis;
But (3) has been argued
for example, it will follow from
the thesis (of Falk, Commoner and others) 'that the modern industrial
ethic as we have known it is not sustainable on ecological grounds'.^
In a sense,
(3) is obvious;
for it is present socio-economic arrangements
that have produced many of the present serious environmental problems;
without major changes in those arrangements most of the problems will
What is not immediately evident is
persist or, more likely, intensify.
that the major changes called for, in satisfying (3), suffice for (4).
However reflection on the specific types of changes required - for example
at a superficial level, human population limitation, reduction of poll
ution, more sensible resource usage, selective economic growth - reveals
that significant changes in value, and also in what is considered
permissible, are bound to be involved in the changes.
plausible, and
therewith the intended conclusion.
So (4) is decidedly
But the argument
leaves the detailed character of the needed alternative ethic rather
obscure;
and it may well be that the ethic so yielded is somewhat
chauvinistic in character.
The more practical argument cannot entirely
supplant the main theoretical argument.
In sum, there are good and pressing reasons to investigate the
alternatives to chauvinistic ethics, especially human chauvinism, because
such chauvinistic ethics are discriminatory, because the case for them
38
39
See, in particular, D. Meadows and others,
Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
PtwZts to CrozjtT?,
R.A. Falk, 'Anarchism and world order', Pornos IX, 1978, p.66. Falk
refers for the case to B.Commoner, TPs CZosZ^p CZroZo, Knopf, New York,
1971;
R.A. Falk, T/zZs
PZo^ot, Random House, New York. 1971;
E. Goldsmith and others EZMoprZut /or F^rvZ^aZ, Houghton and Miflin,
Boston, 1972, and Meadows et aZ., op. cit.
38
O
�does not stand up to examination, and because they have been involved in
the destruction of much of value and now threaten the viability of much
that is valuable.
§ 4 . ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERNATIVES :
NARROWING THE CHOICE AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS .
The basic - and basically mistaken - doctrine of the Western super-ethic
is, as we have seen, that people, humans of whatever shape or form, are
the fundamental carriers or objects of value and that all other items are
valuable only in an instrumental or derivative way.
It is important, in
deed mandatory in a genuine environmental ethic, to reject this view and
allow natural items to have a value in their own right, ^yz i/ze sazzze /as/z^oM
as
peopZ-e, both for the reasons outlined above, of the theoret
ical unsatisfactoriness and arbitrariness of the traditional view, and for
more practical reasons, namely, to help ensure the ecological sustain
ability of modern society, and in optimising human welfare.
It has often
been pointed out that 'a totally humanised world would diminish us as
40
human beings',
that the traditional view of humans, or classes of humans,
as dominant, and of natural items as without value except where they serve
human or class interests - a view that often carries contempt for nature leads not only to the destruction of much that is of value but (paradoxic
ally) to counterproductive results even with respect to human welfare.
Thus McHarg (in attractively coloured rhetoric)
Show me a man-oriented society in which it is believed that reality
exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos is a struct
ure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is
divine and given dominion over all things, indeed that God is made in
the image of man, and I will predict the nature of its cities and
their landscape.
I need not look far for we have seen them-the hot
dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and
mined landscapes.
centric man;
This is the image of the anthropomorphic, anthropo
he seeks not unity with nature but conquest (op. cit.).
The rejection of this view and its replacement by a view in which
natural items can be regarded as of value and as worthy of our respect for
themselves and not merely for what we can get out of them or what use we
40 see e.g. the discussion at pp.116-17 of (a) J. Rodman, 'The Liberation
of nature', Irz^z^rz/, 20 (1977) 83-145. All subsequent references to
Rodman's work without further indication are to this article.
Note well that the rejection of human chauvinism does Moi imply that no
chauvinistic arguments - or rafTzsr, arguments that are usually stated
in chauvinistic form - carry weight. On the contrary, some chauvinistic
arguments (e.g. those supporting wilderness retention and species
preservation) carry considerable weight; and, since the prevailing
industrial ethics remain chauvinistic, environmentalists would be rash
not to use them.
39
�&
can make of them, is becoming increasingly widespread in parts of the
environmental movement. It is this primarily that makes for an important
ideological split in the conservation movement, between what Naess (op.
cit.) called sTzaZZozj and Fesp ecology, between those who see conservation
as just a matter of wiser, better-controlled
exploitation of
the environment — something which is compatible with denying value to
everything except man
and those who see it at least in part as involving
a recognition of value for natural items independent of man, and hence as
involving (at least to some extent) a
The
gzEpZo^a^opz view, which is
first view, the long-term or
closely tied to prevailing more enlightened economic assumptions, tends to
make heavy use of the watershed term 'resource';
the problem of conserv
ation is seen as one of 'zjFss Mse oy resoMrcss', a resource being something
of use to humans or persons.
On this view, which does not get beyond the
confines of human chauvinism, and so is no direction for.a satisfactory
environmental ethic to take, items which have no perceivable use to man,
i.e. non-resources, can be destroyed without loss;
and the environmental
problem is viewed as largely one of making people aware of the extent to
which natural items and processes have Fustrz^gnPaZ- value, i.e. of how
far we are dependent on them and they are of
to us.
There is no
recognition either that some items might be valuable precisely
they are independent of man.
Resource Conservation, or the shallow position, is the first of the
42
four ideal types that Rodman
discerns in his investigation of the
contemporary environmental movement.
The deeper ecological position gets
split under Rodman's division into three ideological positions - though
Rodman prefers to put the matter in symbolic or experiential terms, in
terms of forms of consciousness - namely Wilderness Preservation, Nature
Moralism, and Ecological Resistance.
Though the positions discerned are
neither characterised in an exclusive fashion, nor exhaustive of ecological
positions, and though we shall have to look beyond all the positions for a
satisfactory environmental ethic, nonetheless they afford an excellent
perspective on the main types of alternative positions that have been
adopted by those within environmental movements.
It is not uncommon to encounter attempts to write the shallow position
into the very meaning or definition of
e.g. 'conservation
is the use of resources to the greatest advantage of man', 4 Furvez/ py
Fcrgsz^rz/
T^FMSz^r^es.
ParP FT.
Foresfrz/ Pe^gZ.opz7?e?2^ PZ-arz. Draft (31 October, 1974), p.ll - a
blatantly chauvinistic account.
On next page.
40
�According to (Wilderness) Preservation, which focusses on
wilderness, wilderness is to be preserved for the wilderness experience,
wilderness offers a natural cathedral,
a sacred place where human beings can transcend the limitations
of everyday experience and become renewed through contact with
the power of creation ((b), p.49).
The values discerned in wilderness and natural landscape are primarily
aesthetic and quasi-religious, or mystical,
'the experience of the holy
is esthetically mediated'; what is valuable remains human experiences.
Thus the Wilderness Preservation position does not move outside the
sphere of human chauvinism, and can no more than Resource Conservation
offer a frame for an environmental ethic.
Rodman reaches a similar
conclusion:
Resource Conservation and Wilderness Preservation appear
variations on the theme of wise use, the former oriented to the
[efficient] production of commodities for human consumption, the
latter to providing human amenities ((b), p.50).
For this reason, the Wilderness Preservation position fails even on the
score of justifying the preservation of wilderness - on the very task it
was designed to accomplish - in a range of circumstances.
Like other
See especially (b) J. Rodman, 'Theory and practice in the environmental
movement: notes towards an ecology of experience', in
Search for
VuZzzes
a
International Cultural Foundation,
New York, 1978, pp.45-56. Some of the types are portrayed in greater
detail in other Rodman papers.
The remainder of this largely new section on environmental ethical
alternatives is heavily indebted, in ways the references mostly make
plain, to Rodman's work. His work covers a vast range of interlinked
topics; only those of immediate relevance have been touched upon.
But there is very much in the remainder that repays careful reading,
and zzzMc/z to think about and to question or reject, reaching perhaps
its lowest point in the paradoxical themes:
Just as our statements about other people tend also to be
concealed statements about ourselves, so statements about non
human nature tend to be concealed statements about the human
condition, and movements to liberate nonhuman nature tend also
to be movements to liberate the repressed potentials of human
nature (p.105).
In part because these themes and the related myth of microcosm are
taken seriously, and not for the evident falsehoods they are, in part
because the ethical adequacy of the human/nonhuman distinction is
never seriously questioned (e.g. it is taken for granted, what is not
the case, that rights apply to humans and are problematic beyond them),
and in part because of the characteristically chauvinistic emphasis on
human experience and the endeavour to bring everything within that
experiential purvue, and the associated weight assigned to human
symbolic, mythic and ritual activities, one is left with the feeling,
at the end of all the investigations one can profitably follow Rodman
through, that one has not got beyond the confines of human chauvinism.
41
�instrumentalist accounts of wilderness value, it breaks down entirely
with examples like the Last Man, assuming that Mr. Last Man is never
turned on by natural spendour.
More alarmingly, under readily conceivable
developments, it would allow the elimination of wilderness entirely.
For
consider the Wilderness Experience Machine, a low-impact low-tech
philosophical machine, recently patented by I.M. Diabolic, which can
duplicate entirely, even for groups of people, wilderness experiences,
but in a downtown room.
As far as the psychological experience goes, this
machine can provide a complete substitute for any actual wilderness, and
were the value of wilderness to reside in the experience it afforded,
could entirely replace it and eliminate the alleged need for it.
Most environmentalists would be (rightly) dissatisfied with, not to
say appalled by, the idea that Wilderness Experience Machines could sub
stitute for wildernesses, since they provided the same experiences.
what else they wanted, the answer would of course be:
Asked
Wildernesses, not
merely wilderness experiences. Wildernesses are valuable in their own
right, over and above the experiences they can afford.43 Really, that is,
they consider wildernesses intrinsically valuable, but have been pushed
by the prevailing ethical ethos
into stating, and misrepresenting, their
position in experiential terms.
There is some independent evidence that
the Wilderness Preservation position is frequently a disguised intrinsic
value position, in the attitude taken to examples like the Last Man case,
that purely hypothetical experiencers
(who may vanish into counterfactuals)
are good enough, and that in some real-life cases it is enough that
wilderness is there to be contemplated, whether or not anyone actually
takes advantage of its presence to gain experiences, or indeed whether or
not it is in fact contemplated.
Such examples remove the disguise and
reveal the position as at bottom an intrinsic value position.
In that
event it is however better to avoid the disguise; for the case for wilder
ness preservation which starts from the position that some wilderness
tracts have intrinsic as well as merely instrumental value is substantially
stronger than any position which assigns them merely instrumental value.
Wilderness lovers and nature conservationists have in fact worked out
- or concocted - a set of arguments to show why wildernesses and nature
conservation are of benefit to humans, to argue for their instrumental
—
The concept of zjfZ-demess too can vary with the operative ideology,
e.g. on certain views, such as Wilderness Preservation, wilderness
comprises areas that are
(or provide the opportunity for use), e.g.
used for experiential enrichment. By contrast, on a genuine Environ
mental Resistance view, wilderness is a wild area, use of which is not
implied:
it may never be used, and it may not matter that it affords
no opportunity for (human) use.
(Under popular high redefinition of
'wilderness', there are of course no wildernesses remaining on the
earth, and wilderness vanishes as soon as humanly experienced.)
42
�value.
For example, there are various arguments from the scientific
value, or usefulness, of wilderness, e.g. for the study of natural eco
systems, for the investigation of plant history and evolution, as a
repository of genetic diversity, etc.
These arguments, which (like
parallel arguments for species preservation) are not to be
especially as regards persuasive force, can be put in nonchauvinistic
form;
for science and knowledge are not linked essentially with, for
example, the feature of being human.
Often however - e.g. where the
wilderness defended has, so far as it is known, little that is very
special to offer - such arguments appear to be merely a conventional front
for the real (or deeper) reasons - and in sofne instances, correspondingly
weak and unpersuasive (as Fraser Darling has remarked, and Passmore has
tried to show in (a)) - the real reasons being based on the perception of
nonuseful properties of value.
This is particularly marked in the case
of arguments for preserving the most complex and beautiful of the world's
plant communities, tropical rainforest.
Such arguments as that various
uninvestigated rainforest trees may at some time be found to contain
useful drugs, by no means exhaust the true value of the rainforest.
For it
is in the intrinsic, i.e. noninstrumental, value of the rainforest that
the main reason for not unduly interfering with it, e.g. not interfering
in ways that threaten its stability or viability, lies.
In particular,
destruction of a wilderness, such as a rainforest, would significantly
diminish intrinsic value, and so should (in general) be resisted.
Environmentalists who are aware of these sorts of problems and
dangers with resource use approaches to wilderness preservation sometimes
attempt to formulate their alternative view in terms of one of the lesser
traditions, most popularly in terms of the
image, in
which man is seen as the steward of the earth - an analogy which, as
Passmore points out (in (a)), is problematic outside a religious context.
For who is man steward to?
If not to God, then how is the analogy to be
unpacked, and what conditions must "stewardship" conform to?
If "good
stewardship" is management in the interests of humans, or humanity, then
the position does not go beyond Resource Conservation; if it is manage44
ment to serve intrinsic values, or God,
then good stewardship is but a
cover for the recognition of intrinsic values, which are better introduced
directly.
Thus admitting values which are not instrumental, which do not
answer back in some way to states or conditions of humans is a feature of
all satisfactory deeper ecological alternatives.
In order to allow for
such intrinsic values and/or associated attitudes of respect, e.g. for
44 on some interpretations;
chauvinism.
on others theism may serve to reinforce human
43
�nature and various
natural things, it is however unnecessary to adopt a
religious backdrop such as the "Good Stewardship" image suggests, or even
a semi-religious framework such as a mystical or superstitious one with
taboos and sacred places as symbolic and ritual elements.
A theory of
intrinsic value which assigns intrinsic value to wilderness and species
of free animals, for good reasons, can be entirely naturalistic (in a
main sense of that much-abused term).
The third, somewhat amorphous, cluster of positions Rodman describes,
Nature Moralisms, do just that, assign intrinsic,
noninstrumental,
value to natural items, such as - on some versions of the position wilderness.
[An] alternative perspective ...
[to] the theme of wise use
45
...
is provided by the tradition growing out of the humane movement,
recently radicalised by animal liberationists, and sometimes
generalised to embrace non-animal beings as well.
to the economic ethos of Resource
In contrast
Conservation and the religious/
esthetic character of Wilderness Preservation, this perspective is
strikingly moral in style.
Its notion of human virtue is not
prudence or reverence, but justice.
In contrast to the caste
bound universe of the Resource Conservationist, the Natural
Moralist affirms the democratic principle that all natural entities
(or, more narrowly, all forms of life) have intrinsic value, and
that wild animals, plants, rivers, and whole ecosystems have a
right to exist, flourish and reproduce - or at least that human
beings have no right to exploit or unnecessarily harm or destroy
other members of the biotic community.
In contrast to the aristo
cratic universe of Wilderness Preservation, where some places
(and
some forms of recreation) are holier than others and certain types
of natural entities ... are traditionally more worthy of being
saved than others ..., the world of the Nature Moralist is
characterised by an apparent egalitarianism ((b), p.50, my
rearrangement).
Each of the sweep of environmental alternatives indicated can be seen as
an
of conventional Western ethics:
intrinsic value is extended
uniformly to all animals or certain favoured features of all these, e.g.
their experience, happiness, avoidance of suffering, or is extended to all
living creatures or systems, or is extended to all natural items or even
to objects - it may or may
45
be distributed uniformly or equally;
Human use and human experience, it might be added.
44
�rather independently, rights may be ceded to all animals, or to some or
all living things, or to all things, or, alternatively and differently,
right-holders' rights with respect to some or other of these classes are
restricted;
and similarly other deontic notions, justice, obligation,
even perhaps duty, may extend to apply to larger classes of items than all
humans or persons.
The sweep, which is impressive, is intended to include both extended
utilitarianisms, e.g. Bentham's utilitarianism as revamped by Singer
according to which all sentient creatures are entitled to equal consider
ation of interest, and extended (legal) rights doctrines, e.g. the
assignment of rights or legal standing to all natural objects as suggested
by, for instance, Stone. 46 It also includes Darwin's ethic and Leopold s
47
"land ethic".
In order to capture some of the intended examples of
Nature Moralists, and all the Moral Extension positions, Rodman's
characterisation requires some adjustment - which will be taken for
granted in what follows.
For example, Singer and other animal liberation-
ists do not assign intrinsic value to all forms of life, or even to all
animals;
but (as Rodman is well aware) to all sentient creatures;
that
is, further classifications have to be taken into account.
The egalitarian, or uniformity, assumptions that serve in character
ising Natural Moralism are mistaken.
Not all objects are of equal value;
some are more valuable then others, while some have little or no value
(and some have a negative value).4^
Impressive though the sweep of extensions is, all the positions
indicated should be rejected on one ground or another, and sometimes on
several grounds.
Against positions which do not extend the class of
objects of moral concern and candidates for value to include all objects,
variants of the counterexamples to the Western super-ethic can be
directed.
Consider, for instance, the positions (of usual animal liber-
ationists) which extend the moral boundaries just to include sentient
creatures (or e.g. preference-havers).
Adapt the Last Man and Last
People examples, the Wilderness example, etc., by removing all
(inessential) animals from the examples, e.g. the wilderness contains no
animals, in the Last People situation there are no other animals than the
46 p. Singer,
.4 ZVozJ
Random House, New York, 1975;
for (7%r
C. Stone, op. cit.
<?y
47 At least on a straightforward reading of Leopold's eventual position,
but not according to Rodman; see his contrast of Leopold with Stone,,
p.110.
Darwin's ethic, which anticipates Leopold's, is presented m
C. Darwin,
of Muzz, Second edition, J. Murray, London, 1883.
4 8 On next page.
45
�1*
Then the counterexamples apply as before
last people themselves.
against the liberation positions.
It is unnecessary to go quite so far afield to fault such positions,
at least in practice:
as Rodman might put it, they are countered by the
facts of experience:
... I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon
to feel uneasy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion
that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of
anything but sentient animals (p.89).
But an advantage of the counterexamples is that the same examples, among
many others (e.g. situations devoid of sentient creatures, situations
where the message of experience conflicts with justice or fairness),
reveals the erroneousness of the well-sponsored thesis, a simple analogue
of empiricism, that all value
or sentient, objects).
derives from experience (of experiential,
A corollary is that value is not to be assessed
either, in any simple way, in terms of the facts of experience.
Insofar as Nature Moralism relies upon simple extensions of
utilitarianisms, or of subjectivisms, to include a larger class of
subjects,
(a larger base class), such as all present sentient creatures,
or all preference-havers at any one time, etc., it is open not merely to
adaptations of the argument against chauvinism (animal chauvinism is not
that much more satisfactory than human chauvinism), but most of the
Nor, on Moral Extensions, need all objects that have rights have equal
rights.
Rights may not be very democratically distributed. Some things
have rights, e.g. as a result of agreements, of a sort others do not
hold or are not capable of holding. Even rights to exist, to flourish
and to reproduce (each case is different) are in much doubt where there
is scarcity or conflict and where some right holders are taken to be
worth much more than others. Nor are such leading examplars of Natural
Moralism as Singer and Stone, though they are concerned to extend
principles of justice, committed to equality of rights assumptions.
Stone explicitly rejects equal distribution of rights; but the
principle that all natural objects are equal in having rights, which
really says no more than that they all have rights, is at best a very
weak egalitarian principle.
Singer offers (and presumably would offer)
no equality of rights principle, rejects an equality of treatment
principle, and proposes as a principle of equality a (near vacuous)
principle of equal consideration of interests.
Not, this time, knowledge. But amusingly "value empiricism" collapses
into empiricism proper given the Socratic identification: Value
(generalising Virtue) is knowledge.
The only natural stopping point under value empiricism is, of course,
with all creatures that have (or could have) the relevant experiences:
again not with humans.
46
�standard
objections to utilitarians,
subjectivisms,
etc.
Many
versions of Nature Moralism may than be defeated on rather conventional
grounds.
There emerges, further, a dilemma for extensions.
Either the crucial
notions of right and intrinsic value are extended to all sentient
creatures (experience-havers), in which case the objections just lodged
apply, or they are extended more sweepingly, e.g. to all natural objects.
But the latter involves attributing to such items attributes they do not
have, most obviously rights to such objects as stones;
it also violates
the conditions that have to be met for the holding of rights and for the
entitlement of rights.
Thus, for example, Stone considers underpinning
his extension of rights, beyond sentient creatures in the ordinary sense -
or of legal rights beyond recognised "legal persons" - by a postulate of
50
universal sentience or consciousness;
in short, by an unacceptable
metaphysics, or myth.
There are several further objections which work against many versions
of Natural Moralism to which Rodman draws attention:
(1)
Moral Extensions are 'inadequate to articulate the intention that
sustains the [environmental] movement'
wilderness preservation movements.
(p.88), specifically wilderness and
It takes but little argument to show
that utilitarian ethics, such as Singer's, so far from assisting the
environmental movement, can (if adopted) reinforce the case
wilderness and preservation of wild species.
But an extension like
Stone's extension of legal rights can help, and has helped, at least in
the courts where its meta-physical underpining is unlikely to be glimpsed.
The basic point is however that the rights talk does not connect with, and is
insensitive to, the experiential basis.
Mere extensions of moral notions
such as interest or right or justice are insufficient to treat and do just
ice to the multi-dimensional depth of environmental issues, such as the
damming of a river (p.115). Part of the reason is said to be that the usual
moral aparatus, which was evolved in the case of certain person-to-person
50 See Rodman's discussion, pp.92-3.
But Rodman overstates his case m
claiming that 'some such postulate as universal consciousness is there
fore necessary if the notion of rights for trees is not to seem a
rootless fancy'. For , as explained below, extended rights can be
defined by a rather "natural extension" of the familiar notion of right,
without any such postulate; and grounds of entitlement can be traced
back to value of the items.
Certainly extended rights sever what linkage there may have been between
rights and liabilities, but with the modern separations of rights from
responsibilities that linkage was already damaged or broken.
47
�*
relations, is inadequate for getting to grips with a new dimension of
moral experience, that concerned with environment, and inadequate to
reflect ecological sensibility.
Rodman tries to press, however, a much
stronger, and rather more dubious, theme, the
By adapting the moral/legal theory of 'rights',
[the movement] may
sell its soul, its roots in mythic and ritual experience, to get
easier judicial standing (p.88);
and more savagely,
the progressive extension
model
of ethics, while holding out the
promise of transcending the homocentric perspective of modern
culture, subtly fulfills and legitimates the basic project of
modernity - the total conquest of nature by man (p.97, also
'p.119)7*
"
While neither of these large claims is strictly true - soul-selling is
simply avoided through adoption of the notion of extended-right, which
can yield a conservative extension of the original position;
and even
utilitarians may be committed to blocking projects which threaten free
animals - each has a substantial point.
Part of the point behind the
latter claim is worth developing separately:-
(2)
Moral Extensions typically cast natural objects, notably animals, in
the role of inferior humans,
'legal incompetents', imbeciles, human
vegetables, and the like.
They
are ... degraded by our failure to respect them for having
their own existence, their own character and potentialities,
their own forms of excellence, their own integrity,
a degradation usually reflected in our reduction of 'them to the status of
instruments for our own ends', and not removed 'by "giving" them rights, by
assigning them to the status of inferior human beings'
(p.94).
Many of us know where the treatment of natural objects as mere means
for human ends tends to lead and has led.
The mistaken treatment of them
as inferior humans, a treatment which fails to see and 'respect the
otherness of nonhuman forms of life', leads in the same direction.
For
given that animals, for example, are inferior, it is legitimate to treat
them also as inferior;
a greater value principle, which moral extensions
typically endorse, yields a similar result.
The needs of increasing
populations of superior humans will eventually outweigh, if they do not
do so already, the cases of inferior inhabitants of this finite earth for
the retention of their natural habitats.
48
For their rights and their
�In the larger perspective, the Moral
values will be less than "ours".
Extensions, with their built-in greater value assumptions, do legitimate
the conquest of nature by humans.
Thus too they fail seriously, on what
will soon enough be quite practical grounds, as satisfactory environmental
ethics.
(3)
The extensions, like the parent ethics which they extend, are
narrowly individualistic, and insufficiently holistic. This is particularly
conspicuous in the case of utilitarianisms, which in principle arrive at
all assessments by some sort of calculations, e.g. summations and perhaps
averaging, from an initially given unit conforming to requisite equality
conditions, e.g. equal consideration, equal units of suffering.
In
practice of course the method is, almost invariably, to pretend that the
calculations will yield results which agree with alternatively and
previously arrived at, usually intuitive, often prejudiced, evaluations;
that is, in practice the method is not applied except in a handwaving
back-up fashion.
The method is not applied in part because there are
serious, well enough known, problems in applying it.
The individualistic
bias carried over in other moral extensions, e.g. any experiential theory,
likewise limits their satisfactoriness.
It is to understate the matter to
say merely that 'the moral atomism that focuses on individual animals and
their subjective experiences does not seem well adapted to coping with
ecological systems'
(p.89),
'to explore the notion of shared habitat and
the notion that an organism's relationship to its natural environment may
be an important part of the organism's character'
((b), p.52).
A moral atomism that focuses on individuals, discounting their
interrelations, is bound to result in ecological complexes that
matter
(such as ecosystems, wilderness, and species) getting seriously
short-changed.
To illustrate:-
Under atomism, the value of a complex, or
the rights of a complex, amount to no more than those of its individual
members;
but since these are, in isolation from the complex, no more
valuable than other things of their order, e.g. one gentian than another,
a bush rat from a Norwegian rat, there no special merit in a complex, or
rights attaching to it, in virtue of its rareity or uniqueness or special
features as a complex.
Thus, for instance, a utilitarianism under which
only individual animals count assigns, and can assign, no special value to
species, and can (as remarked) be used to argue against preservation of
species:
Since all animals are equal - or at least all animals of the
same genus are more or less equal - one can substitute for another.
For a
rare species of rat to die out painlessly cannot matter while there are
plenty of other rats.
A rights theory is in similar difficulties so long
49
�w
as rights are assigned only to individuals, taken in isolation from their
environmental setting (i.e. only to the usual separable individuals of
philosophical theory).
These problems may be avoided, in part, by assign
ing rights to complexes (given the notion of rights will take that much
further stretching;
which it will not if right holders are assumed to be
conscious or to be preference-havers), and by attributing independent
value to complexes.
But, since the value of a whole is sometimes more
than the sum of the separable values of its individual members, this move
involves the rejection of usual atomism, utilitarianisms in particular.
The objection against the narrow individualism of the extensions - a
defect they share with standard ethics which do not admit of ready
extension, such as contract theories - soon broadens into an objection
that these extensions are built on an inadequate metaphysics, a metaphysics
of rather isolated individuals who (or which) are seriously depauperate in
An ethics presupposes a metaphysics at
their relations with other objects.
least through its choice of base class:
thus for example, usual homocen-
tric formulations of utilitarianisms and contract theories suppose a base
class of narrowly self-interested humans.
The remedy is not (as Rodman
suggests in various places in his elaboration of Ecological Resistance)
to move to holism:
to do so would be to accept the other half of a false
dichotomy mainstream philosophical thought engenders (cf. Routley (g), this
volume).
It is rather to move to a metaphysics that is built on a concept
ion of objects (which may or may not be individuals) which are rich in
their interrelations and connections.
In summary, the moral extensions are the wrong direction in which to
seek a satisfactory environmental ethic.
But the failure of Nature
Moralism does not mean, as Rodman tends to assume, that all positions
51
that are moral in style are thereby ruled out.
For one thing, Nature
Moralism, as characterised (or generalised), is far from exhaustive of
the range of prima facie viable moral positions.
More satisfactory
positions will simply avoid the damaging assumptions of Nature Moralism
(and likewise those of inadequate ethical positions, such as contract
theories or naturalism, and those linking morality to legality;
For another, if the quest is for an
ruled out.
cf. p.103).
moral notions can hardly be
Even if it is assumed that the call for a 'new ethic' is 'to
guide the human/nature relationship (p.95) - a somewhat unfortunate way
of putting it - whereas what matters is the human/nature relationship
itself, and that in coping with that relation fixation on morality or
51 His thesis of the 'limitation of the moral/legal stage of unconscious
ness' is investigated in more detail in what follows.
50
�G.
$
legality is a serious handicap, and may contribute to the problem of the
relationship rather than helping solve it (pp.103-4);
still part of the
problem is that of indicating entitlements of agents with respect to their
environment, what sort of exploitation, if any, is permissible, what the
limits on conventional morality are, and discovering 'a larger normative
order within which we and our species-specific moral and legal systems
have a niche'
(p.97).
Nor, in outlining Ecological Resistance, does
Rodman shrink from using - he could not avoid the effect of - axiological
terms such as 'good' and deontic terms such as 'should';
he does not
doubt, for example, that some of what is natural that is threatened is
valuable and that threats to it should be resisted;
and he admits that
'prudence, justice, and reverence may be essential parts of a[n ecologic
ally] good life'.
Ecological Resistance, which is said to be the alternative 'most
faithful to the integrity of experience', exhibits indeed the negativity
of resistance.
The position is founded on action, resistance, and theory
only emerges retrospectively (if perhaps at all).
Its (insufficiently
qualified) central principle is 'that diversity is natural, good and
threatened by the forces of monoculture'.
The struggle between these
forces, diversity and monoculture - between (ecological) good and evil occurs in several different spheres of experience, i.e. at various levels,
which reflect one another.
Resistance is not undertaken for self-interest
or utilitarian reasons, or for moral reasons, or for religious or mystical
reasons (such as preventing profanation), but
because the threat to the [natural object or system]
... is perceived
aZso as a threat to the self, or rather to the principle of diversity
and spontaneity that is the endangered side of the basic balance that
defines and sustains the very nature of things ((b), p.54).
The disjunction,
'or', separates however two rather different (though combin
able) reasons-cum-motives for resistance.
The second disjunct yields the
following reasons for resistance (which are linked by a metaphysical
assumption connecting diversity and spontaneity with the nature of things):
(i) The threat to the natural item is a threat to the principle of
diversity and spontaneity.
So, by the central principle, it is a threat
to what is good, etc.
(ii) The threat to the natural object 'is a threat to the very nature
of things':
(as to how consider the example of the wild river threatened
by a dam, p.115).
So - by an unstated, but nonetheless implied and
assumed, principle, that the very nature of things is good (and natural) it is a threat to the forces of good.
51
�W-
The first disjunct yields
a
further,
different, argument;
in simplest
form:
(iii) The threat to the natural object is a threat to oneself.
What
is a threat to oneself is bad and to be resisted, so what is a threat to
the natural object is bad and has to be resisted (since what is bad should,
in general, be resisted).
Although the arguments are valid, the underlying principles are
faulty;
for instance, the diversity (and spontaneity) principle because
it is too simple (and so too does not harmonize with the nature of things) ;
and the second principle, the intrinsic merit of the very nature of the
things, because not everything that is the case or is natural is meritor
ious, e.g. genuinely natural disasters.
Rodman plans to avoid obstacles
to adopting nature as an absolute standard and, at the same time, to
bridge the gap the principle spans, by resort to a version of naturalism
which equates 'the "natural" with the "moral"'
(pp.96-7).
But for well-
known reasons which can be supported (e.g. those telling against objective
ethics of the sort such naturalism would yield), substantive evaluative
assumptions cannot be removed in this fashion;
though they can be
suppressed, they reappear as soon as connections between empirical
grounds and evaluative judgments based upon them are queried.
The
trouble, characteristic of reductionism, arises from the mistaken attempt
to collapse a grounding, or founding, relation to an identity, to close
the gap - which is not problematic but is widely thought to be problem
atic - between value and empirical fact by a reduction of value to fact,
of the thesis that evaluative features are grounded on natural features
to the thesis that evaluative features are nothing but certain natural
, 52
features (e.g. to be good is just to have certain natural features).
52 Rodman interprets naturalistically the statement of Jonas's that he
quotes approvingly (p.95):
Only an ethic which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely
in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the
scheme of things ... an ethics no longer founded on divine authority
[or upon human arete], must be founded on a principle discoverable
in the nature of things ... .
He interprets it in terms of 'an ontologically-grounded moral order in
the "the phenomenon of life" or "the nature of things".'
In this way
can be avoided the reduction of 'the quest for an ethics ... to prattle
about "values" taken in abstraction from the "facts" of experience'.
But Jonas's statement can be construed nonnaturalistically, by taking
the founding or grounding relation seriously, as connecting, but not
reducing, values to empirical facts.
So construed the statement does
help in delineating the sort of environmental ethics sought.
52
*
�C
Such reductions commit the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies which can be avoided neither by thinking 'our way through or around them'
(p.97), nor by holistic assimilation of morality in a 'more encompassing
ethical life' (p.103 and note 66). But details of the fallacies need not
detain us, since we can consider immediately Rodman's important suggestion
53
for circumnavigating them (pp.103-4).
Under natural social conditions, such as are obtained in some
traditional societies and in some free animal societies (as ethological
studies reveal), but have been lost in modern societies, law and morality,
at least in their coercive aspects, would disappear, as they did in
William Morris's
yrow TVozj/zgre, and somewhat as they would in a Kantian
community of fully autonomous beings.
In terms of modern physics,
morality and law are not invariants but vary under transformation of axes,
and in fact vanish or prove eliminable under a suitable transformations,
e.g. to a natural condition.
There is a similar natural condition for
morality and legality,
a condition in which the prohibitions now prescribed
54
Conscience and the State would have operated "naturally
by God,
(i.e. from
inside the organism, as a matter of course) , and patterns now stated
prescriptively could have been stated descriptively. When the Way
is abandoned, then we get Humanity and Justice (T<2<9 T6
, #18)
(p.103).
Even if a change of social axes could place us back on the Way, or on the
way to the Way, morality is not really avoidable in our local frame where
we are far from the Way.
So ethical disputes over environmental matters
are also unavoidable;^ for those a satisfactory ethic is a desideratum,
and can help in bringing about a change of social axes.
Thus too, the
identity of the prescriptive with the descriptive, of "ought" with
(suitable) "is", is a merely contingent (extensional) one and fails in
The suggestion helps explain not only Rodman's naturalism, but his
thesis of the limitation of morality and legality;
it also introduces
the anarchistic social change view that suffuses much of the (very
uneven) later parts of (a): the view appears therein as the elabor
ation of what is 'unthinkable'.
Given prevailing socio-economic conditions it should be rather: that
would (ideally) be prescribed. Let us hope, for environmental reasons,
that the principles that are lived by in natural conditions bear not
too great a resemblance to those now prescribed.
Nor is there, in the local frame, much alternative but to resort to
legal strategies, where they can be applied (where standing is granted)
to delay "the war against nature".
53
�V
alternative situations;
*
hence, as always, there is no deduction of
"ought" from "is", since deducibility would require coincidence in the
alternative situations.
Nor would morality — as distinct from legality,
which requires some codification - strictly disappear under natural
conditions, though its coercive aspects would:
on the whole, as they ought to be.
things would simply be,
But while deontology would have a much
diminished role (as it does on the preferred environmental ethic),
axiology (the theory of value) would still have its place - some objects
(e.g. diverse landscapes) would be more valuable than others (monocultural
landscapes), some not valuable, etc.
(As things stand, of course,
axiology does have an important place in working out the theory of
Ecological Resistance, especially in assessing its central principle of
diversity.)
The upshot is that without much elaboration (like that indicated
below) of an axiological kind; which connects value through a grounding
relation, as distinct from an identity, with the run of things (but not
aZZ things) that are natural, reason (ii) for ecological resistance
fails.
Does reason (i), which is premissed on the central principle that
diversity is good and natural and threatened by monoculture, fare any
better?
While it is a matter of fact that that diversity is threatened,
indeed is being very rapidly reduced by the forces of monoculture, diver
sity is not, as opponents of ecological values are wont to point out, an
entirely unqualified good.
Nor is diversity is always natural:
a
temperate rain forest can be "enriched" and rendered more diverse by
interplanting of exotics (a practice foresters have applied, e.g. in
New Zealand) but the result is not natural and sometimes at least bad.
Or, differently, ecological diversity can often be increased by increasing
edges between ecosystems, but the practice of increasing edges can easily
be unnatural and far from good, as, e.g. in rainforest logging with (say)
50% canopy retention.
So although a reduction of diversity is commonly
bad, since the reduction reduces the quality of an ecological whole, and
increase in diversity good, diversity can not be accepted as a solo
principle.
In fact, Rodman often couples diversity with other factors,
such as naturalness (inadmissible in determining, noncircularly, what is
good and natural), richness, spontaneity and integrity, which help to
remove various of the counterexamples to a diversity principle.
procedure points in the direction to be pursued:
The
replacement of the over-
simple principle of diversity by a principle combining all relevant
ecological factors. After all ecological sensibility - ecological resist
ance is assumed to be the position of the person of ecological sensibility -
requires sensitivity to all such ecological factors.
54
Once it is determined,
�*
through consideration of a mix of ecological factors, that, or whether,
a natural object is good or valuable the reasons for resistance can be
restated:
(iv) Where a natural object is valuable - as
natural objects
are, a natural object does not have to be very ecologically distinctive
to be valuable - the threat to the natural object is a threat to what is
But, other things being equal, threats to what is valuable
valuable.
should be resisted.
So, similarly, threats to natural objects should
often be resisted - and always (on whatever level) resisted where the
objects are valuable and the costs of resisting are not overridingly high
(to begin to spell out the ceteris
paribus
clause).
It remains to tie in reason (iii), a key premiss of which can now
take the initial form that the threat to a valuable natural object is a
threat to oneself.
A threat to what is valuable, to what one as a valuer
values,
is athreat to the valuer, to oneself, for these are one's values.
To make
some of those connections good again requires an excursion into
axiology, one, this time, that connects what is valuable with a valuer's
values.
But Rodman, in trying to connect the threats to natural objects
and to oneself, is forced further
microcosm:
afield, and resorts to the myth of
'Ecological Resistance involves a ritual affirmation of the
Myth of Microcosm'
universe' (OED).
((b), p.5.4), i.e. the view of man 'as epitome of the
While such an affirmation - without the ritual - would
yield the requisite connection, it is a classic piece of anthropocentric-
ism, quite hostile to a nonchauvinistic position, and, fortunately,
inessential to genuine ecological resistance.
What Rodman reaches for
from the myth (which could be restated in terms of seZ/, without its
classic homocentric bias) is however extremely important:
account of the
it is an
which is not a separate subject
isolated from its (natural) environment (as a Humean individual is),
but
is connected intensionally and causally interrelated with that environment.
Rodman introduces this metaphysics in rather old-fashioned terms:
Ecological Resistance ... assumes a version of the theory of internal
relations:
the human personality discovers its structure through
interaction with the nonhuman order.
I am what I am at least partly
in my relation to my natural environment, and changes in that environ
ment affect my own identity.
If I stand idly by and let it be
destroyed, a part of me is destroyed or seriously deranged ((b)
p. 54).
Not Man Apart, in the terms of Friends of the Earth.
55
�w
For among my interests are its interests, part of my welfare is its
welfare;
I am identified in part with it.^ The metaphysics deepens,
then, the reasons for resistance.
A resister 'does not stand over against
"his environment" as manager, sight-seer, or do-gooder;
he is an
integral part of [it]' ((b), p.56).
But the environmental metaphysics, that underlies and helps support
the ethics, that is part of a fuller environmental theory, need not be,
and should not be if it is to be coherent, as (Hegelian and) holistic as
Rodman immediately goes on to suppose that it is:
__ By making the principle of diversity central, Ecological
Resistance can incorporate the other three perspectives as moments
within the dialectic
of a larger whole.
an esthetic religiosity have
niches
Economics, morality, and
in the ecology of our experience
of nature, and each has its limits (p.56 continued).
But a principle of diversity which opposes the forces of monoculture will
not yield f/z-fs pluralism, unless illegitimately extrapolated to theories
where its merit is much less evident, especially when some of these
theories are not only mutually inconsistent but false. Rodman risks the
distinctive features of Ecological Resistance for a dubious synthesis.
It is only true that the positions can be combined if the first three
positions are verz/ limited indeed, and then a trivial combination with
each theory working where it works (which may be nowhere actual in the
case of the religious component) can be managed.
Moreover Ecological
Resistance properly developed, will lead to economic and ethical theories
which compete with the rather conventional, and environmentally defective
theories of, respectively, Resource Conservation and Natural Moralism.
Not only is Ecological Resistance severely handicapped by having
implausible holistic theses tacked in to it (not all of which have been
discussed);
further, Ecological Resistance is too negative. A more
positive theory - which includes a theory of value and, ultimately, for a
fuller environmental position, a metaphysics - is required, not only for
orientation and to meet felt needs of environmentalists already noted,
but for more effective, coherent and systematic resistance.
S'? it is but a short step to the ; fully ecological sensibility [which]
knows with Carl Sandburg that:
There is an eagle in me ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky
Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want ... . And I got the eagle ... from the wilderness, (p.118)
The poem almost admits of neutral logical formalisation.
56
�§5.
THE VIABILITY OF THE SORT OF ALTERNATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC SELECTED
It is not necessary for an environmental ethic to take a set position
on all the issues so far raised for environmental ethics (or others, such
as whether, and if so which, ecological principles should be integrated
for example, it does not
with the ethical system) ;
to decide exactly
But it can hardly avoid determining
which items do or can have rights.
some of the boundaries in a way different from conventional ethics if it
is to count as an environmental ethic.
In particular, the issues of what
sort of items have or carry noninstrumental value, and how they obtain it,
cannot be escaped indefinitely.
Without the assignment of (intrinsic)
value to some items independent of the states and conditions of humans,
an ethic would remain within the confines of human chauvinism.
But how,
it is all too often asked, is such an assignment possible, or rational?
In any case, the environmental examples already relied upon (in §3) pre
suppose
items.
the assignment of intrinsic value to nonhuman, and to nonsentient
So a theory of value is not only unavoidable but owed.
that can be adopted on an environmental
Of the many accounts of
ethic, the following has much to recommend it:-
Some values are instru
mental, i.e. a means or an instrument to something else that has value,
and some are not, but are non-instrumental or intrinsic.
Some values at
least must be intrinsic, some objects valuable in themselves and not as a
means to other ends.
not, however, imply
That a value is (reckoned to be) intrinsic does
that
it
is
absolute
or system independent;
the
values that are intrinsic on one ethical theory may be instrumental or
relative on another. More controversially, values may be
in one
way or another, on other things, on other values or, importantly, on non
values (such as experiences or felt needs, or facts or natural objects);
but while some values are reducible to others, others are not but are
That is, contrary to naturalism and to other forms of
For
reductionism such as subjectivism, some values are irreducible.
analogues of the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies, formulated in
irreducible.
terms of 'valuable', are fallacies.
In particular, evaluative judgments,
such as those as to what is valuable, are not deducible from nonvaluative
judgments, such as those as to what is conventionally valued or what is
58
experienced.
That values in natural items are intrinsic does not imply
that they are naturalistic.
eliminating
or
Indeed intrinsic value cannot - on pain of
- amount to being natural, or reduce
to the experiences of humans or of sentient creatures, to their suffering
or happiness or preferences.
58
On next page.
57
�w
Although some of these things, some of these experiences,
some do not, but have no value, or a negative value or disvalue;
value,
59
and
some things, e.g. some experiences or some natural objects, have more
value (are more valuable) than others.
of value, but by no means everything is.
Almost anything can be an object
Value is distributed unevenly
throughout the universe in something the way that electrical charge is;
some items have positive quantities of varying degrees of intensity (e.g.
a thundercloud may carry a positive charge, and have positive value), some
negative, and some none.
There are however important differences:
elect
rical charge is a quantitative notion, value a qualitative, comparative,
one;
charges are always commensurable, values less certainly or straight
forwardly so;60 and the distribution of values (and especially of
intrinsic values) is much more theory (system, or viewpoint) relative than
.the di^sbributtdn of charges.
For example, on an environmental view, matiy
of the plants Mr Last Man eliminates have (intrinsic) value, whereas on
animal liberation (usual animal chauvinist) views the plants have no value
if no animals remain:
there would be no similar disagreement about
whether the plants were electrically charged.
Evaluative features such
as worth, merit, beauty are features which behave in rather the way that
philosophers of science now mistakenly suppose that
behave:
empirical features
they do not have a hard observational basis but are decidedly
theory-dependent, though the theories involved are evaluative in character
and not empirical.
To assert that value or redness or remoteness is distributed through
the universe is not to imply that these features, value or redness or
For an outline of how this nondeducibility thesis, which yields a
nondefinability thesis, may be proved (in limited contexts), see the
final section of R. and V. Routley, 'The semantics of first degree
entailment', ZVoMS, 6 (1972), pp. 335-59.
A simpler argument against naturalistic reducibility of values is a
consequence of the intensionality of values and the fact that intensional notions cannot be extensionally analysed (syntactically), which
is what naturalistism characteristically assumes.
Strictly the account of instrumental value should be widened if
disvalues as well as (positive) values are to be taken proper account
of.
That is, mcrg
may be at best a partial order, and so an
inadequate basis on which to define total utility functions, and on
which to rationally reconstruct modern economic theory.
If this is so,
as Godfrey Smith has suggested, and the orderings cannot be completed,
applications of the optimistisation models subsequently introduced will
have to work with partial functions.
58
�remoteness, exist,
or are to be found in the universe.
undermines much criticism of nonsubjective values;
The point alone
for example, Mackie's
empiricist case is premissed on the false assumption that the existence
of values
is necessary to objectivism, which he does not distinguish
from nonsubjectivism.
Mackie's "argument from queernessis similarly
broken at the outset:
since values are not entities at all, they are not
strange sorts of entities.
To see how unpersuasive Mackie's argument
should be, replace '(objective) values' throughout by, e.g.,
ordinals'.
universe;
'transfinite
They too would be 'utterly different from'anything in Mackie's
but that does not show that there are no transfinite ordinals.
Thus too, since values are not entities, the account of value being
developed is Met a reaZ-Zst one (in the ordinary sense).62
Values, of one sort or another, are features objects may have or
lack;
they are not subjective, they are not features which reduce to
states or conditions of subjects or valuers.
But no more are they object
ive features, natural or empirical features of objects, features entirely
detached from valuers.
A largely unquestioned false dichotomy between
subjective and objective ethical theories has served to rule out important
options (it has been helped by a connected false dichotomy between
instrumental and detached accounts of value:
see Routley (b)).
In simplest terms, an objective account of value has values "located"
in objects entirely independently of valuers, in the way that (inertial)
mass is located in physical objects independently of observers;
more
satisfactorily, objects have values and masses irrespective of valuers or
observers.
Objectivism forces intuitionism, when it is inquired how
values are apprehended or known;
thus a fuller objective theory is almost
always accompanied by an account, so far always unsatisfactory,
61 The position is that for properties and relations argued in (e)
R. Routley,
EepcTX'd, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1979.
Such objects do not exist, but they have
important theoretical, explanatory, and other roles.
62 j.c. Mackie, Ft/zZcs.
especially pp.38-9.
F-ZpTzt
Penguin, 1977;
see
62 So undermining 0K6 part of D. Mannison's claim that we
want to defend a reaZ-Zst theory of values, i.e. a theory of values
that accounts for the truth of "x has value" with no ineliminable
reference to the interests and concerns of the evaluating group
('Critique of a proposal for an "environmental ethic'", this
volume).
The further parts of Mannison's claim are assessed in what immediately
follows. We are indebted to Mannison for forcing us to try to work
out what is wrong and right about detached value theses.
59
�3
characteristically modelled on sense perception, of the way in which
64
values are intuited or apprehended.
It is also regularly assumed on
objective accounts that values exist, in the world;
noneism) that is a separable assumption.
but evidently (given
By contrast, a subjective
account finds values in, or not independent of, actual subjects, and
commonly as linked with the pyschological states of valuers.
Although
subjectivism, like objectivism, comes in a variety of forms, it is always
required that where an item is valued there exists, at sometime or other,
a valuer who values it:
"no values without a valuer" holds, in a strong,
an excessively strong,implausible and erroneous, form;
namely, a world
without existing valuers in it is, by that very fact, a world without
values.
Fortunately - since both objectivisms and subjectivisms suffer
from serious, and mostly well-known, defects - the positions are not
exhaustive.
The way between is perhaps best revealed in terms of alter
native worlds.65 Although values in a world (more precisely, that items
in that world a have evaluative features) always depend upon a valuer
existing in sows world, the valuer may not exist in the world of the
values
(i.e. the valuer may not exist in a).
For example, our claim that
a certain world without valuers, e.g. a pure plant world of botanically
rich form, is a fine world, depends on our existing in this world (in
order to make the claim, in fact);
"make sense"
but it does not demand in order to
(of course the claim is significant) or to be true, what is
ex hypothesis ruled out, the existence of valuers in the pure plant world.
That the world is a fine one, is dependent on a valuer in some world (and
that valuer's assessments of value and, if you like, theory or overview
of what is valuable and not);
by contrast, that the world contains only
plants of this or that leaf type, biomass or colour, does not depend upon
a perceiver.66 since values are not entirely independent of a valuer in
the way that empirical properties are independent of an observer, the
An important corollary is that
resulting account is not objective.
transworld evaluation does not require objectivism, nor (as we shall see)
intuitionism.
Call the resulting account, which is neither objective nor,
(short for, neither objective nor
as is evident, subjective,
subjective:
the term is ugly but memorable).
For a fuller account and worthwhile criticism, see N. Smith,
Penguin, 1954.
The use of worlds in ethical theorising, which is old, soon leads into
world semantical analyses of ethical notions, which is newer but will
also be taken for granted: it is ^problematic.
On next page.
60
�The replacement of the (no detachable values) thesis,
(1)
There are no values without a valuer,
by the revised thesis,
(1°) There are no values which are entirely independent of a valuer,
still affords the requisite semantical connections between values and
valuers subjectivists have been at pains to maintain, still allows for
the requisite theory dependence and cultural relativity of values, and
still avoids the extravagances of objectivism.
The replacement enables
the defeat of various sophistical arguments designed to show, in virtue
of the conceptual character of evaluative terms, that the case so far
presented against human (or person) chauvinism collapses.
argument of this sort
runs thus:
A simple
Objectivism is untenable;
but that
leaves subjectivism, which validates (1), as the only alternative; and
subjectivism undermines the counterexamples to chauvinism.6&
One defect
of this argument lies in the assumption that a theory can just dispose of
counterexamples, when commonly examples are harder data than any theory.
Note that the difference between evaluative and empirical properties
is not adequately explained counterfactually:
if an appropriate valuer
- it cannot be an arbitrarily chosen valuer - were placed in the world
it would rate the world fine, to be sure; but equally a suitable
observer would perceive perceptual properties.
Both these things
objectivism can quite well allow. Partly for this reason Rescher's
attempt to maintain his initially subjectivist thesis that value must
be benefit-oriented, while admitting Moore's comparison of unoccupied
worlds, is unsuccessful.
Rescher's thesis really gets modified to:
value must be potential-benefit-oriented - with which an objectivist
might well agree, since it becomes a truism if 'benefit' is construed
sufficiently widely (e.g. as 'value'), once unscrambled counterfactually
thus:the unseen sunset has aesthetic value because of the potential
benefits it affords ... [i.e.]
someone were placed on to such a
world, he
be able to appreciate and enjoy this sunset.
(N. Rescher,
Prentice Hill, 1969 ,
pp.136-37.)
But insofar as Rescher wants to suggest that value comes down to
potential-benefit-orientation, that the unseen sunset has value jMst
because of the potential benefits, which are entirely captured counter
factually, objectivists will rightly object; even if no one were
placed in this world, the sunset which delivered no benefits
the
world, would still have value, still be beautiful.
In short, a counterfactually-extended subjectivism remains inadequate.
The requisite relation of entire independence is explained semantically
in terms of worlds.
The truth of A is not entirely independent of b
iff, in every model, for every world of the model in which A holds
there is some world of the model in which b exists.
The valuer of (1°)
need not exist; it is only required (in each model) that it exist in
some world.
Such an argument appears, in essentials, in R. Elliot,
species?', this publication.
61
'Why preserve
�9
Such a procedure is methodologically unsound.
In this case the examples
tell against subjectivism, and point to another defect in the theoretical
argument, namely the reliance on the false objective/subjective dichotomy.
It has been objected 69 that the nonjective way between subjective and
objective is unsatisfactory, for the reason that (1°) results in
unacceptible assignments of value.
But the objection depends upon under
standing 'a valuer' in (1°) not in the intended way, as 'a certain (or
definite) valuer' , the determination of valuer being
MpoM the
values concerned, but as a choice term, as 'an arbitrarily chosen valuer',
or 'some valuer or other (you choose)' - which would require, what can
never happen, that every hypothetical valuer agrees in the values assigned.
A precisely similar misunderstanding of (1) likewise gives strange results:
namely that any state of affairs, however environmentally appalling, is
valuable because we can find a valuer, e.g. a spokesman for your local
development association., who would account it valuable.
understood yields no such bizarre results:
But (1) properly
all it guarantees is that,
where a state of affairs has a value then there is a certain valuer
(zj/z^cT? depending upon the state of affairs and the value assigned, i.e.
the choice is heavily constrained) who assigns that value to that state.
Similarly in the case of (1°) choice of appropriate valuers is a dependent
choice, not an arbitrary one.
There are several, deeper (because metaphysically grounded),
sophistical arguments that conclude on the basis of (1) among other
70
things, that human, or at least person, chauvinism is unavoidable.
These arguments too fail with (1).
It is simply a (common) mistake to
think that values and rights do not have a meaning, or an application,
outside the human context or situation:
to establish this point (on
which Moore rightly insisted) it is enough to point out again that
(hypothetical) valuers, not necessarily human or persons, can assign
69
For example by R. Elliot op. cit.
Elliot's objection depends on a
misconstrual.
The original draft of this paper pointed out that
principle (1)
is strictly mistaken: it would be a little more accurate to assert
that there are no values without possible valuers. A world in which
there are no valuers extant may still contain valuable items.
It does not follow from this, what Elliot infers, that 'a state of
affairs has value if it is such that it would be valued by some
sentient individual if such an individual were to exist', with 'some'
read 'some or other'.
70 These arguments are examined in detail in Routley (a), and found
wanting.
The objections there lodged apply equally against variations
of the arguments built on (1°) . What follows in the text on sorne of
these arguments is largely a condensation of some of the points
developed more fully there.
62
�C
Q
values with respect to situations and worlds devoid of humans and of
persons altogether.
But though these deeper arguments strictly fail
with the demise of (1), they can be readily restated in terms of (1°),
which can equally be taken (given further assumptions) to support the
thesis that persons (or preference-havers)
are the primary items of
value or, more strongly, that persons are the ozzZ-y items of intrinsic
value.
One of these arguments relies on the idea that persons are the
source of value.
But the argument trades on an ambiguity.
A person is
the source of value-judgements and values in one sense, i.e. s/he is the
valuer;
but not in another, namely s/he is not responsible for valued
item having its valued properties.
Nor is there any licence for reducing
the values assigned to those that serve the interests of the valuer.
The
argument is likely to be given the following sort of initial elaboration:
By (1°), whatever has a value has its value in virtue of an assignment
from certain valuers.
But valuers are always persons.
The argument is however
ever has a value gets its value from persons.
defective.
Therefore what
For even if values were always assigned by persons the items
their values from persons
assigned values do not thereby yet or
(or those of persons).
They have what value they have partly in virtue
of features of their own.
Nonetheless, the argument continues, the empirical features of
objects valued are relevant because they are taken into account in
preference rankings on which valuers base their assignments.
By (1°)
(or
a derivative) values are relational properties not properties simpliciter
as objectivism would have it.
They are relational properties which
depend on certain features of the related item.
Which features, of values?
Well, obviously, preferences and interests of valuers.
So, it is con
cluded, values answer to, or reduce to, interests of persons:
no alternative to chauvinism.
there is
Rather similar arguments lead to such
(mistaken) conclusions as that rights are interest-oriented, that
71
obligations must answer to people's interests,
etc. etc.
The arguments
can furthermore - in case the transit seemed excessively swift - be
filled out, for example as follows:
By (1°),
Thus, e.g. K. Baier, T/ze AforczZ Po^yzt o/
Ithaca, 1958.
63
Cornell University Press,
�-B.
Values depend upon valuers, upon their value assignments
or rankings.
-A.
These value rankings depend upon valuers' preference
rankings.
A.
Hence
Values depend upon, or are determined through, the preference
rankings of valuers.
B.
Valuers' preference rankings are determined through valuers'
interests.
C.
Valuers are humans [persons].
Therefore
D.
Values are determined through, or depend upon, human [or
72
persons'] interests.
Hence, it is sometimes concluded, not only is it perfectly acceptable for
humans to reduce matters of value and morality to matters of human,
interest, there is no rational or feasible alternative to doing so:
any
alternative to chauvinism is simply incoherent.
With the replacement of (1) by (1°), premiss (C) is rendered
implausible unless 'human' is supplanted by 'person'
(where the variable
'person' is so characterised that all valuers are persons, something some
accounts of person would rule out).
Thus, without (1), the argument
leads at best to person chauvinism.
Nor does -B follow from (1°):
"not
entirely independent of" does not imply "dependent upon", but at best
"partially dependent upon".
However it does seem that values are, in a
sense, determined through value assignments - assignments made certainly
in virtue of features of the objects valued and of preference rankings of
valuers, that is having dual factual and attitudinal bases - but assign
ments nevertheless.
Accordingly, the central part of the argument can be
reformulated, in a way which locates the main source of damage, thus
A'.
Values are determined through value assignments [preference
rankings] of valuers.
B'.
The value assignments [preference ranking] of valuers are
determined through valuers' interests.
In order to reach what amounts to chauvinism
73
from B', however,
'interest'
has to be narrowly construed, after the fashion of egoism, as 'own, self-
centred or selfish, interest'.
D'.
Otherwise the conclusion,
Values are determined through valuers' interests,
Many variations on this argument are considered in Routley (a); and
obviously there are yet other variations, e.g. value assignments could
be directly linked with interests.
On next page.
64
�c
Q
is innocuous;
valuers.
it does nothing to confine what determines value, to
For valuers' interests may concern almost anything, and in
particular may include the interests of nonvaluers(as in 'its interest
is among my interests') and the welfare of natural systems.
understood, is no more chauvinistic than:
D', so
Values are value-centred.
To
succeed the argument has to narrow the elements assessed in determining
value to features of the base class of persons [or humans];
their interests and welfare alone.
e.g. to
For if we have to look beyond this
class to assess value - even to determine interests and welfare - then
the argument to chauvinism fails. Thus the argument has, in order to suc
ceed, to rely upon assumptions either of egoism - valuers' interests are
restricted to their own (perhaps enlightened) self-interest - or of a
group analogue - valuers' interests are restricted to those of the group,
the base class - where (to indicate the final trick in the argument)
there is, in each case, a slide on the elastic term 'interests', e.g.
from ^?z) f/z^r ozjzz
ozjyz Mses or purposes.
to
t/z^^r ozjzz u^urztape., or
t/ze^r
It is evident enough that in order to succeed the
argument has to assume one of the very points at issue, that interests,
which are progressively restricted to chauvinistic interests, are so
restricted.74 But consider, to expose the character of the assumptions
made, parallel arguments to egoism and groupism, i.e. group egoism:
AE.
Persons always act (in freely chosen cases, or rational cases)
in the way they prefer or choose, i.e. in accord with their
(revealed) preference rankings.
BE.
Individual [group] preference rankings are always determined
through (reflect) self [group] interest.
71 What amounts to chauvinism; for if a position were reached in
this
way by a sound argument, then the position would not be chauvinistic,
being justified. For this reason, it is absurd for a rational creature
to present itself (as some philosophers have) as a human chauvinist or
a person chauvinist.
There is however a descriptive analogue of chauvinism, in which the
justificatory clause is omitted; and this use of 'chauvinism' we have
resorted to ourselves (as the astute reader will have observed) as an
interim step.
In the end of course such descriptive-chauvinism is
chauvinism, since the discrimination involved is unwarranted.
74 The claim generalises: it is not possible to mount an argument for
person [or human] chauvinism on the basis of the meaning, or analysis,
of such notions as, o^Z^pa^o/z or r^pTzf or
without assuming, in
the analysis or the course of the argument, the very points at issue.
This is an outcome of the viability of nonchauvinistic analyses of
these notions, together with the content preservation character of
genuine deductive arguments.
65
�Therefore
DE.
Individual persons [groups of persons] always act in ways
determined in their own self [group] interests (or that
reflect their own interest^).
Thereafter follows the slide from "in their own interests" to "to their
own advantage", or "for their own uses or purposes".
The eventual con
clusion of egoism, again parallelling the class chauvinism case, is not
only that the egoistic position is perfectly in order and thoroughly
rational, but that there are no alternatives;
least ought to be, no other way of acting,
that is, there is, or at
'that men can only choose to
do what is in their own interests or that it is only rational to do
Thus,person or (human) chauvinism, as based.on the central argument,
3
stands revealed as like group selfishness, "group egoism" one might
almost say.
Likewise the criticisms of the
as we shall now call the argument through D or D', parallel those of
egoism;
in particular, premiss B'
to those that defeat premiss BE.
(or B) succumbs to similar objections
Group selfishness is no more acceptable
than egoism, since it depends on exactly the same set of confusions
between values, preferences, interests, and advantages (encouraged by
slippery terms such as 'interests' and 'self-interest') as the arguments
on which egoism rests.
Briefly, because one may discern or select one's own preference or
value rankings, it does not follow that these rankings are set up or
selected in one's own selfish (or enlightened self) interests;
similarly
in group cases, because a group determines its own rankings, it does not
follow that it determines them in its own interests;
the group includes environmental individuals.
certainly not if
Thus just as BE is refuted,
at least prima facie, by a range of examples where preference, and value,
rankings run counter to self-regarding interest, e.g. cases of otherregarding interest or altruism, so prima facie at least, B is refuted by
examples where value, and also overall preference rankings, vary from
group interests, e.g. cases of group altruism and extra-group-regarding
interests, as in resistance movements, environmental action groups, and
so on.
It is often in selfish human interests (no less selfish because
pertaining to a group) to open up and develop the wilderness, strip mine
the earth, exploit animals, and so on, but ecological resistance workers
Nowell Smith, op. cit., p.140. Nowell-Smith's very appealing critique
of egoism (pp.140-44) may, by simple paraphrase, be converted into a
critique of group selfishness.
This is obvious once B' and BE are
compared.
66
�who oppose doing so are commonly not acting just out of (their own or)
human intragroup interests, but out of direct concern for the environment
and its welfare.
But, just as BE is not demolished by such counterexamples of
apparently other-regarding and altruistic action, neither is B:
in each
case it can be made out that further selfish (i.e. self-regarding) inter
ests are involved, e.g., in the case of B, that an agent did what he did,
an altruistic action, because he
in the egoism case,
doing it.
As Nowell-Smith explains
'interest' is written in as an internal accusative,
thereby rendering such theses as BE true at the cost, however, of trivial-
More generally, valuing something gets written in as a
further sort of "interest"; whatever valuers value that does not seem to
ising them.
be in their interests is said to provide a further interest, either the
value itself or an invented value surrogate;
for example, the environ
mentalist who works to retain a wilderness he never expects to see may be
said to be so acting only because he has an interest in or derives
benefit or advantage from just knowing it exists, just as he would be
said to in the egoist case.
"retained";
By such strategies the theses can be
for then a valued item really is in valuers' interests, in
the extended sense, even if they are in obvious ways seriously incon
venienced by it, i.e. even if it is Mot in their narrow interests in the
customary sense.
Thus B, like BE, is preserved by stretching the
elastic term 'interests', in a way that it too readily admits, to include
values, or value surrogates, among interests.
Then however the conclus
ion of the Group Selfishness argument loses its intended force, and
becomes the platitude that values are determined through valuers' values,
just as egoism, under the extension which makes us all covert egoists,
loses its sting and becomes a platitude.
Human chauvinism in this form,
like egoism, derives its plausibility from vacillation on the sense of
'interests', with a resulting fluctuation between a strong false thesis
when interests are narrowed through group interests to group restricted
interests - the real face of human chauvinism - and a trivial analytic
thesis, between paradox and platitude.
To reject the reductionist conclusion D, or D', is by no means to be
committed to the view that the valuers and their preference rankings play
%<? role in determining values and that values are a further set of
In the sense of Wisdom's (meta)philosophy.
The technique of rescuing
philosophical theses by shifts, which begin with natural extensions of
terms, enforced by accompanying redefinitions of terms - including the
thesis "We're all selfish really" - is delightfully explained in
J. Wisdom, dt/zer
Blackwell, Oxford, 1952, especially chapter 1.
67
�mysterious independent items somehow perceived by valuers through a
special (even mystical and non-rational) moral sense.
An intuitionist
theory of value is not required, and is not lurking in the background.
One can simply admit that valuers' preference rankings play an important
role in evaluation;
one is not thereby committed to D unless one assumes
- what amounts to premiss B - that these preference rankings reflect, or
can be reduced to, valuers'
(narrow) interests.
Even so important
problems remain unresolved, in particular, precisely what role valuers'
preference-rankings play, and how this role enables the damaging features
of intuitionism to be avoided.
The arguments against genuinely environmental ethics from the
character of
are sometimes followed up by the objection that such
a ethic can be given no, or no satisfactory, theory of value (or metaethic, to.use the current, but questionable, jargon transferred from
logical theory).
It is true that several theories of value are quickly
ruled out, including mainstream noncognitive theories, which are objection
ably chauvinistic, allowing no non-instrumental value to any non-sentient
natural items.
While an environmental ethic, like almost any other
normative ethic, ca?? be supplied with an intuitionist theory of value,
an environmental ethic, unlike most other ethics, wa?/ appear to have no
option to such a theory, though the theory is unsatisfactory and causes
especial problems for the ethic. 75 The unsatisfactoriness of intuitionism
is in part for the usual reasons:
apart from the perceptual comparison
which is problematic in several ways (e.g. evaluative properties are not
like perceptual properties, the moral sense is rather different from
other senses), the theory is (like a purely axiomatic theory) too much of
a black box, which gives no explanation of many things that call for
explanation, e.g. the semantics of value, how value judgements are based
on factual and emotional or attitudinal bases;
but it is in part because
intuitionism provides little guidance or assistance in accounting for the
intrinsic value of environmental objects.
These difficulties can be evaded and the problems largely resolved
through a semantical theory of value, and more generally of ethical terms.
Thus D. Mannison, 'the "new environmental ethic" is ... irredeemably
intuitionistic' (op. cit.), and H.J. McCloskey:
As far as I can see of the known, plausible meta-ethics, the only
one available ... is an intuitionist one.
... [There] would still
be ... the problem of associating it with a non-human-centred
normative ethic, one which did not locate all values in human
capacities states, goods, but accorded to environmental phenomena
value in their own right. ('Ecological ethics and its justification:
a critical appraisal', this volume.)
68
�For the truth-conditions, 7 8 and resulting interpretation conditions,
will supply an account of meaning not only of axiological expressions
but also of deontic expressions, and moreover in a way that is plainly
nonchauvinistic;
e.g., it enables natural items to be awarded intrinsic
value in much the way that states or conditions of humans are on
chauvinistic theories.
Something of the shape and character of the semantical analyses
emerges from the evaluation rules for important axiological and deontic
79
functions.
The semantics are set within the framework of the semantics
of entailment:
in this way several paradoxes possible world semantics
induces in deontic (and axiological) theory are automatically removed.
The semantical analyses of the central axiological functor,
'that ... is
better than that __ ', abbreviated 'Bt', and the key deontic predicate
'that ... is permissible', abbreviated 'P', restricted to sentential
terms, take respectively the following forms:
I(A Bt B, a) = 1 iff [B]
i.e.
[A], where [C] = {c e K:
I(C, c) =1},
[C] is the range of C, the class of situations where C holds, some
times called the proposition C expresses.
In short, that A is better
than that B holds in world a iff from the perspective of a, the proposition
B expresses is less preferable than the proposition A expresses, where
the ordering relation is spelt out in terms of a preference ranking.
I(PA, a) = 1 iff, for some world b such that Tab, I(A, b) = 1;
i.e., that A is permissible holds in a iff for some world b permitted as
far as a is concerned, A holds in b - where the relation T is spelt out in
terms of a relative permittedness relation.
Enough of the semantical theory has been exposed to indicate some
important features.
Firstly, betterness - and something the same holds
for other value terms - is assessed semantically in terms of a world-
relativised preference ranking.
In the simplest case, where betterness is
assessed as to truth (rather than interpretation, or meaning), i.e. at
actual world T, the assessment just is in terms of a preference ranking
(so validating a form of premiss B above, for a technical sense of
70
Ethical judgements, both axiological and deontic, have truth values,
relative to their context of occurrence. By use of context, objections,
e.g. from relativity, to the attribution of truth-values to such
judgements can be straightforwardly avoided.
79 Full details of the semantics are presented elsewhere, in Routley (c),
and in R. Routley, R.K. Meyer, and others, PeZevuzzf
TZzeZr
P-ZfaZs, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979.
69
�'determined').
Secondly, the semantics of
can be given in
descriptive terms; similarly for deontic terms such as
The
semantical analysis bridges the fact-value gap, by a functional linkage,
without however closing it.
preferential basis.
For it provides no
of value to its
The linkage enables a simple explanation of how
environmental considerations can count:
criteria may be preferred.
worlds satisfying environmental
Sets of worlds where human interests or needs
are not met but ecosystems are maintained may, for example, be prefer
entially ranked above worlds where human needs are met at the expense of
ecosystems.
The way in which the factual basis, which includes environ
mental facts - the descriptive better-making characteristics - enters into
the evaluative judgments of quality, is in outline as follows:
factual
criteria delimit preference rankings on worlds in the same way that
descriptive features of objects delimit preference rankings of these
objects.
It is not the case, then, that we are unable to explain zj?zz/ a natural
item is valuable if we cannot point to some human interest or purpose
which is served.
This again assumes mistakenly, that because a valuer
relative preference-ranking is involved, the evaluation must somehow be
reducible to the interests or purposes of the valuer.
That there is an
allusion in the semantical unpacking of value to the preference system of
a certain valuer no more requires that the items valued are valuable only
insofar as they serve the valuer's interests or preferences than it does
in more familiar cases such as valuing a work of art, a library or an old
building.
Valuers can and do value items because they perceive in them
properties they take to be valuable, and in the interests of other things
whose interests are their own, and not simply for what they can get out of
them or how far they serve their own interests.
The answer to the question
'Why is it valuable?', for a natural item, will not always be, as it must
always be on the instrumental view,
'Because it is good for such and such
purpose or end of the valuer or those of his group', but may be:
'Because
it has properties A, B and C which the valuer holds to be valuable in virtue
of considered preferences, including iterated (second order) preferences
which reflect the preferences of other preference-havers.
In the end, then, environmental value systems are
cvz different
How a seTnaTzt-fcaZ analysis - as distinct from a
analysis may make bridges without involving a reduction - but leaving everything
as it is - is more fully explained in R. Routley 'The semantical meta
morphosis of metaphysics',
JoMruaZ
P/z^Zosop/zz/, 54 (1976),
187-205. For more on how the fact/value gap is semantically bridged
see Routley (c).
70
�preference rankings, which take into account different facts from the
chauvinistic systems they are beginning to compete with and aim to
supplant - a different group preference ranking and network (emanating
from the valuer and those like her) which is grounded in a different
perception and emotional presentation of nature.
The semantical meta-ethic is not as neutral as an intuitionistic
meta-ethic:
for the preference-rankings involved require a valuer, i.e.
thesis (1°) is applied, thereby excluding objective theories.
The fact
that the semantical theory will work (perhaps after minor adaptions) for
a range of normative theories is no serious objection.
not have to be precisely tailored to a given ethic:
A meta-ethic does
the same (sort of)
metalogic may work satisfactorily for many different logics.
It is not merely that the distinctiveness of the meta-ethic may be
what is more serious is that the
contested;
(normative) ethic, even
newness
of
the
within Western traditions, may be challenged.
It has been suggested, for instance, that such ethics are but versions
or minor variants of ideal utilitarianism
McCloskey, op. cit.).
(cf. Elliot, op. cit.;
To assess this claim, and to reveal how much the
preferred environmental ethic has in common with such utilitarianism and
how much it differs, considering what counts as ideal utilitarianism is
unavoidable.
In indicating what does count, there is real point in going
back to Rashdall's original explanation:
... all moral judgements are ultimately judgements as to the
value of ends.
This view of Ethics, which combines the utilitarian
principle that Ethics must be teleological with a non-hedonistic
view of the ethical end I propose to call Ideal Utilitarianism.
According to this view actions are right or wrong according as they
tend to produce for all mankind an ideal end or good, which includes
but is not limited to pleasure.
... The right action is always that
which (so far as the agent has means of knowing) will produce the
greatest amount of good upon the whole.
(H- Rashdall, TTze T/zeorz/ o/
Fzz-z^Z, Oxford University Press, 1907, p.184.)
Ideal utilitarianism is thus, according to Rashdall, nonhedonistic
utilitarianism, and so conforms to the core theses of utilitarianism,
namely:
(i) The ethical or ideal end (the good) is determined simply by
maximisation of net utility or value of certain factors or ends, typically
(but not invariably) experiences or states of consciousness such as
pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction of desires or preferences
71
�!*
(ii) The ends or experiences are those of some given base class,
e.g. mankind, present persons, sentient creatures (Pase <?Zass r^Z-az^z^sut-Zczz);
and
(iii) Other ethical notions, right in particular, are defined as
determined in terms of the ethical end (^eZeoZ-c^-ZcuZ re^zzc^-Zozz-Zsw).
A corollary of the reductionist assumption - which can take various forms,
e.g. act, rule, average utilitarianism - is that maximisation is uncon
strained by deontic requirements.
The core principles are also readily
discerned in that other paradigmatic ideal utilitarian, Moore,
who like
Rashdall, objects to (hedonistic) utilitarianism on the grounds of its
hedonistic principle (e.g. p.184), and accordingly widens the ends
admitted in (i), and, again like Rashdall, takes the base class to
consist of humans.
as assessed through its
paradigm exponents *Zs thus chauvinistic, and zzo
e^zz-ZrczzwezztuZ.
sc/zewa /or azz
Human chauvinism is in fact integral to both
Rashdall'sand Moore's work.
For example, Rashdall characterises r-z^TzZ; in
terms of good for mankind, and endorses a strong form of the greater value
assumption (p.215).
And Moore
not only identifies the best poss-ZbZe
state of things in this world with Human Good (p.183), but considers 'by
far the most valuable things we can know or -z^azy-Z/ze, are certain states of
consciousness', Zzzz?n<27z consciousness (p.188, my italics).
Each one of the core theses of utilitarianism is false (the case is
argued in detail in Routley (b)).
Contrary to (i) optimisation needs to
be constrained, deontically constrained, else serious injustices to and
ill-treatment of objects within the base class and, more important,
objects outside that class, are all too likely.
But, as against (iii)
this destroys prospects of successful deontic reductions, which are, on
independent grounds, improbable.
To avoid the chauvinism, typically built
See Pr-Zpzc-Zp-Zu Ez^/z^cu, Cambridge University Press, 1903, chapters V and
VI.
Moore does say (p.188) that
No one, probably, ... who has asked himself the question, has even
doubted that personal affection and appreciation of what is beautiful
in Art or Nature, are good in themselves.
But 'appreciation of what is beautiful' reduces, on Moore's account, to
'enjoyment of beautiful objects'; and any independent value in what is
beautiful is 'so small as to be negligible in comparison with that
which attaches to the cozzsu^ozzszzess of beauty', (p.189).
Moore's chauvinistic account thus appears open to familiar objections e.g. those based on enjoyment machines (cf. the wilderness experience
machine discussed above), and on beautiful worlds lacking conscious
beings-which help show that beauty is what counts and not just, or
primarily, experiences of beauty. Moore was not, however, entirely
unaware of such points:
cf. pp.194-95.
72
*
�into (ii),
(i) requires restatement in terms of factors which avoid base
class relativisation;
then clause (ii) is eliminated.
The need for con
straints in optimisation modellings of utilitarian or economic sorts can
be seen from the phenomena of interrelated interests and preferences:
that my interests include, or depend upon, yours, means that these cannot
vary independently, but are interrelated.
Repairing the defects of ideal utilitarianism results in more
adequate optimisation modelling.
notion of
The recipe elementary analysis of the
item leads to is, in essence, as follows:
Maximise a
weighted function (e.g. a sum) of the factors that value a determines
subject to appropriate constraints:
symbolically, maximise n-place
function E = E(x) subject to constraining relations Rj(x)
and x = <x^,...,x^>).
(with j an index,
Special cases of such optimisation modellings are
familiar from engineering and economic applications (e.g. determination
of optimal social welfare in concave programming). What is more general
82
about the model indicated,
is, in particular, the form of constraints
permitted, which can include
that ... Xi ... X2 ..."
bounds for optimals).
deontic constraints, e.g. "It is forbidden
(which has the effect of putting a subspace out of
Since there is nothing to prevent moral prohibitions,
requirements of fairness, and the like, from appearing among the constraints
ethics, economics, and practical reasoning can in principle be success
fully amalgamated.
The optimisation modelling of general value theory differs
significantly from that of (ideal) utilitarianism.
Although maximization
is fundamental in both, in utilitarianism value is characteristically
replaced by net utility, measured usually in terms of experiential units
of some sort, whereas in general value theory this reduction is rejected.
In each case there is a
of an ethical calculus, but the currency
is different, being values in one case and base class or individual
utilities (units of utility) in the other;
but in both cases the calculus
is so far (equally) unworkable except in very special cases.
In each
case there is an analysis into components of the objective (function)
maximized, but the analysis is very different.
In utilitarianism net
utility is broken down into individual utilities of members of some base
class.
In general value theory such a reduction is rejected (except
perhaps where appropriate hypothetical valuers are admitted);
analysis into factors that carry value is made.
instead an
(But in Moore's ideal
The general model is motivated, explained, illustrated, applied and
defended in Routley (b) and (d) and also in R. Routley, 'The choice of
logical foundations: nonclassical choices and the ultralogical choice',
L<9<2"f<?a, 38 (1979).
73
�utilitarianism, unlike utilitarianism proper, the way is opened for
factors, such as beauty, which carry intrinsic value and are not reducible
to features of the base class or its members.)
In utilitarianism deontic
notions, such as right, are analysed in terms of the value theory;
general value theory deontic notions are taken as given
constraints are imposed on optimisations.
but in
and deontic
Whereas the maximisations of
utilitarianisms proper are (single element) unconstrained maximisations
(hence the injustice, unfairness, and ill-treatment such ethics condone),
general value theory optimisations are constrained.
in principle
While there is room
for constraints in ideal utilitarianism, as there is for a
switch to factors which are base-class independent - though the theory has
never been elaborated to the point where these things are done - deontic
constraints cannot be noncircularly imposed, given the teleological
reduction thesis (so the problems of unfairness and ill-treatment remain).
It is a fairly evident corollary of the differences that general
value theory removes leading objections to utilitarianisms.
It is not
perhaps so evident, however, how it applies to environmental cases or
what the factors of environmental relevance are.
To expose some of the
factors - and to indicate just how far an environmental ethics is dis
tanced even from a comparatively liberal ethic like Moore's ideal
utilitarianism
- consider the very difficult optimisation problems as to
the determination of the Ideal.
Moore distinguishes (1) The Ideal,
from, what is more interesting,
state of things
the best possZbZe state of things in this world',
toward which our action should be directed'
absolute ideal'
(KI)
and (2)
'the
(2)
'the MZtZ/naZe end
(p.183).
Call (1)
'The
'the T ideal' or 'the this world ideal'
(TI).
A crucial difference between the two problems lies in the constraints:
determination of TI is constrained by features - many of them unknown -
of the actual world T (now and in the immediate future), by its populations
of humans and of various species of living things on its various earths,
by its natural features, by its physical and technological resources,
limitations of which will impose characteristic scarcity constraints.
By
That does not imply that no analyses can be given of deontic notions.
Although axiological reductions are ruled out, others are not.
Certainly semantical analysis, like that already sketched for permissib
ility, can be supplied and elaborated.
Moore's teleological ethic is not far removed from Aristotle's ethic
more than 2000 years earlier (which exhibits features of ideal
utilitarianism) . From the point of view of this long relativelyunchanged base line, environmental ethics are not merely new and
radical, but represent a paradigm shift.
74
�-
contrast, KI is presumably not constrained by resources or technology
(in relation to populations);
this is just one reason why Leibnitz's
equations of TI with KI and with things as at present fails.
theless constrained.
8S
KI is none
There will, for example, be constraints forbidding
unfair or ill-treatment of various sorts (given that such treatment is
possible), and there will be constraints interrelating factors that are
not independent.
The factors entering into the modelling will no doubt represent, in
some way, many of the positive goods, such as enjoyment of the "meritor
ious" sorts that Moore managed to discern - positively weighted - and
many of the evils he found - but negatively weighted (but some of these
things are better represented through constraints). There remain,
86
however, many features
of ecological importance that Moore never con
templated;
for example, diversity of systems and creatures, naturalness,
o7
integrity of systems, stability of systems, harmony of systems.
Optimising a mix of factors, which are mutually constrained, meets
constant reproaches made against such ecological values as diversity.
The objections take the form that enhancement of diversity as a sole
factor can lead to undesirable ecological results, indeed can diminish
Op
net value and so be wrong on utilitarianism grounds.
On the multiple
factor model diversity is constrained by naturalness and stability, for
example;
thus net value is not going to be increased through increasing
the diversity of a simple temperate rainforest by felling some of its
trees and replacing them with exotic species.
On the other hand, diver
sity will be increased by planting the banks of a stream, eroded through
excess clearing and overgrazing, with suitable exotic species - then birds
Perhaps, moreover, there are no limiting natural laws, such as con
servation principles, but the universe operates according to beneficient natural laws.
There are distinctions here between worlds and
physically possible worlds which Moore did not make.
There may also be, at least in the case of KI, as Moore observed,
factors that we are unaware of - at least under the intended construal
of 'conceivable'.
Rough and ready measures of such factors as diversity are not so
difficult to come by, and, in important respects, present fewer problems
than obtaining measures of pleasure that encompass, in ways that take
account of interspecies and interindividual comparisons, all sentient
creatures.
Compare the objections made in §4 to Rodman's reliance on the single
criteria of diversity; and also Passmore's points in (a) against
diversity as a single criterion in arguments for preservation.
75
�and other animals will increase as well as plant diversity - and in such
a case stability will also be increased in the longer term and natural
ness not diminished (since already removed);
thus overall value will be
increased (it may also be increased by the enjoyment of conservationists
formerly appalled by the stream landscape).
Diversity,though (like enjoy
ment or pleasure) good in itself, is (again like hedonistic values) not an
unconstrained value (compare, e.g., enjoyment obtained through secret
maltreatment of animals or by impoverishment of an unvisited streamside).
The multiple factor model also solves the problem of how to combine
traditional values, such as the virtues and creature enjoyment with what
many in the West are only beginning to discern, environmental values;
namely, by a constrained optimisation which takes due (i.e. weighted)
account of them
Thus in moving to an environmental (or nonchauvinist)
ethic one is not
ordinarily acknowledged welfare values for persons
or humans, but simply recognising a further set of values to which such
welfare values should be added.
welfare values are retained;
Nor is one
humans, for human
one is simply aiming to remove - through
constraints which may reduce assignments to human values in favour of
other values - the unwarranted privilege and chauvinism of the displaced
Western super-ethic.
One would not have come very far if, despite the claim to have
recognised environmental values, one assumed that wherever there is con
flict between natural values and human values, the latter must always
prevail.
This would be equivalent to assigning them very low weight, or
even zero value, in all serious conflict cases.
One would not have
advanced far past rejection of axiological principle (A) if one then
accepted, in assessments as to how things should be done, the yreafer
namely that even though other things may have intrinsic
value, people or humans are more valuable than anything else, and rank
more highly (no matter how large their number).To allow that sows
in human welfare values may sometimes - or even often,
especially with increasing human populations - have to be accepted in
cases of conflict is an essential part of assigning a genuine positive
value to nonhuman factors.
Sometimes humans, their states and conditions,
do not come first:
the greater value assumption should be rejected.
Such an assumption - in popular form, that people come first - is
extrgTMgZ-z/ widespread and is even included in animal liberation theory;
cf. Singer, op. cit.
For striking examples of the damaging assumption
at work, see the (chauvinistic) resolutions of the United Nations
Conference on the Human Environment.
�o
4
There are many kinds of examples.
Conspicuous examples are provided by
recognisedly evil people (there are, under current social arrangements,
plenty), whose welfare, or even lives, do not rank above, for example,
valuable natural items, or the welfare of future persons.
More con
troversial are evaluations which rank the preservation of an animal
species, such as the tiger, above the increase (or even retention) of
human population in given areas.91 But, for the most part, the compar
ative value of humans as opposed to other creatures and things has been
greatly exaggerated.
The arguments used in support of the greater value assumption are
but variations of those for human chauvinism already considered, and
largely rejected (in §1).
Thus, for instance, Keller argues for a greater
value thesis on the ground that a 'human being is the most complex thing
which we know; its depth and range of experience far transcend that of
any other known living thing'
(p.209)
Ecological Concern', Zz/^o/z, vol.6
(J.A. Keller,
(1971), pp.197-209).
complexity the claim is almost certainly false:
are much more complex.
'Types of Motives for
As regards pure
tropical forest ecosystems
The claim about range of experience is open to
doubt, even for "normal" humans, since many animals have a much wider
range of such sensory experiences as smells; and it is false of many
humans.
More important, range and "depth" of experience, of certain
have) , does not, on its own,
select sorts (those that normally
establish greater value in any routine or regular way.
Often enough it
is no good basis for assigning greater value.
The generalised optimisation model will commonly give way, in
applications less sweeping and more feasible than that of the determining
TI, to such special cases of it as Bayesian decision theory and cost
benefit analysis, where these analyses allow properly for environmental
values and duly incorporate ethical constraints (see Routley (a)).
90
91
It
The fact of the matter is that prevailing unqualified attitudes to
human welfare or the "sanctity" of human life - as opposed to other
life - are shot through with inconsistency. For instance, despite
common claims that human life is sacrosanct, neither the largely
unquestioned military ethics nor medical ethics nor the state or "the
law" take such a position: most individual humans are regarded as
expendible, replaceable, and not particularly or uniquely valuable.
On the prevailing ethic quite a different evaluation is taken for
granted: e.g.
It would be unrealistic to agree, of course, that preservation of
wildlife should take precedence over providing for human needs.
(S. Richardson, writing in T/ze CuTZ&erru
November 29, 1974 ,
p.12)
On an environmental ethic, while it might not be politically expedient,
it would not be at all "unrealistic", to so agree.
77
�&
is these more special methods that should normally be applied in trying
to determine a best course of action in a range of difficult decision
cases thrown up for an environmental ethics, especially cases where there
is a conflict (i.e. constraining conditions) between retention of natural
values (e.g. preserving a wilderness or a national park) and maintenance
of humanistic values (e.g. keeping some humans alive, commonly reckoned
one of the highest human-values).
But for a cost-benefit weigh-up to be
attempted such cases have to be described in
more detail
usually provided by chauvinistic philosophers who
than is
to direct such
examples against environmental evaluations - as if furthermore, the
examples were quite conclusive, when they almost always presuppose from
the very beginning what is in dispute, a greater value assumption.
In
connection with such intended counterexamples to properly environmental
ethics, two further points are worth recording:
firstly, resort to such
analytical methods is the rational procedure in such cases (unless a time
urgency intrudes, as seldom happens, or should happen, in philosophy);
secondly, an environmental ethic should not, any more than other ethics
or economics, be expected to provide a decision procedure for any and
every case that may arise:
the theory (and accompanying intuitions) may
have to be developed to resolve some cases, while other cases may go
(cheerfully) undecided.
On similar test or decision cases, e.g. one
group of starving people versus another group in a situation of limited
resources, or quality of life versus number of humans, conventional ethical
theories may offer no quick, or clearcut, resolutions, etc.
The optimisation model indicates, among many other things, how
axiological principle (A) is to be modified.
For best choice and best
course of action are now determined by taking account of the further
range of values, not just those that are human-based.
Then (A) vanishes
into the truism that only those objects that are of intrinsic value are
of intrinsic value, or need be taken into account in the values of the
optimisation model.
How to rectify the deontic principle (D) is rather less obvious than
how to adjust (A).
An obvious strategy, is, however, to add further
92 Even when a case is more fully described there will, of course be
(unavoidable) difficulties in quantifying some of the values, e.g.
those of "intangible" factors; but these difficulties are not sub
stantially worse than those already encountered in routine business
accounting in quantifying such assets as good-will and such matters as
wage relativities for different work.
As L. Tribe has pointed out
(in 'Ways not to think about plastic trees:
new foundations for
environmental law', YaZ-e AuzJ
vol.83 (1974) , pp.1315-1348) the
difficulties of transferring or adapting rather standard methods of
assessment, such as decision theory and cost-benefit analyses, to pro
vide rational decision methods in the case of environmental matters has
been much exaggerated, to the detriment of the environment.
78
*
�provisos.
way;
But it is unsatisfactory to do this in a piecemeal sort of
it hardly suffices, for example, to simply add further riders
excluding unnecessary cruelty to animals, speciescide, etc.
What has to
is unwarranted interference with other preference
be ruled out
havers (and goal-possessors)
and the degrading of items of value.
A
revised principle appears then to go something like this:-
DN.
One is free to act as one wishes provided that (i) one does not
unwarrantedly interfere with other preference-havers, and
(ii) one does not damage or ill-treat or devalue anything of
value.
Though the revised principle has a rather more complex and restrictive
character than freedom principle (D) and Western variants thereon, it
still does the requisite task (D) set out to do, namely to state that out
side certain prescribed areas one is free, that select behaviour is
permissible.93 it is simply that the proscribed area is far larger than
inadequate homocentric ethics have envisaged.
But perhaps the whole conception underlying (D), and the way it
fixes onus of proof, should be stood on its head.
On the view behind (D),
one starts from an unlimited position permitting unlimited interference
and exploitation;
restrictions are added primarily because other ones
(again ones of the privileged class) are also starting from a similar
unlimited position whose freedom of action may be (impermissibly) curtailed
by one's own.
So results the initial position, e.g. of (D).
For inter
ference in others' projects (no matter how exploitative) beyond this
"evident" initial position,good reasons have always to be offered.
alternative thoroughgoing
On the
respect view, which is illustrated by various
nonexploitative non-Western ethics, one starts from a restricted position,
a position of no interference and no exploitation, a position at peace with
the natural world so to say, and allows interference - not as on
thinking, restricts interference - for good reasons.
thus entirely inverted:
stop interference.
Western
The onus of proof is
good reasons are required y<2r interference, not
The good reasons include the collecting of fruit
and nuts (and other natural "produce") for life support purposes, but not,
for example, the collection of a substantial surplus of forest orchids on
whim or in the hope that they may be sold at a profit.
A theory of value like that outlined, though it takes it for granted,
93 The revised freedom principle is not incompatible with, but can be
combined with and supplemented by, a bill of rights, charter or catechism specifying positively types of rights and of permissible
conduct.
79
�A
in the constraints imposed in optimisation, that there are deontic
principles limiting what is done to many objects other than persons,
leaves main deontic issues open, and in particular does not thereby imply
that such objects have rights.
For woraZ
forbidding certain
actions with respect to an object (fo not, in general,
that object a
94
corretattle r-^p/zt.
That it would be wrong to mutilate a given oak or
landscape painting does not entail that the tree or painting has a correl
ative right not to be mutilated - without (what has a point) stretching
the notion of r^p*7z^.
An environmental ethic like the respect ethic being
advanced does not automatically commit one to the view that natural
objects or artifacts sometimes have rights.
It is sometimes held that some such objects do have rights, e.g.
under the influence of pantheism.
But construed literally, pantheism is
false, since artefacts, and other inanimate objects, are not alive.
The
view that the class of right-holders extends beyond the class of
preference-havers can however be placed on bases less extravagant than
pantheism - most obviously in terms of a suitable deontic analysis of
r^p?zt, for instance along the following lines:
others
d has a right to
iff
(obligation-holders) are not entitled to interfere with d's cj)ing
(if d (f)'s or were to (j)).
Under this account, of
which
emerges straight-forwardly from modern analyses of r^p/zt, a painting or a
tree may indeed have "rights", such as to continue existing.
Although
the term 'right' can no doubt be 6^ctezz<ie(i along some such lines, the
analysis leaves out essential elements of the normal notion, namely the
involvement of choice.
There are, once again, various competing environ
mental ethics, some simple extensions of Western ethics which extrapolate
the notion of r^p/zt, some not, some rationalistic, some not, and so on.
Environmental positions can - but need not - adhere to the familiar
assumption that rights divide into the following two broad classes:First, there are rights held by those (persons, in o?z6 sense) who can
duly claim their rights themselves, a class which excludes many humans
So rejected also is the s^rozz^ correlation thesis, presented e.g. in
S.I. Benn and R.S. Peters, Pocz^aZ Pr^Tzc^pZes a7z<i ^Tze Pew<9<?r<2^<?
Allen and Unwin/1959, pp.89-9, according to which 'right and duty are
different names for the same normative relation, according to the point
of view from which it is regarded' (thereby also elevating what is at
best a coentailment into a stronger identity relation).
For example,
that d has a duty to look after the painting does not entail that the
painting has a right to be looked after by d, in any sense of 'right'
Benn and Peters are prepared to acknowledge.
The weaker correlation thesis - that d has a right to R entails that
at least someone else has a duty with respect to R - is not at issue.
80
&
�and (so far as we know) almost all nonhuman animals.
Such rights are
often supposed to carry with them various responsibilities.
Secondly,
there are rights held by certain other (sometime sentient) creatures;
though the extent of this subclass of right-holders is a controversial
matter, it is generally taken to include at least infants, mentally
defective humans, dead humans, and some animals.
These rights do not
carry corresponding responsibilities, though they are, of course, the
However the assumption that certain rights -
ground for various claims.
the really central rights - are restricted to those who can claim them on
their OM% behalf, seems to be based on the faulty idea of private (or
separable) individuals as the basic metaphysical units.
In a community
of socio-environmental individuals there is no reason why one creature's
rights should not be claimed, as infants' and animals' rights frequently
are, by another:
these rights are others' responsibilities.
right-holder has itself no specific responsibilities.
Often a
Moreover the
supposed division leaves it quite vague what responsibilities "central"
often, it seems, they have none that
right-holders are supposed to have;
connect relevantly with their rights.
be put on the alleged division:
a primary nonderivative way).
Accordingly but little weight will
any preference-haver can hold rights (in
That any preference-haver can hold rights
is a consequence of the account of rt<y72t that usage of 'right to' appears
to lead to, namely for very many (action-type) predicates cj), d has a
right to
iff, for every other (obligation-holder) z, z is not entitled
to interfere with d if d chooses or would choose to <&.
Thus that d holds
rights requires of d only that it be the sort of creature that can make
choices, that it be a preference-haver.
The result holds good generally.
Consider the other main case, where the right is to some object b:
d has
a right to b iff, for certain ot (a class of obligation holders, which may
consist of a single person), members of a have an obligation to cede b to
d if a chooses or would choose (to have) b (cf. Benn and Peters, op. cit.,
p.89).
To be sure, there are other cases where rights to are attributed,
but these appear to reduce to the cases given;
which seems to amount to something like:
to work.
e.g. a has a right to work,
a has a right to an opportunity
Similar analyses - again with significance restrictions on the
class of (])S and bs - apply to rights ??ot to, e.g. an animal has a right
not to be kept in a cage.
Rights of this sort can likewise be held by any
preference-haver (but once again such rights
be extended beyond this
class to all natural objects).
Not every right-holder bears responsibilities or carries obligations :
infants for instance do not.
Responsibility-bearers and obligation
holders are a very proper subclass of humans and may only overlap the
81
�A
t*
class of humans, and likewise the class of potential responsibility
bearers only overlaps the class of humans.
Thus more demanding deontic
notions afford no point of access for human chauvinism.
To be responsible
for something requires more than ability to have preferences or capacity to
make choices;
it implies liability to be called to account for the thing,
answerability for it.
Similarly, the undertaking of obligations involves
entering into binding relations which imply answerability.
Responsibility
bearers and obligation-holders are thus a subclass of preference-havers,
in accord with the annular theory.
For answerability and accountability
involve some level of linguistic competence - at the very least an ability
to answer, in some language (usually presumed
to be translatable, easily?,
into some human language) - which many preference-havers do not possess.
But responsibility and obligation lead a kind of a double life.
For a
creature that does not have responsibilities, may nonetheless be responsible
for various things, in the sense of having done them, and sometimes done
them deliberately;
as, e.g., the wallaby who breaks down protecting
netting and branches time and again is responsible for the demise of a
Japanese plumtree.
Rather similar oz^p/zf-statements hold true of subjects
who do not carry obligations;
consider, e.g., "wombats ought to be more
careful in crossing roads".
The upshot is that an environmental ethic can - despite its very
different value theory - retain, in large measure, and sharpen, rather
standard accounts of, and distinctions concerning, rights and obligations.
It is in this respect, however, that the sort of environmental ethic being
advanced differs markedly from alternative environmental ethics, e.g.
those which would, implausibly, confer rights to trees, assign obligations
to the soil, and so on.
JM<?7z 6J?fe?zs^o?z pos^f^o/zs, of which Leopold's
would be a leading example,
^Tzaf <2% eM^iro^z/??6?zfaZ ef/z^c
znz^sf yoZZozJ i/zg paffgru cy hosier?? ef/z^<?s
&ase <?^uss.
orzZz/
a zzzzzcTz
The way to a satisfactory, environmental, ethic is to reject
the pattern of the Western super-ethic, not to simply extend it.
The way
is through some sort of annular theory which recognises categorial distinc
tions between different sorts of things, not through a theory which would
delete the legitimate distinctions between the sorts of things.
latter mistaken way is unnecessary.
The
For example, in order to reject the
instrumental view of value, and to assign natural objects intrinsic value,
it is unnecessary to take Leopold's course of viewing all natural objects
as having r^p/zfs in the same way as persons and preference-havers are
regarded as having rights, or of persons as having obligations
natural
objects such as trees in the same sort of way as to other persons.
Thus too there is no need to see the rejection of the instrumental
82
�<!
view as mystical or anti-rational, or as reverting to the view that
trees and other natural items house spirits (a view which in any case may
have simply been a way of expressing an allotment of value to natural
items), and hence as gross superstition.
An environmental ethic can be as
tough, practical, rational and secular as prevailing Western ethics.
so such an ethics will
lose much
Even
if it loses contact with its felt bases
in natural things and appreciation of natural things.
An environmental ethic will be much the poorer too if it limits
itself to the moral terminology, and variations of the categories, of
chauvinistically shaped ethics.
There will much more as to care, concern
and respect in the presentation and main principles of such an ethic than,
what occupies standard Western ethics, duties, obligations and rights.
In
this way too, further problems and puzzles for environmental ethics can
be resolved.
For example, the view that ethical concepts can apply to the
non-human world in an irreducible way is often seen as very puzzling.
Much of this puzzlement is generated by attempting to transfer intact a
strongly legalistic and person-oriented category of moral concepts, such
as rights, moral obligations, duties, and so on, to items in the natural
world where they give rise to such apparg^tZ-y problematic questions as
'Do stones have rights?', 'What are our moral obligations to trees?', and
so on.
If we attempt instead to apply a broader, less legalistic class of
moral concepts, such as care, concern, responsibility and respect, much of
the puzzling character of these still essentially moral attributions
vanishes.
There is no great problem for example about how we can legitimately
apply notions such as respect to natural items, once a few distinctions
are made.
The view that the land, animals, and the natural world should
be treated with respect was a common one in many hunting and gathering
societies, and it is clear that this respect was not seen as generated
merely by moral obligations to other persons.
dimension to relations
with
Respect adds a moral
the natural world.
Respect - or the lack of
it - comes out in everyday actions concerning the natural world.
The
following passage contrasts the Western treatment of the land which lacks
respect with the careful and respectful treatment of some American
Indians:
The White people never cared for land or dear or bear.
we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up.
little holes.
When we dig roots we make
When we built houses, we make little holes.
burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things.
acorns and pinenuts.
dead wood.
When
We don't chop down the trees.
When we
We shake down
We only use
But the White people plow up the ground, pull down the
83
�St
trees, kill everything
(Tozzck ike Furik,
(ed. T.C. McLuhan,
Sphere Books, London, 1973, p.15).
The great care with which so many of the Indians utilized
every portion of the carcass of a hunted animal was an expression,
not of economic thrift, but of courtesy and respect
(D. Lee, in
Tonck ike Forik, p.15)What the respect position is based on is the fact that it is possible
to make use of something without treating it as something which is no more
than a means to one's ends.
That is, it is possible to make use of some
thing in limited, constrained ways - with constraints which may
not
derive entirely from considerations of the welfare of other humans, as in
the case of the Indians' use of animals - without treating it as available
for any kind of use.
To so use something without treating it as available
for unlimited or unconstrained use for human ends is characteristic of
use.
In contrast non-respectful use treats the use of the item
as constrained by no considerations arising from the item itself and the
user's relationship to it, but as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare and so forth of other humans.
The Western view, as the Indians realised, is the non-respect position,
that the world is available for unconstrained human use.
People who hold
respect positions, such as the Indians, see such a position as indicative
of a lack of moral sensitivity, and sometimes in even stronger terms.
The conventional wisdom of Western society tends to offer a false
dichotomy of use versus respectful nonuse - a false choice which comes
out especially clearly again in the treatment of animals.
Here the choice
presented in Western thought is typically one of eiiker use without respect
or serious constraint, of using animals for example in the ways character
istic of large-scale mass-production farming and a market economic system
which are incompatible with respect, or on the other hand of not making
any use of animals at all, for example, never making use of animals for
food or for farming purposes.
What is left out in this choice is the
alternative the Indians and other non-Western people have recognised, the
alternative of limited and respectful use, which enables use to be made of
animals, but does not allow animals to be used in an unconstrained way or
merely as a means to human ends.
Such an alternative can have some applic
ation in a Western context (for some limited examples of respectful use
in the operations of a small farmer, see John Seymour, Tke Cowpiete Rook
of
Faber, London, 1976).
A limited and respectful use
position would condemn the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals, and
also the treatment of animals as machines, as in factory farming.
84
It
�would also condemn unecessary and wasteful killing and especially killing
for amusement or "sport", which is incompatible with respect and assumes
that animals can be used merely as a means for ZrZz?ZuZ human ends.
But
it would not necessarily oppose the use of animals in the case of approp
riate non-trivial need, e.g. for food, although here again it would
insist that the ways in which use can be made are limited, and not just
by considerations of effect on other humans.
The limited and respectful use position avoids some of the serious
problems of the no-use position of the animal liberationists, although it
shares many of the same beliefs concerning the illegitimacy of factory
farming and similar disrespectful methods of making use of and exploiting
animals.
The no-use position faces the problem that it proposes that
humans should treat animals in ways which are quite different from the
ways in which animals treat one another, for example, prohibiting needful
use for food.
Thus the no-use position seems obliged to say either that
the world would be a better place without carnivores, or else that
carnivorous animals themselves are inferior, immoral,
moral creatures - whichever
alternative
amoral or non-
is taken here the bulk of
animals emerge as inferior to humans, or at least vegetarian humans.
It
implies too that an impoverished natural order which lacked carnivores -
and given what we know of ecology this would be a very highly impoverished
one indeed, not to say an unworkable "natural" order - is preferable to a
rich natural one with a normal proportion of carnivorous and partly
carnivorous species.
carnivores,
Since it would imply the moral inferiority of
the no-use position appears to arrive at the negation of its
own starting point,
(as regards e.g., the equality consideration) of all
animals, human and non-human.
In thus seeing humans as capable of a moral
existence which most animals are not capable of, it sees man as apart from
a largely
amoral (or immoral) natural world, denies community with the
animal and natural world,and indirectly reinforces human chauvinism.
§6.
TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
OF THE EXTENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REVISION ENSUING ON
ABANDONMENT OF CHAUVINISTIC ETHICS
A radical change in a theory not uncommonly forces changes elsewhere
- conceptual revision which affects not only the theory itself but many
neighbouring areas.
The phenomenon is well-known in the case of major
physical theories, but it holds as well for ethical and philosophical
theories;
for example, a logical theory which rejects the Reference
Theory in a thoroughgoing way has important repercussions throughout much
of the rest of philosophy, and requires modification not only of logical
85
�systems and their semantics, but also, for instance, of the usual meta
theory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is
95
tailored to cater only for logics which do conform.
A
thorough-going environmental ethics likewise has a substantial
impact and forces many changes.
The escape from human chauvinism not
only involves sweeping changes in ethical principles and value theory but
it induces substantial reverberations elsewhere - both inwards, for
example in metaphysics, in epistemology, and in the philosophy and method
ology of science, and outwards (in subjects that presuppose value theory)
in social theory, in politics, in economics and in law, and beyond.
For
human chauvinism is deeply embedded in Western culture, and affects not
only the ideology and the institutions but the arts.
Thus, for example,
much of literature, and especially of ballet and film, is given over to a
celebration :of things' human,', of .'the species. ,-;Eveh the. ti.RfeLy herw,eYnphas.is,
for instance of the counterculture, on-human relations (a-s opposed to selfcontained private individuals of social theories)
remains well within
the inherited chauvinistic framework.
As to the changes, let us begin again with ethics.
As we have begun
to see, an environmental ethic can retain, though in a much amended
theoretical framework (which affects meanings of terms), virtually all
the standard ethical terminology.
But even at a superficial syntactical
level, there will be conspicuous alterations:
firstly, ethical terminology
will be enriched with new environmental terms, drawn in particular from
ecology, somewhat as it was expanded in the late nineteenth century by
terminology from evolutionary theories;
and secondly, accompanying the
attitudinal shifts the new ethic involves, there will be a marked shift
in ethical terminology, away from the predominance of such terms as (and
examples associated with)
'obligation',
to such expressions as 'care',
'respect',
'consciousness'.
'duty',
'concern',
'promise',
'contract',
'responsibility', 'trust',
Because the theoretical and attitudinal
frame is changed, an environmental ethic forces - as we have already
found with such notions as z)oZ-Me, cZzotce, interference and (Zowa^e reexamination of, and modified analyses of, characteristic ethical notions.
It requires, furthermore, reassessment of traditional and conventional
analyses of such notions as nctnraZ- ri^/zt, ^ronn^Z of ri^Zzt^ and perznissib-
iZitz/., especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions - much
as it requires the rejection of most of the more prominent meta-ethical
These points are explained in detail in Routley (e);
and also in
L. Goddard and R. Routley, TZze Lopic of Cipnificonce an^Z Context,
Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, 1973, chapters 3 and 4.
86
�0
46
positions.
Cursory examination of recent accounts of TzuZ^ruZ rZpTzZ^
zzzoruZ-Ztz/-,
and
ucf-Zczz will help illustrate and confirm these
points.
Hart, for example, accepts (subject to defeating conditions which
are here irrelevant) the classical doctrine of natural rights according
to which, among other things,
any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is
under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons
Hart,
(H.L.A.
'Are there any natural rights?', reprinted in PcZ-ZZ-ZcuZ
P/z-fZoscpZzz/,
(ed. A. Quinton), Blackwell, Oxford 1967).
But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on
accepting the basic chauvinist principle - a variant of (D) - environmental
ethics reject;
since if a person has a natural right he has a right.
So
too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective
principle.
Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straightforward matter now
that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are,
like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major
re-evaluation.
Another example of chauvinism at work in the very setting up of the
field of discussion and problems in ethics is provided by recent accounts
of woruZ-ZZy, where it is simply taken for granted that 'moral' distinguishes
96
among ZzMzzzu?z actions, policies, motives and reasons,
and that what is
moral refers essentially to human well-being (contentment, happiness or something of this general sort, tied with appropriate states or
97
conditions of humans).
Such criteria for what is moral are chauvinistically based, assuming that what does not bear on human states or conditions
cannot be a moral matter.
What happens in worlds without humans,
how animals fare or are treated, what is done or what happens to plants
or other natural objects - none of these are directly moral matters,
except insofar as they impinge on human welfare.
That is human
96 Thus for instance, B. Williams, AfcruZ-Ztp; 24% P^z^rodMcf-Zo^ fo Ff/z-Zcs^
Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p.79. Williams does, however, remark in
his Preface (p.xiv) how 'shaky and problematic' the distinction - which
he subsequently takes for granted - is.
97 See, for example, P.R. Foot, TZzeor'Zes
Ft/z-Zcs, Oxford University
Press, London, 1967, and G.J. Warnock, Ccwfewporurz/ AforuZ P/z-ZZosop/zz/,
Macmillan, London, 1967, and also TZzg
o.f MoraZ-Zfz/, Methuen,
London, 1971.
87
�t*
chauvinism at work, and is at the same time a reductio
such criteria.
s-
ad absurdum of
A different nonchauvinistic account of what is moral is
required (a beginning can be made by adopting certain of the maligned
formal criteria).
It is evident that any account which meets even weak
conditions of adequacy will serve to meet the objection that an environ
mental ethic is not concerned with what is moral but is really an aesthetic
theory.
For the objection as usually presented depends squarely on a
chauvinistic restriction on morality, all the rest of value theory being
classed, or dismissed, as "(mere) aesthetics".
The case of morality
illustrates the characteristic way in which theories - in this case
chauvinistic ethics - redefine crucial notions in their own terms to suit
their own ends, such as entrenchment and fortification of the theories
against objections.
Further corollaries of the rejection of chauvinism include the
inadequacy of recent fashionable attempts, mainly derivative from Hobhouse,
at characterising a^naZf^z/ and justifying it in ways that argue from man's
humanity^98 and the inadequacy of much recent, largely chauvinistic, work
in the philosophy of actdan, which takes it for granted that action and
99
rationality requirements on action are bound up with human nature.
The abandonment of chauvinism implies the rejection not only of much
ethical analysis, but of all current major ethical positions.
The bias of
prevailing ethical positions, and also of economic positions, which aim to
make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is
especially evident.
These positions typically employ a single criterion
p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically
each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps
including future humans, is supposed to have (at least) an ordinal p-
ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy);
then
some principle is supplied to determine a collective p-ranking of these
states in terms of individual p-rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the
Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism in
terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking.
The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class.
And
98 Among such unsatisfactory liberal egalitarian positions are those
presented in G. Vlastos, 'Justice and equality' in SacZaZ JnstZae
(ed. R.B. Brandt), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, and
B.A.O. Williams, 'The idea of equality' in P^Zasap/zz^., PaZfZfcs and
JacZafz/, Second series (ed. P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman), Blackwell,
Oxford, 1963.
99 see, e.g.^T. Nagel, T/ze Pass-Z&'ZZ'Ztz/ a/ ^ZZrnZszzz, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1970.
88
�even if the base class is extended to include persons or some animals
(at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that
the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to
unjust principles.
To take a simple example, if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes'
behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will
rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (still
unfortunately the evaluation of most Australian farmers, though it lacks
any requisite empirical basis).
Likewise it would just be a happy
accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from
individual demand) for a state of the economy with sperm whales as a
mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands;
for
if but few in the base class happened to know that sperm whales exist or
cared a jot that they do, then even the most "rational" economic decision
making would do nothing to prevent their extinction.
But whether the
sperm whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what
they see on television.
Summed human interests, or preferences of certain
private individuals, are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis
for deciding upon what is environmentally desirable.
Nor would such
accidental bases be adequate.
Moreover ways out of the problem do not bear much investigation.
It cannot be assumed, for instance, that the base class is on the whole
good, and hence will not enjoin reprehensible behaviour, because such an
assumption seems false, would at best be contingently true (so that the
theory would fail for different circumstances to which it should apply),
and would involve a deep problem in the theory, since it would then seem
to admit the determination of goodness - that of the base class, on the
whole - independently of what the theory was set up to determine, among
other things, goodness.
Nor can it be assumed, without serious circularity,
that the optimisation is constrained by requirements of justice or fairness
(see Routley (b) and §5 above).
The ethical and economic theories just singled out (which are based
on optimisation over select features of the base class) are not alone in
their species chauvinism;
much the same applies to west going meta-
ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some
rationale for their basic principles.
That is, the argument against
utilitarian—type ethical and economic theories generalises.
For instance,
on social contract positions, obligations are a matter of mutual agreement
89
�between individuals of a given (but again problematic) base class;
on a
social justice picture, rights and obligations spring from the application
of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the base class, usually
a rather special class of persons;^00 while on a Kantian position, which
has some vogue, obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the
base class, persons.In each case, if members of the base class happen
to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class, then that is unfortun
ate for them: that is (rough) justice.
Looking outwards from the ethics, the abandonment of chauvinism has
likewise a wide set of consequences, both theoretical and practical, in
economics, politics and law, and generally in the social sciences.
One
major practical economic impact of environmental ethics is in the extent
to which free enterprise can operate unimpeded or unchanged.
of business and enterpreneurial activity - to
But
consider <9722 option - will
involve, in turn, either legal constraints, or reallocation of activity
by such devices as environmental pricing, which directs activity away from
environmentally undesirable pursuits.
For example, if it is wrong to
destroy a rare ecosystem in order to make a few more dollars, then
restrictions should be imposed on business activity by one method or
another.
To some limited extent this is already happening in the field of
pollution, but primarily because of the likely effects, direct or not too
far removed, that pollution comes to have on other humans, not for a wider
set of reasons, and often not for the right reasons.
With a wider environ
mental code, the public and legal intrusion into areas typically regarded
as "private" and open to the free enterprise operations (of "open go")
would be much more extensive.
The same applies in the case of private
Thus for example,
[Rawls'] original position seems to presuppose not just a neutral
theory of the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception
according to which the best that can be wished for someone is the
unimpeded pursuit of his own path, provided it does not interfere
with the rights of others.
This view is persuasively developed in
the later portions of the book, but without a sense of its controver
sial character (T. Nagel, 'Rawls on justice' , P/z^Zcsop/ztcczZ
82 (1973), p.228).
Nagel also effectively argues that Rawls' original position is not
neutrally determined but involves substantial moral assumptions (e.g.
pp.232, 233); they are mostly, as it happens, of a chauvinistic cast.
While the first of Kant's maxims is not so restricted in actual form
ulation, others are (see H.J. Paton,
AforuZ P<2M, Hutchinson, London,
1947) . And, firstly, such maxims are s^ppast?^ to be equivalent to ones
formulated in terms of persons; secondly, they are supposed to be
derived from features of, or connected with, people.
90
�-4
property;
for example, given that it is not permissible to erode hill
sides then there should, in this setting, be (legal) restrictions on
farmers' and foresters' activities.
Although the impact on the practice of economics of a thoroughgoing
environmental ethic would be drastic - market negotiations, firms'
activities, international trade, all would be affected - the impact on
the underlying theories of preference and choice is comparatively
For much of economics is squarely founded
but still far from negligible.
on chauvinism.
less,
The theoretical bias follows directly from the utilitarian
bases of the theory, which is fairly explicit in welfare theory and rather
heavily disguised in neoclassical theory.
But although choice and value
theory are, as characteristically presented in economics and elsewhere,
damagingly chauvinistic, they do not have to be.
For the theories can be
reformulated in a non-chauvinistic way, as was indicated (in §5) above
for utilitarianism - upon which economic theory is modelled.
On such a
revamped foundation an environmental economics to match the chosen
environmental ethic can be built (for some preliminaries on this approach,
see Routley (d), appendices 1 and 6).
Several of the objections to base class theories such as utilitar
ianism apply not merely against orthodox economic theory, but also to
voting theory, to representative democratic systems of determination of
political action.
If, for, example, the base class consists of private
individuals motivated by their own self-contained interest then such
procedures can readily lead to most undesirable results, especially if
these individuals
compromise
representative individuals.
their autonomy through the election of
For the more powerful of these representative
individuals can be - and typically are, as their behaviour if not their
protestations show - not favourably disposed to (the welfare of) things
outside the base class or even to many members of the base class.
Nearer the theoretical surface, especially in such branches of
economics as "resource management", the chauvinism is more conspicuous.
The following narrowly utilitarian assumption is quite typical:
The goal of resource managers should be to communicate and act in
ways that maximize human satisfaction (H.J. Campbell, 'Economic and
social significance of upstream aquatic resources' in Forest
Fs^s
Oregon State University, Corcallis,
1971, p.14, also p.17).
When
management - where such is
management becomes
needed at all - the goals will be changed from such chauvinistic ones.
91
�The method of interference in
"free economic enterprise", of
controls and regulations, of legal and political constraints, is only one
way in which leading principles of an environmental ethics can be put
into effect.
A quite different, and ultimately far more appealing,
approach is by way of structural change, by changing the socio-economic
structure in such a way that it comes to reflect on environmental ethics
(by altering the frame of reference, or axes, to use the physical picture
of §4, so that major problems vanish).
Requisite structural change is
.
102
far-reaching, both practically and theoretically
in every reach of
social science.
For example, while on the
position,
capitalist markets are subject to further regulation, either directly
imposed or by way of suitable pricing policies, in the s^rz^g^raZ. c/zaMgre
position, capitalist markets are eliminated;
while under state
regulation private property is subject to further Controls,given approp
riate structural change private property disappears.
Looking inwards, an environmental ethic has an impact on the
practice of many sciences other than the social sciences - what they do
experimentally with natural objects (e.g. the treatment of animals in
laboratory testing);
how their research programmes are organised and
directed (consider,e.g., projects involving irradiation or broadscale
herbicide treatments of rainforests);
the way classifications are made
and which are made (consider, e.g. the extent to which human perception
enters into classifications in botany);
recommended on the basis of such sciences.
and, of course, what is
For as it stands human
chauvinism is deeply embedded in the practice of science, directly in
research and experimentation and in shaping classifications, theses and
theories.
Indeed the effect of a different ethic may extend even to the
theory of such sciences, in particular through the bearing the ethic has
103
on metaphysics which m turn influences the foundations of such sciences.
Such a new ethic would quite properly upset (as §1 should indicate) the
extent to which humans are seen at the centre of things and things as
accountable through them and scientific theories as 'human constructions
wrestled from a hostile nature'
(after Popper).
It would help overthrow
the pernicious chauvinistic idea that, apart from certain elementary facts,
4ZZ-es
value.
Me?zs<?/ze?zzjgr^, all necessity, all intensionality,
all
It should result too in the shattering of still widespread
As (g) V. and R. Routley, 'Social theories, self management and
environmental problems', this volume, begins to explain.
Cf. R. Harre, TTza P/z^Zosop/ztes c/ S'c^eyzcg, Oxford University Press,
1972;
and also Routley (e).
92
�*****
assumptions as to the nature of animals and plants, for instance that
their apparently goal—directed and intensional behaviour can be explained
(away) mechanistically, and the deeply-rooted idea that some sort of
Cartesian metaphysical picture of natural, as distinct from spiritual or
rational, objects can be maintained (cf. again §1).
In metaphysics there are at least two further important classes of
effects. Firstly, the orthodox views of man's relation to nature, the
dominant and modified dominant and lesser traditions, have to be abandoned
and new positions worked out.
In this sense, a new environmental ethic
implies a similarly new metaphysic redefining Man's place in nature and
human/nature relationships.104 Such a new philosophy of nature will
recognise various natural objects other than humans as of independent
value, so it will not be naturalistic.
Nor will it view natural objects
as simply available for the use, wise or otherwise, of humans.
Several
principles derived from the orthodox metaphysical positions will have to
be abandoned and replacements worked out (as in the case of (D) in ethics)
Thus superseded, for example, will be the principles of total use of
natural areas for human use and of maximum long-term productivity of the
earth's resources (principles criticised in their application in forestry
in Routley (d)). At a deeper level, such a philosophy of nature will
involve a turning away from the leading ideological principles of both the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment and of much that went with them (e.g.
with the Renaissance,
the rise of commerce, bureaucracy, professionalism,
formal education, and subsequently, with the Enlightenment, the rise of
the modern state, capitalism and scientific enlightenment).
For it means
the dismissal of the chauvinistic principles of theRenaissance,with 'Man
as the kernel of the Universe', a creature 'half-earthly and half-divine,
his body and soul form[ing] a microcosm enabling him to understand and
control Nature ...'.1°5
It means too removal of the humanism of the
Enlightenment, the reduction of what formerly was assigned to the religious,
such as ethical and political principles, to the human, a reduction which
104 As Passmore has observed - inconsistently with what is claimed m his
(a) - in 'Attitudes to Nature', Roz/aZ
of PTz^oscp/zy Lectures,
volume 8, Macmillan, London, 1975. As against Passmore (a) p.3, such
new ethics and metaphysics need involve no abandonment of 'the
analytical, critical approach which is the glory of the West : on the
contrary, they may well mean a more thoroughly critical and analytical
approach than hitherto.
105 goth quotations are from T^ze
<?y tTzg 7?e7z<2^ss(2%<3g (ed. D. Hay)
Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp.7-10, where too main movements,
practical and ideological, of the Renaissance are usefully
indicated.
93
�was based on the false dichotomy, which has still not lost its hpld:,
religious or humanistic.
Secondly, the removal of humans from a dominant position JhT the
natural order renders immediately suspect a range of familiar philosophical
positions of a verificationistic or idealistic kind such as phenomenalism
in epistemology (how can what exists depend on what is perceived by
members of such a transitory and perhaps not so important species or ^on
whether there exist
perceivers?), intuitionism in mathematics, con
ventionalism in logical theory, the Copenhagen interpretation ir^ micr<^-
physics, and subjectivisms not only in ethics but in every other*
*
True, most of these positions are defeated on t^e
basis of other considerations anyway; but it is an immediate and fur,t^ier
philosophical sphere.
point against them that they are damagingly chauvinistic.
Thus a corollary of the thoroughgoing rejection of human chauvinism,
of very considerable philosophical importance, is the rejection of all
the
usual forms of idealism, i.e. all positions which accord primacy to
the human subject and make the existence of a world of things or the
nature of things dependent upon such subjects.
A paradigmatic example is
phenomenalism; other examples are Kantian idealisms, Hegelianisms and
later German idealisms, Christian philosophies based on the primacy of
human (and superhuman)
consciousness, existentialisms;
more surprising
examples are empiricisms - inasmuch as all knowledge and truth is supposed
to be ultimately derived from human experience - and their holistic
images, dialectical materialisms and Marxisms.
A satisfactory environ
mental philosophy will be significantly different from all these
positions.
94
�
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—
?HUMAN CHAUVINISM AND.ENVIRONMENTAL.ETHICS*
Richard and Vai Routley
/
*
.
*
Class chauvinism has been and remains a cardinal weakness of most
.
moral codes - including, so it will°be argued, Western ethics.
*
A most
serious failure 6f Western ethics is its human chauvinism or anthropo^centricism - a chauvinism which emerges in a refined, and apparently more
reds&n*able, form as person chauvinism in much modern ethical theory.
*
w
What is chauvinism?
$
*
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is
sz^Etant^aZ-Z-z/ differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment (by
sufficiently many members of the class) for items outside the class, for
which there is not enff-ZcZen^ justification.
Pnwan chauvinism is class
chauvinism where the class is humans, wuZ-e chauvinism where the class is
human males, an-Z/zzaZ. chauvinism where the class is animals, etc.
It would be bazf, to say the least, if Western ethics, in its various
strands, were to turn out to rest on human, or person, chauvinism.
For
Western ethics would then have no better foundation than, and be open to
the same sorts of objections as, moral codes based on other sorts of
chauvinisms, e.g. on familial, national, sexual, racial or socio-economic
class chauvinism - in particular it would be open to the objection that
This paper (which considerably elaborates R. Routley 'Is There a need
for a new, an environmental, ethic?', Procee^-Znps of Zz/ze XPt/z ^orZ^
Ccnpress of PTz^Z-cscp/zz/, 1 (1973), pp.205-10), was drafted in 1973 and
read in 1974 at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, at Notre Dame
University, and at the Conference on The Good Society held at the
University of Victoria, Canada. Since the main virtue of the paper has
been that it'has generated much interesting discussion, the original
form has been retained, though the authors are no longer especially
happy with the form, and many theses remain insufficiently developed or
defended. But in order not to remove the previous and continuing
criticism, no substantial deletions have been made, even though the
paper has been raided and segments of it presented in improved form
elsewhere, especially (a) R. and V. Routley, 'Against the inevitability
of human chauvinism', in MoraZ P/z-ZZosopTzz/ an<7 t?ze Tzjentp-F-Zrst Centnrz/
(edited by K. Goodpaster and K. Sayre), Notre Dame University Press,
1979, and (b) R. and V. Routley, 'An expensive repair-kit for
utilitarianism', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preferences CTzo^ce
an<i FaZzve, RSSS, Australian National University, 1977. However some
sizeable additions have been made, with a view to increasing the
intelligibility and enlarging the scope of the original draft, and meet
ing some of the many objections.
1
it discriminated against nonhumans in a prejudiced and unwarranted way,
and would thereby stand condemned.
For it is hard to see how an ethic
based on simple spoo-Zes loyalty could have any greater claim to absolute
ness or deserve any more respect than moral codes based on simple loyalty
to national, sexual, or racial classes.
Such an ethic could no more
command allegiance - once the facts are brought into clear view - than
other normally-deplored examples of localised class chauvinism, such as
the Mafia or protection agencies or rackets or enclaves of slavery.
Unfortunately prevailing Western ethics appear to be of just this sort.
§1.
THE WESTERN CASE FOR ITS HUMAN (OR PERSON) CHAUVINISM:
THE FIRST LINES OF DEFENCE
It is important, then, for defenders of the Western ideology to be
able to show - *Zf it can be shown - that an ethic which discriminates
strongly in favour of humans, as Western ethics apparently does, is not
chauvinistic.
Otherwise the ethic stands condemned.
Of course not every
distinction in treatment qualifies as chauvinistic - the distinction in
treatment may not be substantial or systematic, and there may be an
adequate and explicable basis for the distinction, so that some discrimin
ation is warranted.
In order to escape the charge of human chauvinism,
it has to be shown how and why the drastic and general discrimination in
favour of humans sanctioned and enjoined by modern (as by historical)
Western ethical systems is warranted, and that it has an adequate basis.
The extent of this chauvinism, especially with respect to animals, is at
last - after centuries of a priori prejudice and gross distortion of the
characteristics of wild animals and wilderness - beginning to be spelt
1
out.
It is at least clear from the outset that an adequate justification
cannot be provided which simply selects all and only these members of the
species human (i.e. /zowo sap*Zo?zs) as zoologically defined.
There is
nothing about the characteristic of TzMwazzZZp itself (as distinct perhaps
from its accompanying properties) which could provide a justification for
overwhelmingly favourable treatment for humans (and unfavourable treatment
for nonhumans)
as opposed to other possible, and possibly some actual,
nonhuman creatures.
Once again, an adequate ethic and justification can
not possibly be based on blind and unthinking species loyalty.
The same
1 See, e.g., S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds),
Mor azzd
Morals.
-Z^Zo Z/ze zzzaZ^roat/TzozzZ of yzorz-ZzMwaMS, Gollancz,
London, 1971;
P. Singer, ?l?z-Z7na:Z f-Z^oraf-ZoM.
pzezj o^/z-Zos for OMr
of azz*Z/??aZs, Cape, London, 1976; S.R.L. Clark, y/zo A7oraZ
of ^H-ZwaZs, Clarendon, Oxford, 1977.
2
CB
objection applies against the simple
need's argument:
the commonly
assumed domination of human needs over all else (e.g. over all environ
mental considerations) has, if it is to have any merit, to be based on
more than speciesism.^
We shall have to look then for some other not
merely taxonomic characteristic to provide the sought justification.
It
will emerge however, that any such characteristic is held or may be held
by nonhumans, and is not held, or potentially not held, by all items of
the species human.
Of course there are many characteristics which can, as a contingent
matter, be used to distinguish human beings as a general class from other
higher animals - although in fact with increasing knowledge of animals it
is no longer clear that some of these characteristics distinguish as
clearly as was assumed a priori in the past.
For example, humans have a
language, and a culture of a certain sort and even various logics.
And,
as we are accustomed to have people point out, other terrestrial animals
do not conduct philosophical discussions on environmental ethics.
However
not only is participation in these activities potentially available to
nonhuman creatures, and these characteristics possibly possessed by some,
but these activities are not generally engaged in even by humans
(particularly the power elite), many humans lack the requisite competence,
and even among those who do qualify, such activities are carried out to a
very varying extent. We run the risk, then, in applying such demanding
criteria, of ruling out, of classing as deserving of "sub-human" or "sub
person" treatment, a considerable class of human beings — items most
humans would consider as worthy of better treatment than that normally
accorded by humans to nonhuman animals.
What is more important however is that such criteria as human
language, culture, human civilization, human intentionality, or whatever,
appear to provide no satisfactory
for the substantially
unfavourable treatment allotted those falling outside the privileged
class.
should there be such strong discrimination in favour of
creatures having a (certain sort of)^ language or a higher level of
intelligence and against creatures or items which do not, in favour of
things with a certain sort of culture or a certain logic and against
those without?
Especially when some of these criteria are clearly, and
2 As McCloskey remarked (in a letter dated 5.7.77 containing many helpful
comments) 'talking about needs does little but obscure the problem, as
needs, to be normatively relevant, involve reference to goods;
and
that merely transfers the problem'.
3
On next page.
3
*3
unjustifiably,loaded in favour of human interests, achievements and
By
contrast the very many respects in which some
or sorts of animals
are
superior bo bMfnans (many are noted in V.B. Droscher, Tbe
abilities (cf. the cultural loading of various intelligence tests).
4?ibmaZ Parcaptbo^, Allen, London,
of tbe Sassos.
1969) are rarely considered;
yet some of these features would, if taken
in the same serious way as some respects in which humans excell, justify
a reverse chauvinism (which could be reflected as, for exampZ-e, in the
Hindu treatment of cows).
The only sort of justification for the discrimination that might
appear convincing - that those who have the given characteristic (e.g.
those that are more intelligent, or more rational, or richer) are more
valuable or worth special treatment - is vitiated by the fact that were
it accepted by Western ethics it would warrant similar discrimination
humans (or persons).
For how do we show that the allegedly
warranted discrimination is sufficiently different from making substantial
(class) distinctions between humans in terms of their level of intelli
gence, linguistic or logical ability, or level or kind of cultural
achievement - so that those with "lower" levels of these valued abilities
are treated in a consistently inferior way and regarded as available for
the use of the others?
In short, these characteristics do not provide
adequate justification for the substantially inferior treatment accorded
those not having them, and so the charge of chauvinism is not escaped by
producing them.
A similar set of points applies against a number of other criteria^
traditionally or recently proposed to distinguish the privileged class.
Often these are propounded in terms of personhood and criteria for being
a parson (the class marked out for privileged treatment being the class
of persons) rather than criteria for being bz^wan - in order to escape
difficulties raised by young, senile, decrepit, stupid, irrational,
3 For undoubtedly many mammals, birds and insects can communicate, some
times in ways analogous to language, even if the honorific term
'language' is withheld (see - to select an unfavourable source
the
discussion in E.O. Wilson, SocZobboZ-opp.
Belknap,
Cambridge Mass., 1975, chapter 8 ff.).
It is becoming increasingly
evident, however, that the ascription of some linguistic ability, and
of elementary languages, to nonhuman creatures should not be withheld,
see e.q. the details assembled in E. Linden, 4p<2s_,
Penguin,New York, 1976.
(But contrast Wilson, op. cit., pp.555 59,
and to set this in proper perspective, consider Wilson s discussion of
ethics and aesthetics a few pages later, pp.562-65.)
4 Many of the criteria that have been proposed are assessed, and found
wanting, in Routley (a).
4
damaged and defective humans, extraterrestrial creatures, and super
animals;
to avoid the merely contingent connections between being human
and having requisite person-determining characteristics (such as ration
ality or knowledge) supposed to warrant discriminatory treatment;
and t
defeat, though it is a pyrrhic victory, the charge of human chauvinism
(or
equivalents of the charge, such as anthropocentricism or
speciesism).
But much the same problems then arise in terms of criteria for
u person, and the chauvinism problem reappears as the problem of furnish
ing criteria which are suitably clearcut, and do separate persons from
assumed nonpersons, and which would provide an adequate justification for
substantially privileged treatment for persons and inferior treatment for
nonpersons.
Unless such a justification is forthcoming the charge of
person
is not escaped.
Most of the criteria proposed for
personhood fall down in just these sorts of ways, e.g. being autonomous,
the having of projects, the producing of junk, the assessing of some of
one's performances as successful or not, the awareness of oneself as an
agent or initiator.
Not only does it appear that (the more worthy of)
such criteria apply (or could apply) to many nonhuman animals - thus
animals are generally more autonomous (in main senses of the term) than
humans, many animals have projects (e.g. home and nest building), and they
are well aware of themselves, as opposed to rivals, as initiators of
5
projects - and that they do not apply uniformly to humans or indeed to
persons in any ordinary sense; but again it is extremely difficult to
see what there is in these characteristics which would warrant or justify
the vast difference in treatment between the privileged and nonprivileged
classes, or justify regarding the non-privileged class as something
available for the
of the privileged class.
Similar objections can be lodged against the proposal that knowledge
or the possession of knowledge, provides
feature.
(or u crMc^uZ) distinguishing
It can hardly provide the appropriate filter, since it not only
gives no sharp cut-off point,but does not even always rank humans or
persons above nonhumans or nonpersons.
Moreover, taken seriously it
should lead to substantial moral differentiation between persons, a
person's moral rating also fluctuating during his lifetime.
In any case,
For example, the shiftless intelligent person, or the primitive person,
who has no projects and engages in no moral reflection, and thus offends
protestant ethics, is not thereby deregisterable as a person, any more
than an intelligent animal with projects can join the union.
On next page.
5
4
why rank knowledge so highly:
for (pace Socrates) knowledge is not the
foundation of virtue, but is frequently turned to evil ends, and even
where it is meritorious it is not the sole (or even a crucial) criterion
of worth.
Similar difficulties apply too to the historic criterion of
ratZozzaZZZp, along with the added problem that it is -very difficult to say
what it is in any clear or generally acceptable way, or to prevent it from
degenerating into a simple "pro" word.
If a hallmark of rationality is
commitment to the consequences of what one believes and seriously says,
then many humans fail the test.
If, on the other hand rationality i^, for
example, the ability to discover and pursue courses and actions likely to
achieve desired goals (direct action toward goals), ability to solve
problems concerned, etc., then plainly many animals have it, and possibly
to a greater extent than humans in some cases (and of certain humans in
almost all cases).
If it were the ability, e.g. to do ZopZc (say propositional calculus) or to assess reasoning verbally, then the (biassed)
criterion would be far too strong and rule out many humans.
Again, why
should one make such a marked discrimination on this basis? What is so
meritorious about this characteristic, that it warrants such a marked
distinction?
Nothing (at least in the ordinary academic's view, or
logicians would receive more favoured treatment).
Other criteria, which yield an analytic connection between being a
person and enjoying freedom or having rationality, in part beg the
question.
For in D?zat respect is it that persons - or worse, just
persons - are free.
Also the justificatory problem, as to how the
claimed freedom or rationality warrants such differential treatment,
remains.
Characterisations of parsons vary enormously, from so strong
that they rule out suburban humans who are not "self-made" enterpreneurs,
to so weak that they admit very wa^z/ animals. An (unintentional) example
of the latter is the following:
persons, that is, ... beings who are not only sentient but also
capable of intensional autonomous action, beings that must be
ascribed not only states of consciousness but also states of
belief, thought and intention (A. Townsend,
'Radical vegetarians ,
4zzstraZasZa?z JoMrzzaZ of P/zZZosop/zz/, 57 (1979), p.89).
6 in addition, the relation "a has at least as much knowledge as b is
only a partial ordering.
For example, a dog's and a child s knowledge
may be incomparable, because they know about different matters how to
do quite different sorts of things, etc.
(The idea that knowledge is
the key to moral discrimination, that it is what makes humans rank t
way Western ethics ranks them, may be found in C.B. Daniels,
PaaZMaZZoK of FZTzZcaZ T/zoorZes, Philosophy in Canada Monograph, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 1975.)
6
O)
Most rats and rabbits satisfy the conditions:
conscious animals that have intentions
they are sentient,
(e.g. to get through some barrier
such as a floor or a fence), beliefs and thoughts (e.g. that there is
For his further argument Townsend
preferred food beyond the barrier).
shifts - without notice, but in a way that is quite typical of this
scene - to wzzcTz stronger requirements upon being a person (such that one
who does not meet them is incapacitated as a person) which rule out many
humans, e.g.
'The person must recognise canons of evidence and inference
warranting changes in his beliefs, and be capable of changing his beliefs
7
accordingly' (op. cit., p.90).
In meeting hypothetical objections, Townsend slips in a further require
ment of rationality, but the characterisation of person given does not
include any such requirement. Subsequently, however, Townsend commits
himself, without argument, to the thesis that 'a fairly high degree of
rationality is prerequisite' to attributing 'intensionality' (as dis
tinct from 'intentionality'). This is not going to help much.
For,
firstly, rationality is very much a notion which admits of degrees,
without the relatively sharp cut-off stages required for person as a
notion of orthodox moral relevance, or possessed by the notion of /zzzwczzz
to which Townsend sneaks back in his chauvinistic conclusion (p.93).
Secondly, Tzozj high a degree is prerequisite for being a person? If
only enough to satisfy the conditions for being a person, then the
animals that are persons have it.
If more, then either the initial
characterisation of a person fails or the thesis breaks down.
The much stronger requirements upon being a person that Townsend sub
sequently appeals to are said to derive from S.I. Benn.
But, if any
thing they strengthen one of the stronger of several zzozze^zz-Zz^uZezzf
characterisations of (zzatz^raZ) person - none of them equivalent to
/zzzzzzuzz - that Benn has at various times offered. While Benn's weaker
characterisations appear to admit at least many "higher" animals, e.g.
that of a
natural person as a chooser, conscious of himself as able to make
a difference to the way the world goes, by deciding to do this
rather than that, having projects, therefore, of his own, whose life
experience may consequently be understood, not simply as a chronicle
of events, but as an enterprise, on which he puts his own construct
ion ((a) 'The protection and limitation of privacy, Part I',
^MstraZ-Zazz Lazj JozzrzzczZ, 52 (1978), p.605);
the stronger characterisations which invoke (rather vaguely specified,
and cZ-Z//ere?zt) minimum conditions of rationality in belief and action said to imply respoTzs-Zb-ZZ-Ztz/ on the part of the person for what s/he
does, though they do zzcf - exclude many of the creatures admitted by
weaker characterisations. For such stronger characterisations see
'Individuality, autonomy and community' in CozzzzzzMzz-Ztz/ (ed. E. Kamenka)
Edward Arnold (forthcoming) and (c) 'Freedom, autonomy and the concept
of a person', ProceecZ-Zzzps o/ t?ze ^r-Zs^oteZ-Zuzz Society, 76 (1976),
pp.109-30.
7
D
The foregoing points, taken together, support our contention that it
is not possible to provide criteria which would
distinguishing,
in the sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have prefer
ences or preferred states.For such criteria appear to depend upon the
mistaken assumption that moral respect for other creatures is due only
when they can be shown to measure up to some rather
and
tests for membership of a privileged class (essentially an
elitist view), instead of upon, say, respect for the preferences of other
creatures.
Accordingly fka skarp woraZ
ethics by philosophers and others alike,
commonly accepted m
aZZ
ofkar
a^-fmaZ speafas, Zacks a safZsfacforz/ cokarazif bcsZs.
The distinction,
which historically rested on the assumption that humans possessed a soul
(or higher reason) but that other animals, brutes, did not, appears to
have been uncritically retained even after the religious beliefs or
philosophical theories underpinning it have been abandoned.
Given that the distinction underlying human chauvinism fails, is
there anywhere satisfactory demarcations of moral relevance can be made
among things? Yes, several divisions^ of mcraZ
can be made;
but
of these coincides with a division into human and others.
Consider, first, the question of consideration fiards others, and the
matter of which offers are to be taken into account in cases where
others' interests and preferences are affected by some action. Insofar
as moral consideration for others (among sentient items) is based on
analogical
(empathetic, and essentially inductive) principles, such as
taking account of their worthwhile preferences, objectives, interests etc.,
8 There are of course further arguments for the contention, for example
from the anatomical and physiological affinities of human and other
animals, from their common evolutionary history, and so on. The
arguments are of varying force;
for example, evolutionary arguments
can be arrested, temporarily, by the claim that there was a quantum
jump" in human evolutionary development which did not occur with other
creatures with a previously shared evolutionary history (cf. Wilson,
op. cit.).
9 Although the divisions may be conceptually sharp enough, they are any
thing but sharp when applied in the field to the variety of creature
and circumstances that occur.
For example, preference-havers is, so
far at least, sharp enough, but it is far from clear which creatures
qualify, e.g. which, if any, Crustacea? For the present most of t ese
potential decision cases are cases for cheerful indecision; _ u ,
alternatively, the divisions may be viewed - perhaps better
not a
sharp boundaries, but as gradation states, as where two colours m a
rainbow meet.
8
*
c-
it is difficult to see how such consideration can fail to apply to all
(including nonhuman) preference-having creatures;
and one does not need
to apply criteria such as linguistic ability, navigational ability,
intelligence, piano-playing, hunting skill, etc., to obtain a basis for
such consideration (indeed one cannot).
The /zuzzz^zz^ a/* pr^yerezzces
(and
of preferences revealed through choices) is however a quite sufficient
basis for z^/zz^s
of consideration and concern.
It is at this point,
we suggest, that the requisite, important and non-arbitrary distinction
is to be drawn which marks out the class of creatures towards which
obligations may be held;
that is, the usually recognised principles of
consideration towards others (of the privileged class) properly extend or
should be generalised to consideration for other creatures having prefer
ences, and t/ze correspazz^zzy pezzaraZ
zza^ to putt afTzars
a/zZ-^pa^azz pr^zzc^pZ-e
("at/zer preyerezzce-TzuzJersJ tzzto a c%spreyerra<^ stato y*ar
zza paa<i raasazz.
Insofar as moral behaviour is based on consideration for others and
not harming others, preference-having provides an adequate basis, and
does appear to provide a sufficient justification for substantially
different treatment for preference-having over non-preference-having
items - because items without preference cannot (literally) be put into a
dispreferred state.
Thus preference-having appears to tie in with an
important basis for moral obligation, and appears to provide a superior
criterion, for a
sort of moral consideration, to other criteria
sometimes proposed such as sentience - or, differently, intelligence -
especially since in the absence of preferences such notions as /zurzzztzz^
something (in a way that does affect it) and damaging its interests
become difficult of application (not to say nonsignificant, except in
extended senses).
The unsatisfactoriness of the sentience criterion for
what one can hold obligations ^azJarzis can be grasped from the case of the
sentient machine or purely sentient creature which does not have preferen
ces, does not care what state it is in or whether it is destroyed,etc.
The sentience criterion is often converted by utilitarians into a suffer
ing criterion, by taking pain as a paradigm of sentience:
but plainly
the two criteria diverge since some sentient creatures may never feel
pain or suffer.
Suffering is even less satisfactory than sentience;
for
suffering is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in a dispreferred
state (consider masochists who suffer but are not in a dispreferred state,
and well-treated workers who are in a dispreferred state but do not
suffer).
Preference-having provides a lower bound;
it is a sufficient but
zzat zzecassurz/ condition for being an object of this sort of moral
9
consideration and concern.
That it is not necessary is revealed,
independently of environmental examples, by the following sorts of cases:
the treatment of "human vegetables", successful stoics, and science
fiction cases in which people are brain-washed into performing certain
goals and having no dispreferred states apart from the programmed goals.
In all three cases the question of dispreferences does not arise, but
relevant moral issues can.*^
The necessary condition, that corresponds
to preference-having as a sufficient condition, appears to be capability
at some time (e.g. previously, when developed) for preference-having.
It has been taken for granted that many animals (from species higher
on the evolutionary scale) have preferences, make choices, and the like.
This is the merest commonsense, which can be readily confirmed in a
scientific way.
For example, some of the preference-rankings of a black
tail wallaby as to types of foliage to eat are readily established by
observation, and it is fairly straightforward verifying that bushrats
prefer cheese to soap, this preference being revealed by regular choices.
It has however been claimed by some recent philosophers, for reasons
apparently different from those offered by traditional philosophers such
as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes,that animals do not have intentions,
or at least do not have them in a full sense.
It is unclear whether these
intentions, which are taken to include thoughts and beliefs and, perhaps,
desires, include preferences; but it is hard to see how preferences,
which are intentional, are excluded if desires are included in intentions.
The recent arguments to show that animals do not really have intentions,
which do not bear much investigation even in such central cases as
belief,12 appear extremely feeble when applied to preference. For the
arguments start from the claim that we cannot say zjTzat it is that animals
As N Griffin, who supplied the examples, remarked a similar thing
happens also in less extreme cases of the type brought in to prominence,
e.q. by the women's movement:
that it is possible, by means of
indoctrination, to limit the range of someone's dispreferences;
treatment of such persons may still remain immoral even when it does
not place them outside the (artificially widened) range of their
preferred states.
11 The traditional reasons look slight also in the case of preferences
and choices.
It would have been claimed - the theory forces the claim
Interestingly, choices
- that animals' choices could not be rational,
of many animals conform to behavioural criteria for rationality pro
posed in economics.
(forthcoming)
12 See J. Bishop, 'More thought on thought and talk',
and R Routley, 'Alleged problems in attributing beliefs to anima s ,
paper'prepared for the B.Ztef conference, University of Queensland,
1979.
10
believe (of course very often we can, and unproblematically) and fall back
on the claim that animals lack concepts of a fit sort.
In the case of
preferences, however, there is often no problem in saying what it is
animals prefer, or in confirming the claim.
Nor is it that we cannot
attribute propositional-style preferences to animals;
if black-tail
wallabies prefer, as they do, new foliage to old then they prefer the
foliage's being new over the foliage's being old. As for the concept
claim, in the sense in which
is delineated in psychology, animals
have concepts.
And if a philosopher's notion of "concept
gets in the
way of the claim that free dogs prefer bones to carrots (or other
vegetables) then it is not the claim that requires revision, but the
philosopher's notion.
The preference-having criteria appear to distinguish non-arbitrarily
and sharply enough between higher animals and other items, and to rule out
of the relevant class elementary animals, trees, rocks and also some human
items, e.g. human kidneys.
The criteria plainly exclude inanimate objects,
and they separate animate objects.
For while living creatures such as
plants and elementary animals can be said in an extended sense to have
and also optimal living conditions, e.g., for healthy develop
ment, and in
sense to have preferred states or environments, they do
not have preferences, and cannot be put into states they disprefer.
All
that is required for an 'interest' or 'welfare' in the broad sense is a
telos or life-goal, as possessed by living things, or an equilibrium or
system goal, as possessed by living ecosystems.
At the same time the criteria indicate another important division.
For in a wider sense, animate objects which do not (significantly) have
preferences or make choices, are sometimes said to have
or 'preferred environments'
(as, e.g., in 'the plant prefers a sunny
frost-free location with a well drained soil').
us say that the
or
preferred states
To avoid confusion let
of animate objects and also such
biological items as ecosystems can be affected in one way or another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.For instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it can be reduced to zero by
sandmining, and it can be seriously threatened by pumping waste detergent
13 in this broad sense too, living things, things that participate in the
growth process, have interests.
However under a narrower and more
common determinate of the slippery term 'interests', only preference
havers have interests (again sentient creatures do not provide the
boundary). Because the term 'interests' so readily admits of high
redefinition, and the infiltration of chauvinism, its use is better
limited (or even avoided), in favour of other more stable terms.
11
There is a general obligation principle
into the nearby ocean.
corresponding likewise to this more comprehensive class of welfare
bearers, namely,
sz/sf67??s
ohjecfs <9r
^<90<i reason.
Moral
does not of course end with what is in some way
animate, much as the class of valuable objects is not tied to what relates
suitably to central preference-havers. In suitable settings, a
(virtually) dead landscape, a rare stone, a cave, can be items of moral
or aesthetic concern;
indeed any object of value can in principle be of
such concern, and
in principle at least,
value or disvalue, and so of woraZ concern.
almost any sort of object.
<2% object of
There can then be obligations
Naturally only a fraction of the
things that exist have especial value, and only a few of the things that
exist will be things concerning which some of us have obligations.
Furthermore these sorts of obligations do not in general reduce to the
conditions or arrangements (e.g. contractual or joint welfare arrangements)
of preference-havers or some select subclass thereof (what will sub
sequently be called, as the argument is developed, the base cZass).
Just as there are relevant divisions beyond the class of preference
havers, so there are within the class.
Thus the suggestion that the class
towards which moral obligations (and a corresponding sort of moral concern
which takes account of creatures' states) may be held is bounded by the
class of preference-havers, does not of course imply that
d^st^^ot^o^s
can be made
the class of preference-havers with respect to the kind
of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example,
obligations
which by no means exhaust obligations - can only be held directly (as
distinct from by way of a representative) with respect to a much narrower
class of creatures, from which many humans are excluded. The class is
also distinct from the class of persons, at least as 'person' is usually
characterised.
What emerges is an
of types of objects of moral
relevance, some matched by types of moral obligation (described toward the
end of Routley (a)), with nested zones representing respectively different
sorts of objects - such as, objects of moral concern, welfare-having
objects, preference-havers (and choice-makers), right-holders, obligationholders and responsibility-bearers, those contractually-comnitted-and the
different sorts of obligations that can significantly apply to such
objects.
Not all the types of objects indicated are distinct, nor is the
listing intended to be exhaustive but rather illustrative.
For strictly
the labels given should be expanded, as the distinctions are categorial
ones, so that what matters is not whether an object is, for instance,
12
contractually committed in some fashion but whether it is the sort of
thing that can be, whether it can significantly enter into or be committed
by arrangements of a contractual kind.
is to
Similarly
function as a categorial marker, that marks out the sorts of things that
can (significantly) have preferences: the assumption that preference
havers coincide with choice-makers is based on this categorial reading.
Although the annular picture is (as will become clear in §5) important
for the environmental alternative to be elaborated, and in meeting object
ions to it, the countercharge has been laid that it reintroduces chauvin
ism through its inegalitarian distinctions.
This is a mistake:
not
every sort of ethical distinction, certainly not a justified distinction,
involves chauvinism.
Chauvinism is exhibited where, for example, objects
of a favoured class are treated in a preferential way to superior items
of an excluded class,e.g. defective humans as against apes, degenerate
French against normal Pygmies.
The annular picture neither involves nor
encourages such differences in treatment:
it is neutral and unchauvinistic, for the reason that it relies only on categorial distinctions
which tie analytically with ethical notions (see the semantical analyses
of §5). It is certainly in no way species chauvinist or human chauvinist
For none of the zones of the annular picture comprises the class of
humans (or its minor variant the class of persons); for this class is
not of moral relevance. The reason is that the human/nonhuman distinction
is not an ethically significant one, and can, and should, be demoted from
its dominant, and damaging, position in ethical theory.
notion of
But dropping the
out of ethics, is only part of the ethical change that is
called for: taking due account of nonhumans is also required.
In particular - to return to the theme - what is quite unacceptable,
14
and based on a set of distinctions which are arbitrary and unjustifiable,
differential treatment enjoined nonpersons as distinct
is the ex
from persons under Western ethics, and the view that only persons or
humans have any (nonderivative) right to moral consideration and concern
as preference-havers and that there are obligations towards other creatures
such a criticism
of
chauvinism
is based firmly
14 According to Q. Gibson
----- ----.
.
.
.
'
"
This is simply
on Western ethical equality and egalitarian principles,.
___
The general argument
not so: there is no reliance on such principles,
feature -f cannot
be what justifies
the
differential
takes the form;
----- —
- . .
.
treatment of humans and nonhumans, because either f is not morally
relevant or not all humans have f or some nonhumans have f., Neither
Nei__.
equality nor substitutions based upon equality are invoked at any
stage.
13
only insofar as these are or reduce to obligations to persons or humans.
§2.
THE EXTENT OF CHAUVINISM, AND FURTHER LINES OF DEFENCE
Western ethics are, then, human chauvinist in that they characterist
ically take humans (or, to make a slight improvement, persons) to be the
only items worthy of proper moral consideration, and sanction or even
enjoin substantially inferior treatment for the class of non-human
preference-having creatures, without - so it certainly appears - adequate
justification. The prevailing nineteenth century Western attitude to wild
creatures is evident from Judge Blackstone (quoted approvingly in
Penguin, London, 1967, pp.431):
W. Cobbett, E^raZ
With regard likewise to wild animals, aZZ rT?a%kZ%<7
arZ^ZnaZ
bz/ the
the Creator a right to pursue and take away
any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the
waters, and any beast or reptile of the field:
and this
natural right still continues in every individual, unless
where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country.
And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while
living his qualified property, or if dead, are absolutely
his own.
Prevailing Western attitudes have not shifted markedly since that time;
for example, foresters, widely regarded as socially responsible, think
nothing of dislodging from their homes and environment, or even destroying,
communities of animals which do not directly interfere with human welfare.
But there is another very important broader respect in which
Western ethics are human (or person) chauvinistic, namely in the treat
ment accorded to and attitude taken towards the broader class of natural
items such as trees and forests, herbs, grasslands and swamps, soils and
waterways and ecosystems.
Unlike higher animals such items cannot liter
ally be put into dispreferred states (and in Z/zZs obvious sense, as
opposed to the wider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare, they have no
interests), but they can be damaged or destroyed or have their
eroded or impaired. The Western, chauvinistic, assumption is that this
can only happen where human interests are affected.
The basic assumption
is that value attaches essentially only to humans or to what serves or
bears on human interests, or derivatively, to items which derive from
human skill, ingenuity or labour.
Since natural items have no other value,
there is no restriction on the way they are treated insofar as this does
not interfere with others;
as far
as ZsoZate^ natural things are con
cerned anything is permissible.
14
It is, at base, because of these chauvinistic features of Western ethics
that there is a need for a new ethic and value theory (and so derivatively for
a new economics, and new politics, etc.)
setting out not just people's
relations to preference-havers generally but also (along with many other
things) people's relations to the natural environment - in Leopold's
words 'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it'
ct/zer essuz/s
(A. Leopold, A
Coz^/ztz/
New York, 1966, p.238).
/Uzzzu^zuc
It is not of course
that old and prevailing ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he
pleases, i.e. his relations with nature - insofar at least as they do not
affect others, as pollution and vandalism do - are not subject to moral
censure.
Thus assertions such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating
those trees' are significant and morally determinate but inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not
hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.
It is to this,
to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold,
Fraser Darling and many others, both earlier and later, take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on
prevailing views is morally permissible.
But it is not, then, as Leopold
seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing
ethics and that merely an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right in his
criticism of prevailing conduct, what is required is a change in the
ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations;
for example, what is
permissible on the prevailing ethics will be no longer permissible on the
new.
For as matters stand, as Leopold himself explains, humans generally
do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever will yield, and then move on;
and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the
moral indignation of others, and is accordingly permissible on prevailing
ethics.
As Leopold says:
A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows
into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the coi^munity creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected
member of society (op. cit., p.245).
Only recently has such behaviour begun to be seriously questioned and
become the subject of criticism,e.g. by environmentalists.
Under what
will be accounted an eyz^trozi/TzeMtuZ gtTz^c, however, such traditionally
15
permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer
subject to proper moral criticism.
That ethics and morality are not, and never have been, restricted to
human concerns, or exclusively to relations between persons, is important
in rebutting objections to the very idea of an environmental ethic, based
on the premiss that morality just is restricted (definitionally) to human
relationships (and connected values) and is not significant beyond that.
The problem of moral relations with respect to preference-havers other
than persons and to inanimate items cannot be resolved or escaped simply
by declaring morality to apply solely,or as a matter of meaning or defin
ition only to humans (or to persons).
For first, such a solution would
run counter to the common view that humans are subject to some moral con
straints, even if comparatively minor ones, towards other creatures;
the
having of such constraints cannot be ruled out definitionally, and corres
pondingly the judgments formulating these constraints or prohibitions
cannot be ruled out as nonsignificant, yet they are surely moral. The
only way in the end, that the claim gets support is by a narrow, and no
longer acceptable, account of what is moral in terms of concern with
humans alone (cf. S6). Likewise, the question of the moral interrelations
of humans with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrial beings, even if at
present hypothetical, is certainly a meaningful one, and some interesting
and clearly moral issues of this sort are frequently raised in science
fiction.
Only if the extent of morality is, somewhat misleadingly, reconstrue
in terms of the class of constraints on the behaviour of those it applies
to - that is, in terms of limitations, as distinct from moral freedom does the claim that Western morality is restricted to humans (or persons)
begin to gain plausibility.
For it is true that beyond the favoured base
class, humans or persons, few constraints are supposed to operate (and ad
hoc ones at that) unless the welfare of members of the base class is
adversely affected.
Under an environmental ethic, such as that Leopold
advocates, this would change:
previously unconstrained behaviour would
be morally circumscribed, and in this sense the scope of morality would
be extended.
It is not evident, however, that a
ethic
ethic, an
in the case at hand, is required to accommodate even radical new judgments
seriously constraining traditionally approved conduct, i.e. imposing
limitations on behaviour previously considered morally permissible.
For
one reason it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as
a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old.
16
For,
notoriously, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked
out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
obscure.
They are nonetheless (pace Quineans) perfectly good objects for
investigation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles
together as the one ethic:
e.g. the Christian ethic, which is an umbrella
notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems.
There are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the new principles and evaluations;
that of
an extension or modification of the prevailing ethic, and that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within
the prevailing ethic.
The possibility that environmental evaluations can
be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the not
inflexible framework of prevailing Western ethics, may appear open because
there is not a single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civiliz
ation:
on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as
infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of
principles.
Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and
even a single ethic, need not have.
The Western ethic is not so monolithic.
In particular, three important traditions in Western ethical views
n ,been mapped
.3 out:
4. 15 a
concerning man's relation to nature have recently
dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant),
and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custod
ian, and the cooperative position with man as perfector.
the only traditions;
Nor are these
primitivism is another, and both romanticism and
mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental
ethic;
for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free
to deal with it as he pleases (since - at least on the mainstream StoicAugustine view - it exists only for his sake^^), whereas on an
See especially (a) J. Passmore, Man's Fespons^btZ^^z/ for
Duckworth, London, 1974;
also R. Nash, ^tZderness an^ t/ze
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973.
(All further references
to Passmore's work are, unless otherwise indicated, to Passmore (a).)
The
dominant position has also been sketched in many other recent
texts, e.g. I. McHarg, Z)es^<yn
Doubleday, New York, 1969,
while the lesser traditions have been appealed to in meeting criticisms
of the Western ethic as involving the dominant view.
The masculine particles are appropriate;
so is the resulting tone.
environmental ethic man is not so free to do as s/he pleases.
But it is
not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with
one of the lesser traditions.
Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially
when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g.
(as further considered in
§4) who is man steward for and responsible to?
However both traditions
are inconsistent with a deeper environmental ethic because they imply
policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some
worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from sub
stantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces
reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable but ecologically
impoverished European small farm and village langscape.
According to the
cooperative position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potential
ities, the test of perfection being basically
purposes;
/or
while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm
manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means
that will deliberately degrade its resources.
Thus these positions
figure among those of the shallow ecological movement (as depicted by
A. Naess,
16
'The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement', Tr^M^rz/
(1973), 95-100):
longer term.
they are typically exploitative, even if only in the
Although these lesser positions both depart from the dominant
position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of
an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible
farmer, and allow for some of the modern extensions of the Western ethic
that have been made, e.g. concerning the treatment of animals and
criticisms of vandalism, they are not well-developed, fit poorly into the
prevailing framework, and do zzof p<9 /ar orozz^Zz.
For in the present
situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they
will lead to, and enjoin the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all
natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use, implying
17
that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used
for /zzzzzzor
17 if 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for
preservation, this total use principle is rendered innocuous at least
as regards it actual effects.
Note that the total use principle, in the usual sense, is tied to the
resource view of nature (cf. (d) R. and V. Routley,
F-z^/zt /or z^/ze
Forests, Third Edition, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1975).
Such a principle, like the requirement of
economic growth, emerges directly from - it is an integral part of neoclassical economic theory.
18
18
"humanized".
As the important Western traditions mentioned exclude an
environ
mental ethic, it would appear, at first glance anyway, that such an ethic
- not primitive, mystical or romantic - would be new alright - or at
least new from a Western perspective.
For, from a wider perspective,
which takes due account of traditional societies (such as those of some
American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, and Pygmies), there is, it will
turn out, nothing so very new about what is included in (as distinct from
the theoretical setting of) the "new" ethics. Even from the narrow
Western perspective, the matter is not so straightforward.
for the
dominant ethic has been substantially qualified, in particular by the
rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this
physically interferes with others.^ It may be that some such non-inter
ference proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary);
and that it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased vn.th natural
items would not affect others (a^oT^terfereMcg assMwpf^^).
it may, the
Be this as
appears, at least for many thinkers
to have supplanted the dominant position;
and the modified position can
undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic.
For example
the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the
grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environ
ment for no satisfactory (taxable) returns or which cause pollution
deleterious to the health of future humans can be criticised on the sort
of welfare basis (e.g. that of P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier,
18 Humanization, and humanitarian measures, may be a cloak for human
chauvinism - in which case, far from being virtuous, they may be
positively undesirable.
19 Also, as Leopold has observed, the class of
has been
ively widened, e.g. from the family group, to the tribe, to the nation
or race, even to all humans including often enough future humans
but
rarely further in the West until recently.
of
20 The assumption is not the same as its relative, Benn's
'that no one may legitimately frustrate or prevent
(or interfere with) a person's doing what he chooses to do, ^nles
there is some reason for preventing him
(Benn (c), op. cit.,
in
from (a) P.605).
The principle is said to derive from 'the notion of
a person' ^e.g. (a), p.605), but it only so derives given commission
ofPfhe fallacy of conversion of an A-proposition. Moreover even
reduced to a 'formal principle ... locating the onus of justification
(cf (a))
the principle is dubious, especially given principles of
respect for objects other than persons, with which persons may be
interfering.
It is, however, a formal principle that will help to
keep entreprenuerial humans happy.
*
GrozjZ/z <2%^
Dgcaz/,
T/ze ^oZz^ZZc^ ^gcowgs
York, 1972) that blends with the modified position;
be criticised on welfare grounds;
and so on.
Fr^hZ^w^
New
vandalism can usually
The modified position may
even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have,
since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere
with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position
nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser trad
itions, is adequate as an environmental ethic.
chauvinism.
None moves outside human
They are all encompassed under the
t^es-Zs
- the
view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are available
for human benefit or to serve human interests, and hence that humans are
entitled to manipulate the world and its systems as they want, in their
own interests - which is but the ecological restatement of the strong
thesis of human chauvinism, according to which items outside the privil
eged human class have no value except one as instrumental value (both
theses are criticised in Routley (a)).
To escape from chauvinism, and from
its thesis, a new ethic -Zs wanted, as we now try to show.
§3.
GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST WESTERN ETHICS
The main argument is directed primarily against the modified
dominant position, but will incidentally show the inadequacy of the lesser
Western traditions.
The strategy is to locate core features of Western
ethics, and to reveal through examples their thoroughgoing chauvinism
and class bias, and in this way to provide decisive grounds for rejecting
For the general argument some more technical points have to be made
them.
first.
(An)
spgcZyZc ethic,
is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a
and a more generic notion, a
specific ethics are grouped.
under which
(As usual, a weZu-ethic is a theory about
ethics, super-ethics, their features and fundamental notions.)
An ^Z/zZcaZ sz/sZsw s
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e.
a structured set of propositions) or a theory which includes (like
individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory)
a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of
what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights and
responsibilities, what is valued, and so forth,
(On newer perceptions an
ethical system will include rather less in the way of prescriptions, of
duties, obligations and the like, and more as to what are matters of care
and of concern and for respect.)
Since an ethical system is propositional
in character, such notions as consistency, coherence, independence of
20
a
assumptions, and the like, apply to it without further ado.
It is
evident, from a consideration of competing or incompatible values and
principles, that
are
sz/s^ews.
Moreover
appropriately general criteria for rationality will not reduce this
class to a singleton.
Accordingly, there is logical space for a^terrzaf^re
A general or lawlike proposition of a system (characterised along
similar lines to a scientific law) is a pr^Mc^pZe;
and certainly if
systems Si and S2 contain different principles, they they are different
systems.
It will follow then that an environmental ethic differs from
the important traditional ethics outlined if it differs on some principles.
Moreover if environmental ethics differ from each Western ethical system
on some core principle or other embedded in that Western system, then
these systems differ from the Western super-ethic (assuming, what seems
to be so, that that ethic can be sufficiently characterised) - in which
case if an environmental ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted.
It
would suffice then to locate a common core principle and to provide
environmental counterexamples to it.
It is illuminating (and necessary, so it will emerge) to attempt to
do a little more than this minimum, with a view to bringing out the basic
assumptions of the Western super-ethic.
Two major classes of evaluative
statements, commonly distinguished, are axiological statements, concerning
what is good, worthwhile, valuable, best, etc., and deontological state
ments, which concern what is obligatory, permissible, wrong, etc.
Now
there appear to be core principles of Western ethics on both axiological
and deontic fronts, principles, for example, as to what is valuable and
as to what is permissible.
Naturally these principles are interconnected,
because anything is permitted with respect to what has no value except
insofar as it interferes with what does have value.
A strong historical case can be made out for what is commonly
assumed, that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western
ethical systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the super-
ethic.
example.
The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core deontic
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified
A recent formulation of this principle runs as
21
follows (Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., p.58):
dominant position.
On next page.
21
The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that (D) one
should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he
does not harm others {and (2) that he is not likely to harm
himself irreparably}.
The principle, which is built into or derivable from most traditional
ethical theories, may be alternatively formulated in terms of permissib
ility, as the principle that <2 person's
(foes no^ ^n^er/ere zJ-^/z o^/zers,
^s perw^ss^&^e provt^e^
(i.e. other people, including perhaps the
A related economic principle is that free enterprise can operate
agent).
within similar limits.
It is because of these permissibility formulations
that the principle - which incorporates fundamental features of (human or
person) chauvinism - is sometimes hailed as a freedom principle;
for it
gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions
which degrade the environment and natural things) providing they do not
harm others.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to
It is worth remarking that 'harming others' in the restriction
is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others;
it is
not enough that it is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop
breathing;
you are free to breath, for the time being anyway, because it
does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to exactly what
counts as harm or interference.
Moreover the width of the principle is
so far obscure, because 'other' may be filled out in significantly
different ways:
21
it makes a difference to the extent - and privilege - of
The principle is attributed by Barkley and Seckier to Mill, though
something like it was fairly common currency in nineteenth century
European thought. It appears, furthermore, that Mill would have
rejected the principle on account of clause (2): thus, for example:
Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, ozzZz/ in respect of
those actions of each, which concern the interest of o^Zzer
people (J.S. Mill, (/^^Z^^ar^uzz^szzzj L^&gr^z/ az-z^f 7?eprese?z^az^zze
^ozz6r?z777g?z^, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, 1910, p.74,
emphasis added).
The deletion of clause (2) from (D) does not affect the general
argument: hence the braces.
(We owe this reference and the points in
the next footnote to N. Griffin.)
A similarly modified form of (D) is found in much recent Western
literature, even radical literature which purports to make due allow
ance for environmental concerns. A good example of the latter is
I. Illich, TcoZs /cr Cofz^ttz^uZ-z^z/, Calder & Boyers, London, 1973,
where Mill's (D) appears, in various forms, at several places (e.g.
p.xii, p.41). What this indicates is that Illich's "convivial society"
will not - if its principles are taken seriously - move beyond
chauvinism in its treatment of animals and the natural environment; it
will at best yield some form of resource conservation.
22
a
the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient being';
and it
makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its
economic applicability, to which class of other persons it is intended to
apply, whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote
future others or only to nondiscountable future others, and whether to
poss^bZe others.
The latter would make the principle untestable and com
and it is generally assumed that it
pletely unworkable in practice;
applies at most to present and (some) future others, to those to whom it
would make a (fairly immediate) difference (thus excluding past others ).
For the purposes of the general argument however, the problems in specify
ing the class of others is not material, so long as the class includes no
23
more than persons that at some time exist.
Fortunately the main argument is not very sensitive to the precise
formulation of principle (D). Not only can clause (2) be deleted, and
'other' left rather unspecific, but additions can be made; then even if
the main argument does not succeed, m-z^or
succeed.
o/ t/ze zzzu^M arpz^g?^
An important case concerns the treatment of animals.
Unless (D) is construed widely (extending 'other'), or hedged by further
qualifying clauses,24 the basic principle fails to take proper account of
concern for animals, especially that one should not inflict "unnecessary
cruelty or "impermissible" harm.
animals then comes to matter;
these issues can be avoided.
What counts as per^ss^Me Tzurzzz to
and familiar conflict issues arise.
But
For the core principle (D), of basic
chauvinism, can be modified to include (historically recent) moral concern
for higher animals by adding, after 'harm others', something like 'or harm
animals unnecessarily'.
Then however the new principle succumbs to the
22 Although the interests and preferences of past others are excluded in
conventional utilitarianism, as in (welfare) economic theory and vot
inq theory, these are often respected in ethical and legal settings,
e.g. in wills, last wishes, etc.
Similarly (as N. Griffin also point
ed out), in the treatment of "human vegetables", past preferences of
the person when capable of making decisions are often taken to be
morally relevant, or even decisive, to the question as to whether to
keep the body alive.
23 if merely possible persons are included then the valuational rankings
of environmental ethics, indeed of virtually any ethics, can be
reflected in a "utilitarian" fashion. The argument of (c) R. and V.
Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory',
(accepted
for publication in 1974; still forthcoming?), can be used to show this.
24 or unless it can be made out, what seems entirely implausible, that
what is wrong with torturing animals is not what it does to them but
the way it affects other people (the Aquinas-Kant thesis).
23
main argument - upon at most simple variation of the counterexamples to
be given.
Modification becomes more important in the case of standard ethical
theories which lead to principles conflicting with (D), such as utilitar
ianism does unless (D) and the maximisation principle of utilitarianism
are appropriately segregated, e.g. by severing connections at some point
in the chain connecting entitlement, permissibility, right, maximum
utility.
For, as in widely recognised, net utility may be increased in
ways that violate (D), e.g. by injustice to, or the infliction of suffer
ing upon, or harming, some individual by others.
Thus utilitarianisms in
the tradition of Mill, which both include (D) and characterise entitlement
in utilitarian terms, are inconsistent (as simple hypothetical cases show).
To avoid counterexamples it is not enough merely to distinguish higher and
lower utilities, though this is an initial step in what is required, namely
- ideally by constraints (as is explained in §5) - o/
unconstrained
Although qualification of utilitar
ianism principles to ensure (D), as a restriction (but not the orzZz/
restriction) on what is permissible,is the proper course, it is a course
not all utilitarians are prepared to follow.
To defeat
isms, it is not enough to adduce counterexamples to (D).
utilitarian
Counterexamples
to some other core principle of such utilitarianisms must be located;
otherwise the main argument fails against a quite standard, and important,
class of positions supporting chauvinism and the Dominion thesis.
Fortunately,
again,
neither a suitable core principle nor appropriate
counterexamples are hard to find.
The common utilitarian principle
provides such a core, and several of the examples directed against (D)
serve to counter it (in its various forms).
An axiological principle corresponding to (D)
(%72<i to some of its
variants) runs along these lines:
(A) Only those objects which are of use or concern to humans
(or persons), or which are the product of human (or person)
labour or ingenuity, are of value;
thus these are all that
need to be taken into account in determining best choice or
best course of action, what is good, etc.
Roughly, value consists in answering back to certain features of human (or
person) involvement.
No calculus of value or what is best need look
beyond human values.
According to a matching value-ranking thesis, item
a is better than b only if a serves human concerns more than b.
A
narrower version of principle (A) embedded in main forms of Marxism is
24
the human labour theory of value.
25
Thus a corollary will be that
Marxism is certainly - unless severely modified - no direction in which
to seek an environmental ethic or social theory.
There may appear to be exceptions to principle (A) in such objects
But although values are assigned to works of art where
as works of art.
these may not positively affect human welfare, the basis for assigning
value is usually taken to be the human skill or ingenuity involved in
their production.
principle (A).
Hence such assignments do not extend, or violate,
Indeed the problem raised by natural objects which cost
nothing to produce and involved nothing human is very different from the
matter of valuing art objects.
objects rctse <2
problem.
There are also other important differences between natural objects and
works of art, apart from the characteristic
noninvolvement of humans,
namely those turning on the issues of replaceability and the reversibility
of destruction.
Human artefacts are always replaceable by similar objects,
e.g. modern cities, especially concrete jungles are all too similar and
replaceable, and using modern techniques paintings can be substanially
duplicated;
whereas there is no possibility of replicating, even remotely,
such as extinct species or real
damaged or destroyed natural objects
jungles (or lost or vanishing cultures).
In terms of replacement costs,
these are much more valuable than such human artefacts as material works
of art.
Thus attempts to assimilate natural objects to material works of
art break down.
There is an additional reason for rejecting a now familiar
approach to natural objects through works of art, namely that it is
premissed on the assumption that some sort of chauvinistic account of
works of art is adequate:
that is not so, as the (intermediate) situation
of objet trouve begins to reveal.
It is in connection with principles
qualification to
(D) and especially (A) that the
ethics (already required at several points)
becomes important for the argument;
for various non-Western ethics have
not adopted these principles, e.g. both American Indians and Australian
Aborigines appear to recognise clearly values in natural items which are
not reducible (simply or at all) to human values - and apparently not
essentially theistic (supra-human).
In any case Western ethics and
25 According to some Marxists, and apparently to Marx, the labour theory
is superceded when the period of accumulation is completed and the post
scarcity era reached.
But by the time this high-energy high-tech
stage is reached, if ever, irreparable and frequently irreversible
environmental damage will have been wreaked.
26
On next page.
25
p
attitudes, and more comprehensively the associated ideologies, are of
critical importance;
for it is to these and Western influence that the
world's main - serious and very extensive - environmental problems can be
ascribed.
Hypothetical situations are introduced in designing counterexamples
to core principles (D) and (A).
The basis of the method lies in the
semantical analyses of permissibility, obligation and value statements
which stretch out over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even
inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some permitted
situation, what is obligatory in every such situation, and what is wrong
is excluded m every such situation.
But the main point to grasp for
the counterexamples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are
universal and are assessed over a class of situations.
Thus hypothetical
cases are logically perfectly legitimate and cannot be ruled out on one
pretext or another, e.g. as rare, as desert island cases, as hypothetical,
The counterexamples to (D) and (A) presented depend largely on
etc.
designing situations different from the actual where there are either too
few or too many humans or persons.
But alternative special situations
where interference with others is minimized or is immaterial are readily
devised.
(i) The
example.
The last man (or woman or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system sets to work eliminating, as
far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs).
What he does is quite permissible
according to principle (D) but on environmental grounds what he does is
wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to
regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly and destroying things of value (the
reason being perhaps that radical thinking and values have shifted in an
environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the
Characteristically Westerners have attempted to recast these value
systems, sometimes misleadingly, in a religious guise - probably because
it was thought that there was no non-religious way of presenting them so
as to make them intelligible or have them comprehended.
Thus they get
represented as basically chauvinistic in view of the relations of Man
and God.
On these semantical analyses, which avoid all the usual problems of
modal theories of axiological and deontic terms, see R. Routley,
R.K. Meyer, and others,
RSSS,
Australian National University, 1979, chapters 7 and 8. A sketch is
given in §5 below.
The situations or worlds with respect to which the interpretation is
made permit of different construals; e.g. instead of permitted situ
ations, the situations can be construed evaluatively as ideal
situations.
26
3
Q
formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
The usual vandalism charge does not apply against Mr. Last Man
since he does no damage to others.
Moreover, Mr. Last Man's activities
may be toned down to avoid any vandalism charge, yet succumb to the
(extended) chauvinist charge, e.g. he may simply destroy sows environ
mentally valuable things unnecessarily (without due reason or some need).
(ii) The Zest pgopZe example.
to the last people example.
The last man example can be extended
We can assume that they know they are the
last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have
One considers the last people in
blocked any chance of reproduction.
order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or
somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet
and destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfect
ing the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting
the lesser traditions, just for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous.
They humanely
exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas,
they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining
natural forests disappear in favour of pastures or plantations,and so on.
They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying
reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people
employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their
impending extinction.
behaved badly;
of value;
On an environmental ethic the last people have
they have done what is impermissible and destroyed much
for they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural
ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform with the core
principles (D) and (A), and as well with the principles enjoined by the
lesser traditions under more obvious construals of these principles.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this extension of the last man
example is because principles (D) and (A) may, as they stand, appear to
conflict with stewardship, cooperation and perfection positions, as the
last man example reveals.
The apparent conflict between these positions
and principle (D) may be definitively removed, it seems, by conjoining a
further proviso to the principle, to the effect (3) that he does not
wilfully destroy natural resources.
But as the last people who are not
vandals do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of
28
reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate.
28
On next page.
27
(iii) The ^reu^ eTz^repr^KeMr example.
The last man example can be
adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
industrialist;
The last man is an
he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms
which he proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among other things,
from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and
recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we do.
Of course he has
the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world
product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be
increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased
output and productivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible;
indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be
quite fine and even meets Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing
notions of being "better off".
It may be objected, however, that there is no reason or warrant for
the great entrepreneur's production and it is simply wasteful.
But we
can easily amend the example by adding consumers who want to use the out
put.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last
people, so we can extend (iii) to the
socket!/ example (iv):
the society looks depressingly like ours except for its reproductive
incapacity.
(v) The
species example.
The blue whale (reduced to a
29
mixed good on the economic picture )
is on the verge of extinction
because of its qualities as a private good, as a profitable source of oil
and meat.
whalers;
The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any
good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compen
sate the whalers if they desist;
destruction.
nor need whale hunting be wilful
(Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting
aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species
is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's
28 There are however elements in the lesser traditions - especially if
'cooperation' and 'perfection' are reconstrued in less chauvinistic
and homocentric terms - which point the way to a more satisfactory
ethic.
29 The example is adapted from Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., who nicely
expose the orthodox economic picture.
To make the example more difficult for utilitarians in the tradition
of Bentham, it can be further supposed that the killing of the whalesis
near instantaneous and painless, the whale products are very valuable
to humans and indeed irreplaceable, and that the whales led a good
life while they lived.
(Would the killing of remote groups of humans
under similar conditions be then so much worse?).
28
*
activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The
behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale
is accordingly quite permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the free-market
mechanism did not cease allocating whales to commercial uses, as a
satisfactory environmental economics would:
instead the market system
ground inexorably (for the sorts of reasons well-explained in Barkley and
Seckier, op. cit.) along the private demand curve until the blue whale
population was no longer viable.
It has been objected that the operation of the free market is
restrained by ethical principles - or rather legally enforced copies
thereof;
for example, it would be profitable to exploit child labour,
but moral prohibitions, legally enforced, exclude such exploitation of
children.
But the case is quite different;
children, unlike young
animals such as vealers, are already shielded under the modified dominant
position.
If anything, the "objection" is a further illustration of
chauvinism at work.^O
Although the vanishing species example given does not apply decisively
against extended utilitarianisms, such as that of Bentham, which widen the
base class to all sentient creatures, the case is easily varied so that it
does:
class of tropical plant species
simply select one of the
currently threatened with extinction.
(vi) The /actorz/ /arm example.
On the farm animals of various sorts
are kept under artificial, confined conditions and simply used for the
market goods they deliver, e.g. eggs in the case of battery hens, milk in
the case of rotor cows, veal in the case of calves.
The animals are
subject to whatever conditions (e.g. forced feeding, iron deficient diets,
constant lighting) will deliver maximal quantities of desired goods for
the human commodity market.
The animals do not necessarily suffer pain
(and insofar as they do in behaviourally conspicuous ways the problem can
For the most part the operation of the free market is only constrained
by chauvinistic principles: otherwise enterpreneurs tend to undertake
whatever apparently profitable business activity they can get away with,
including substantial exploitation of animals and widespread environ
mental destruction, and their lack of concern is illustrated by such
facts as that they are generally prepared to pay taxes (e.g.
to
compensate other humans) rather than to forgo their activities in
cases such as river and lake pollution and forest removal.
In fact,
of course, fairly unfettered operation of the market tends to
encourage more restricted chauvinisms, e.g. the exploitation of cheap
foreign or female labour in the secondary labour market.
29
be met by antibiotics), but they are imprisoned under dispreferred
conditions.
The threatment of the animals on the "farm" is perfectly
permissible according to the core principle (or at least minor adjustments
to exclude unnecessary suffering will ensure conformity), but on an
The treatment of the animals on the farm
environmental ethic it is not.
also seems to conform to the principles of the lesser traditions, insofar
as these principles are spelled out in a way that can be applied to the
example, that is so long as cooperation and perfection are construed in
intended chauvinistic fashion.
(vii) The
example.
The wilderness, though isolated and
rarely visited or thought about by environmentalists, is known to contain
nothing of use to humans, such as seed or drug supplies, that is not
adequately replicated elsewhere.
It does contain however some "low
quality" forest that could supply pulpwood on a commercial basis were the
local government to provide subsidies on the usual basis.
The logging
would destroy the wilderness in a largely irreversible way (e.g. it grows
on high sand dune country or on lateritic soils)
and kill many animals
which live in the forest.
sees
The prevailing
with the destruction of such
ethic
wrong
nothing
a wilderness, nor do the lesser traditions:
a deeper environmental ethic does.
Again the example requires variation, e.g. to a wilderness devoid of
sentient individuals, if it is to counter clearly such extensions of
Western ethics as those of animal liberationists.
For this sort of reason
we do not want to overstate or overrate the role of
as distinct from variations upon such examples.
examples -
Firstly, people deeply
committed to human chauvinism - as many, perhaps most, people are - will
find some of the examples unconvincing because they depend on non-
chauvinistic assumptions.
Secondly, there are rejoinders to some of the
examples based on the prevailing ethic.
In this case what we claim is
that there are variations on, and elaborations of the examples which meet
such considerations.
In connection with this we do not want to deny that
there are other strands supplementing the prevailing ethic which are
critical of some activities of the sort described in the examples, e.g.
anti-vandalism principles and strictures against conspicuous consumption
But, as remarked, these principles
as reflected, e.g. in sumptuary laws.
have not been adequately incorporated in the prevailing ethic in such a
way as to meet variations on the examples or to serve environmental
purposes;
and if the attempt were made to fully incorporate such princi
ples once again a new ethic would be the upshot.
(Compare the situation
before the change from an ethic which sanctioned Tzu/na??. slavery.)
30
*
In summary,what the examples show is that core axiological and
deontic assumptions of the Western super-ethic are environmentally
inadequate;
and accordingly Western ethics should be superseded by a
more environmentally adequate ethic.
The class of permissible actions
that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on such an
environmental ethic than it is in the Western superethic, and the class
of noninstrumentally valuable objects is correspondingly wider than it is
on the Western super-ethic.
But is not an environmentalist ethic going too far in implying that
these people - those of the examples and respected entrepreneurs and
industrialists and bureaucrats, farmers and fishermen and foresters - are
behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
No, what these people do
is to a greater or lesser extent evil, since destructive of what is
valuable, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who
stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and
impermissible, so also is the destruction of the forest where the people
may live, or the slaughter of remaining blue whales, or the gross
exploitation of experimental or factory-farm animals for private profit
or as part of the latest 5 year plan.
Those who organise or engage in
such activities are (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their
mode of engagement) morally culpable.
Models of permissible respected
life styles and of the good life (for others to emulate) depend upon
what the underlying ethic accounts good and evil, permissible or not,
and so forth;
and changes with change of ethic.
A new ethic is needed not merely to accommodate the evaluations,
prescriptions and models indicated, in a way decidedly different from
Western ethics, but in order to cope with a much wider range of more
practical, and often more controversial, cases where Western ethics yield
(without epicycling, i.e. extensive resort to theory-saving strategems)
unacceptable or inadequately grounded results.
An alternative ethic is
also needed by a growing number of valuers because they have values,
interests and new concerns of ecological sorts which do not fit in with,
but conflict with, central features of prevailing Western ethics.
There
is occurring, it seems, a far-reaching cultural, and ethical change, a
change in consciousness, and in particular a change in attitudes to what
is natural and the natural environment (a change which may eventually be
as fundamental as, and partly overturn, the humanist changes of the
Enlightenment).
A new ethic is accordingly needed to reflect and formul
ate, and enable the defence and application of, a new, increasingly felt,
31
a
but not so far well-articulated system of values, in much the same way
that a system of probability was needed and formulated to articulate and
systematise likelihood and probability principles, and relevant logic
systems required to capture pre-analytic views of entailment.
The
explication of environmental ethics is a similar theoretical concern;
again, as commonly, theory lags behind the facts of change and the felt
data.
Furthermore, just as entailment systems are not uniquely determined,
or desired or accepted by every thinker, so ezzzz*Zr<9zzwe7zfaZ.
be %%-z^MeZz/ (ie^grzzz-Zzzg^, or adopted by every valuer.
will zzct
On the contrary, as
is plain enough, their adaption and furtherance will be vigorously
resisted by many vested interests, as - to take just one instance - the
furtherance of programmes for the elimination
of environmental sources
of cancer is vigorously opposed by industrial chemical companies.
The matter of persuading other, valuers to accept values and
principles of a new ethic is of course a further and somewhat separate
issue from the question of need for such an ethic.
The procedures for
trying to effect changes in values are but variations on the usual pro
cedures, and like them are not fully effective:
excluding coercion and
education, they include, for example, argumentation, and propaganda, in
each case of many sorts.As usual, too, where there is a broad common
32
basis, especially in felt evaluations and emotional presentation,
effecting a change, or a conversion, will generally be an easier task.
In the case of transformation to environmental values, what is often
important are distinctive features regarding the factual bases of many of
the evaluations.
correcting
In particular, there is the matter of removing or
/zz^scozzcept^oTZS on a broad range of matters of
Some of these sorts are considered in more detail in (c) J. Passmore,
'Ecological problems and persuasion' in PpnaZ^fz/
ipz^erTzaz^ozzaZ u?Z(Z Comparative t/vrisprz/devce (ed. G. Dorsey) , Oceana
Publications, New York, 1977, pp.431-42.
The apposite term 'emotional presentation' is adapted from Meinong;
see especially Ov FmotiozzaZ Presentation (trans. M.L. Schubert-Kalsi),
Northwestern University Press, 1972. The notion of emotional present
ation can play an important role in the explanation of how emotions
enter into (environmental) evaluations, the objects evaluated (canyons,
mountains, giant trees) often being emotionally presented. A little
more precisely, the connections are these: A value ranking (e.g. c is
better, more valuable, than d) of a valuer is explained emotionally
through - it does not reduce to - certain preference rankings of the
valuer;
and the preference rankings have in turn dual factual and
emotional bases, in the same sort of way that an item may be preferred
or chosen in virtue of its factual features and the valuer's emotional
responses to those.
The main details of such a semantical analysis of
value, which is discussed in §5, are given in Routley (c).
32
environmental concern;
for example, about animals, their various
behaviour, abilities, etc;
about the alleged gulf between humans and
other animals and the uniqueness of humans and each human;
about the
profitability, or desirability, or necessity, of environmentally destruct
ive enterprises;
about the inevitability of current Western social
arrangements and about the history of the way these particular arrange
ments developed.
There is, moreover, the matter of sheer information,
for example as to how free animals live together and what they do;
about
how factory and experimental animals are treated, and in the latter case
for what:
about the sources and effects of various forms of pollution
and the reasons for it;
about how natural creatures such as whales or
environments such as forests are commonly dealt with, for what products,
by what interests, for what ends.
Naturally (given a fact/value division)
none of this information is entirely conclusive support for a change in
ethic;
for many of the evaluations the data helps support can be included
in other ethics (including sometimes modifications of prevailing ethics),
while remaining evaluations can, at worst, be simply rejected (as e.g.,
those utilitarians who extend consideration just to sentient creatures are
obliged to reject versions of the last man argument where no sentient
creatures are affected).
Althouth a new ethic is needed, for the reasons indicated, and
although such an ethic can,furthermore, be a considerable asset in
practical environmental argument (e.g., as to the point of trying to
33
retain a piece of not-especially-unique near-wilderness),
for many
practical ecological purposes, there is no need to apply it or to fall
back on it.
For example, virtually the whole environmental issue of
destructive forestry in Australia can be argued without invoking any
unconventional ethical principles or values at all, i.e. entirely within
the prevailing chauvinistic framework.
environmental disputes.
The same sort of point applies to
But, it by no means applies to all.
A
corollary is an inadequacy in the presentation of environmental problems
and suggested solutions in standard (human) ecology texts
(such as P. and
JssMss
A. Erlich's
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, to select one example), which are set
34
e/zf-ZreZz/ within the chauvinistic framework.
Also, differently, in the way that theories are in enabling one to see
how to move and argue in a discussion.
Quite properly given prevailing sentiments, according to some erring
conservationists, who account themselves "realists".
33
Since it is sometimes charged - despite all that has been said
that
an environmental ethic does not differ in practice from that of more
conventional "chauvinistic" ethics, there is point in spelling out in
Firstly, many conventional
yet other ways how it can differ in practice:
positions, in particular social contract and sympathy theories, cannot
take proper account of moral obligation to future humans (who are not in
the immediate future).
Since the usual attempt to argue, in terms of
value and benefit to humans, that natural areas
ecosystems
generally should not be destroyed or degraded depends critically on
introducing possible future humans who will suffer or be worse off as a
result of its destruction or degradation, it is plain that an environ
and
mental ethic will differ radically from such conventional positions.
That
is, the usual argument depends on the reduction of value of a natural
item to the interests of present and /nfure humans, in which reduction
future humans must play a critical role if conclusions not blatantly
opposed to conservation are to be reached. Hence there will usually be
a very great gulf between the practical value judgements of conservation
ethics and those of conventional positions which discount the (non-
immediate) future.
Secondly, as we have already seen through examples, there are
practical differences between an environmental ethic and conventional
instrumental views which do take account of the interests of past,
present and future humans, differences which emerge sharply at the
It is, however, unnecessary to
hypothetical (possible world) level.
turn to possible world examples to see that normally there would be very
great differences in the practical valuations and behaviour of those who
believe that natural items can have value and create obligations not
reducible (in any way) to human interests and those who do not, as the
following further examples show.
Example 1.
We need only consider the operation of
zJorZd, for example, the concept of damapo to a natural
item, and the associated notion of coTnpeMsafdoM for that damage.
C. Stone, for instance, in STzo^Zd Troes
^fuTid^Mp?
Thus
Towards LepaZ.
/"or ZVufMraZ- Objocfs (Avon Books, New York, 1975) notes the
practical legal differences between taking the damage to a polluted river
as affecting its intrinsic value, and taking it as just affecting human
river users.
In the one case one will see adequate compensation as
restoring the original state of the river (rectifying the wrong to the
river) and in the other as compensating those present (or future) humans
who will suffer from its pollution.
As Stone points out, the sum
34
adequate to compensate the latter may well be much less than that
required to restore the river to its unpolluted state, thus making it
economic, and in terms of the human chauvinist theory, fair and reason
able, to compensate those damaged and continue pollution of the river.
In the first case, of course, adequate compensation or restoration for
the harm done would have to consist in restoring the river to its
unpolluted condition and will not just be paid to the people affected.
Compare here Stone's example of compensation for injury to a Greek slave;
in the instrumentalist case this will involve compensating the slave's
owner for the loss of his slave's working time;
in the other, where the
slave is regarded as not merely an instrument for his owner, it will
compensate the sZuue not the
for this compensation will also take
account of the pain and suffering of the slave, even where this has not
affected his working ability.
There is a difference not only in the
amount of compensation, but to zj/zow it is directed.
In the case of a
natural item damage may be compensated by payment to a trust set up to
protect and restore it.
Example 2.
The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary
and excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its
nonhuman inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that
there is no other human around to know the difference.
For one to whom
the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conventional utility,
however, there will be no such constraint.
He may avoid unnecessary noise
if he thinks it will disturb other humans, but if he is certain none are
about to hear him he will feel at liberty to make as much and as loud a
noise as he chooses, and this will affect his behaviour.
Examples like
this cannot be dealt with by the introduction of future humans, since
they will be unable to hear the noise in question.
To claim that the
making of noise in such circumstances is a matter of no importance, and
therefore there is no important difference in behaviour, is of course to
assess the matter through human chauvinist eyes.
question-begging.
From the intrinsic viewpoint it
So such a claim is
make a
difference, and be reflected in practical behavioural difference.
Example 3.
Consider an aboriginal tribe which holds a particular place
to be sacred, and where this sanctity and intrinsic valuableness and
beauty is celebrated by a number of beautiful cave paintings.
A typically
"progressive" instrumentalist Western view would hold the cave (and
perhaps place) to be worth preservation because of its value to the
aboriginal people, and because of the artistic merit of the human arti
facts, the cave paintings the cave contained.
35
To the "enlightened"
Westerner, if the tribe should cease to exist, and the paintings be
i
destroyed, it would be permissible to destroy the place if this should
be in what is judged to be the best interests of human kind, e.g. to get
at the uranium underneath.
To the aboriginal the human artifacts, the
cave paintings would be irrelevant, a celebration of the value of the
place, but certainly not a surrogate for it, and the obligation to the
place would not die because the tribe disappeared or declined.
Similarly
no ordinary sum of money would be able to compensate for the loss of
such a place, in the way that it might for something conceived of as a
utility or convenience, as having value only because of the benefits it
confers on the "users" of it.
There is an enormous
or
difference between feeling that
a place should be valued or respected for itself, for its perceived
beauty and character., and.feeling that it should not be defaced because
it is valued by one's fellow humans, and provides pleasurable sensations
or money or convenience for them.
Compare too the differences between
feeling that a yellow robin, say, is a fellow creature in many ways akin
to oneself, and feeling that it is a nice little yellow and grey, basically
clockwork, aesthetic object.
These differences in emotional presentation
are accompanied by or expressed by an enormous range of behavioural
differences, of which the examples given represent only a very small
sample.
The sort of behaviour
by each viewpoint and thought
by it, the concept of what one is free to do, for example, will
normally be very different.
It is certainly no coincidence that cultures
holding to the intrinsic view have normally been far less destructive of
nature than the dominant Western human chauvinist culture.
In summary, the claim that there is no
difference,
that the intrinsic value viewpoint is empty verbalisation, does not stand
up to examination.
The capacity - no doubt exaggerated, but nonetheless far from
negligible - of Western industrial societies to solve their ecological
problems (at least to their own pathetically low standards) within a
chauvinistic framework, does considerably complicate, and obstruct, an
alternative more practical argument to the need for a new ethic,
/row
that in no other way ...
[than] prepared[ness] to accept a
"new ethic", as distinct even from adding one or two new moral
principles to an accepted common ... can modern industrial
35
societies solve their ecological problems.
On next page.
36
Not only does the argument encounter various objections - most obviously
that many of the problems can be solved, if not within Western ethics, in
immediate extensions of them - but the case suggested would hardly be a
satisfactory basis for the type of ethic sought.
It is not so much that
it would be a chauvinistic way of arriving at a supposedly nonchauvinistic
ethic, for bad procedures can lead to good results;
rather it is that
important ecological problems, shaping environmental ethics, such as
preservation of substantial tracts of wilderness and just treatment of
animals, tend to be written off in industrial societies as not serious
problems.
But even if the argument suggested has too narrow a problem
base, and so may yield too limited a change in attitudes as compared with
the main theoretical argument, the argument merits fuller formulation and
further investigation.
The argument to need for ethical revision is as
follows:
(1)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems (of modern
industrial societies) implies (the adoption of) an alternative
environmental ethic.
(2)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems is needed.
Therefore, an alternative environmental ethic is needed.36
The argument is valid, given, what seems correct, that pimplies q implies
that p is needed implies that q is needed.
The second premiss is or can
be made analytic, on the sense of 'satisfactory'
'satisfactory' imply 'needed');
(e.g. by having
so the case is complete if the first
premiss can be established (in the same sense of 'satisfactory'), and the
conclusion is then plausible to at least the extent the premiss is. Al37
though the first premiss, or something like it, is widely endorsed,
cogent
35
Passmore (c) op. cit., p.438.
According to Passmore (p.431),
By common consent, there are four major ecological problems:
pollution, the exhaustion of resources, the destruction of
species, and overpopulation ...
To solve such problems involves finding a way either of altering
types of human conduct or of preventing that human conduct from
having its present consequences.
In what follows the assumption that 'there are four major ecological
problems' gets rejected.
36 This implies only, that a new ethic is necessary for solving
environmental problems, and not of course that it is
37 Even Passmore, though previously (e.g. in (a)) highly critical of
proposals for new ethics, gives qualified endorsement to an assumption
of this sort ((c), p.441).
... I do not doubt, all the same, that our attitudes to nature
stand badly in need of revision and that, as they stand, they form
a major obstacle to the solution of ecological problems.
37
#
arguments for it are few and it is no simple matter rendering the
premiss plausible.
Moreover rendering it plausible involves a substant
ial detour through social theory;
for the case for the premiss proceeds
along these sorts of lines:
(3)
Unless there are (certain) major changes in socio-economic structure,
environmental problems will not be satisfactorily solved.
(4)
The major changes in socio-economic structure involve
ethic.
an alternative
A much stronger thesis than (3) has been argued for using systems analysis,
namely that without very extensive socio-economic changes, modern
industrial society will collapse;
but several of the assumptions made
in the analysis are doubtful or disputed.
independently of that stronger thesis;
But (3) has been argued
for example, it will follow from
the thesis (of Falk, Commoner and others) 'that the modern industrial
ethic as we have known it is not sustainable on ecological grounds'.^
In a sense,
(3) is obvious;
for it is present socio-economic arrangements
that have produced many of the present serious environmental problems;
without major changes in those arrangements most of the problems will
What is not immediately evident is
persist or, more likely, intensify.
that the major changes called for, in satisfying (3), suffice for (4).
However reflection on the specific types of changes required - for example
at a superficial level, human population limitation, reduction of poll
ution, more sensible resource usage, selective economic growth - reveals
that significant changes in value, and also in what is considered
permissible, are bound to be involved in the changes.
plausible, and
therewith the intended conclusion.
So (4) is decidedly
But the argument
leaves the detailed character of the needed alternative ethic rather
obscure;
and it may well be that the ethic so yielded is somewhat
chauvinistic in character.
The more practical argument cannot entirely
supplant the main theoretical argument.
In sum, there are good and pressing reasons to investigate the
alternatives to chauvinistic ethics, especially human chauvinism, because
such chauvinistic ethics are discriminatory, because the case for them
38
39
See, in particular, D. Meadows and others,
Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
PtwZts to CrozjtT?,
R.A. Falk, 'Anarchism and world order', Pornos IX, 1978, p.66. Falk
refers for the case to B.Commoner, TPs CZosZ^p CZroZo, Knopf, New York,
1971;
R.A. Falk, T/zZs
PZo^ot, Random House, New York. 1971;
E. Goldsmith and others EZMoprZut /or F^rvZ^aZ, Houghton and Miflin,
Boston, 1972, and Meadows et aZ., op. cit.
38
O
does not stand up to examination, and because they have been involved in
the destruction of much of value and now threaten the viability of much
that is valuable.
§ 4 . ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERNATIVES :
NARROWING THE CHOICE AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS .
The basic - and basically mistaken - doctrine of the Western super-ethic
is, as we have seen, that people, humans of whatever shape or form, are
the fundamental carriers or objects of value and that all other items are
valuable only in an instrumental or derivative way.
It is important, in
deed mandatory in a genuine environmental ethic, to reject this view and
allow natural items to have a value in their own right, ^yz i/ze sazzze /as/z^oM
as
peopZ-e, both for the reasons outlined above, of the theoret
ical unsatisfactoriness and arbitrariness of the traditional view, and for
more practical reasons, namely, to help ensure the ecological sustain
ability of modern society, and in optimising human welfare.
It has often
been pointed out that 'a totally humanised world would diminish us as
40
human beings',
that the traditional view of humans, or classes of humans,
as dominant, and of natural items as without value except where they serve
human or class interests - a view that often carries contempt for nature leads not only to the destruction of much that is of value but (paradoxic
ally) to counterproductive results even with respect to human welfare.
Thus McHarg (in attractively coloured rhetoric)
Show me a man-oriented society in which it is believed that reality
exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos is a struct
ure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is
divine and given dominion over all things, indeed that God is made in
the image of man, and I will predict the nature of its cities and
their landscape.
I need not look far for we have seen them-the hot
dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and
mined landscapes.
centric man;
This is the image of the anthropomorphic, anthropo
he seeks not unity with nature but conquest (op. cit.).
The rejection of this view and its replacement by a view in which
natural items can be regarded as of value and as worthy of our respect for
themselves and not merely for what we can get out of them or what use we
40 see e.g. the discussion at pp.116-17 of (a) J. Rodman, 'The Liberation
of nature', Irz^z^rz/, 20 (1977) 83-145. All subsequent references to
Rodman's work without further indication are to this article.
Note well that the rejection of human chauvinism does Moi imply that no
chauvinistic arguments - or rafTzsr, arguments that are usually stated
in chauvinistic form - carry weight. On the contrary, some chauvinistic
arguments (e.g. those supporting wilderness retention and species
preservation) carry considerable weight; and, since the prevailing
industrial ethics remain chauvinistic, environmentalists would be rash
not to use them.
39
&
can make of them, is becoming increasingly widespread in parts of the
environmental movement. It is this primarily that makes for an important
ideological split in the conservation movement, between what Naess (op.
cit.) called sTzaZZozj and Fesp ecology, between those who see conservation
as just a matter of wiser, better-controlled
exploitation of
the environment — something which is compatible with denying value to
everything except man
and those who see it at least in part as involving
a recognition of value for natural items independent of man, and hence as
involving (at least to some extent) a
The
gzEpZo^a^opz view, which is
first view, the long-term or
closely tied to prevailing more enlightened economic assumptions, tends to
make heavy use of the watershed term 'resource';
the problem of conserv
ation is seen as one of 'zjFss Mse oy resoMrcss', a resource being something
of use to humans or persons.
On this view, which does not get beyond the
confines of human chauvinism, and so is no direction for.a satisfactory
environmental ethic to take, items which have no perceivable use to man,
i.e. non-resources, can be destroyed without loss;
and the environmental
problem is viewed as largely one of making people aware of the extent to
which natural items and processes have Fustrz^gnPaZ- value, i.e. of how
far we are dependent on them and they are of
to us.
There is no
recognition either that some items might be valuable precisely
they are independent of man.
Resource Conservation, or the shallow position, is the first of the
42
four ideal types that Rodman
discerns in his investigation of the
contemporary environmental movement.
The deeper ecological position gets
split under Rodman's division into three ideological positions - though
Rodman prefers to put the matter in symbolic or experiential terms, in
terms of forms of consciousness - namely Wilderness Preservation, Nature
Moralism, and Ecological Resistance.
Though the positions discerned are
neither characterised in an exclusive fashion, nor exhaustive of ecological
positions, and though we shall have to look beyond all the positions for a
satisfactory environmental ethic, nonetheless they afford an excellent
perspective on the main types of alternative positions that have been
adopted by those within environmental movements.
It is not uncommon to encounter attempts to write the shallow position
into the very meaning or definition of
e.g. 'conservation
is the use of resources to the greatest advantage of man', 4 Furvez/ py
Fcrgsz^rz/
T^FMSz^r^es.
ParP FT.
Foresfrz/ Pe^gZ.opz7?e?2^ PZ-arz. Draft (31 October, 1974), p.ll - a
blatantly chauvinistic account.
On next page.
40
According to (Wilderness) Preservation, which focusses on
wilderness, wilderness is to be preserved for the wilderness experience,
wilderness offers a natural cathedral,
a sacred place where human beings can transcend the limitations
of everyday experience and become renewed through contact with
the power of creation ((b), p.49).
The values discerned in wilderness and natural landscape are primarily
aesthetic and quasi-religious, or mystical,
'the experience of the holy
is esthetically mediated'; what is valuable remains human experiences.
Thus the Wilderness Preservation position does not move outside the
sphere of human chauvinism, and can no more than Resource Conservation
offer a frame for an environmental ethic.
Rodman reaches a similar
conclusion:
Resource Conservation and Wilderness Preservation appear
variations on the theme of wise use, the former oriented to the
[efficient] production of commodities for human consumption, the
latter to providing human amenities ((b), p.50).
For this reason, the Wilderness Preservation position fails even on the
score of justifying the preservation of wilderness - on the very task it
was designed to accomplish - in a range of circumstances.
Like other
See especially (b) J. Rodman, 'Theory and practice in the environmental
movement: notes towards an ecology of experience', in
Search for
VuZzzes
a
International Cultural Foundation,
New York, 1978, pp.45-56. Some of the types are portrayed in greater
detail in other Rodman papers.
The remainder of this largely new section on environmental ethical
alternatives is heavily indebted, in ways the references mostly make
plain, to Rodman's work. His work covers a vast range of interlinked
topics; only those of immediate relevance have been touched upon.
But there is very much in the remainder that repays careful reading,
and zzzMc/z to think about and to question or reject, reaching perhaps
its lowest point in the paradoxical themes:
Just as our statements about other people tend also to be
concealed statements about ourselves, so statements about non
human nature tend to be concealed statements about the human
condition, and movements to liberate nonhuman nature tend also
to be movements to liberate the repressed potentials of human
nature (p.105).
In part because these themes and the related myth of microcosm are
taken seriously, and not for the evident falsehoods they are, in part
because the ethical adequacy of the human/nonhuman distinction is
never seriously questioned (e.g. it is taken for granted, what is not
the case, that rights apply to humans and are problematic beyond them),
and in part because of the characteristically chauvinistic emphasis on
human experience and the endeavour to bring everything within that
experiential purvue, and the associated weight assigned to human
symbolic, mythic and ritual activities, one is left with the feeling,
at the end of all the investigations one can profitably follow Rodman
through, that one has not got beyond the confines of human chauvinism.
41
instrumentalist accounts of wilderness value, it breaks down entirely
with examples like the Last Man, assuming that Mr. Last Man is never
turned on by natural spendour.
More alarmingly, under readily conceivable
developments, it would allow the elimination of wilderness entirely.
For
consider the Wilderness Experience Machine, a low-impact low-tech
philosophical machine, recently patented by I.M. Diabolic, which can
duplicate entirely, even for groups of people, wilderness experiences,
but in a downtown room.
As far as the psychological experience goes, this
machine can provide a complete substitute for any actual wilderness, and
were the value of wilderness to reside in the experience it afforded,
could entirely replace it and eliminate the alleged need for it.
Most environmentalists would be (rightly) dissatisfied with, not to
say appalled by, the idea that Wilderness Experience Machines could sub
stitute for wildernesses, since they provided the same experiences.
what else they wanted, the answer would of course be:
Asked
Wildernesses, not
merely wilderness experiences. Wildernesses are valuable in their own
right, over and above the experiences they can afford.43 Really, that is,
they consider wildernesses intrinsically valuable, but have been pushed
by the prevailing ethical ethos
into stating, and misrepresenting, their
position in experiential terms.
There is some independent evidence that
the Wilderness Preservation position is frequently a disguised intrinsic
value position, in the attitude taken to examples like the Last Man case,
that purely hypothetical experiencers
(who may vanish into counterfactuals)
are good enough, and that in some real-life cases it is enough that
wilderness is there to be contemplated, whether or not anyone actually
takes advantage of its presence to gain experiences, or indeed whether or
not it is in fact contemplated.
Such examples remove the disguise and
reveal the position as at bottom an intrinsic value position.
In that
event it is however better to avoid the disguise; for the case for wilder
ness preservation which starts from the position that some wilderness
tracts have intrinsic as well as merely instrumental value is substantially
stronger than any position which assigns them merely instrumental value.
Wilderness lovers and nature conservationists have in fact worked out
- or concocted - a set of arguments to show why wildernesses and nature
conservation are of benefit to humans, to argue for their instrumental
—
The concept of zjfZ-demess too can vary with the operative ideology,
e.g. on certain views, such as Wilderness Preservation, wilderness
comprises areas that are
(or provide the opportunity for use), e.g.
used for experiential enrichment. By contrast, on a genuine Environ
mental Resistance view, wilderness is a wild area, use of which is not
implied:
it may never be used, and it may not matter that it affords
no opportunity for (human) use.
(Under popular high redefinition of
'wilderness', there are of course no wildernesses remaining on the
earth, and wilderness vanishes as soon as humanly experienced.)
42
value.
For example, there are various arguments from the scientific
value, or usefulness, of wilderness, e.g. for the study of natural eco
systems, for the investigation of plant history and evolution, as a
repository of genetic diversity, etc.
These arguments, which (like
parallel arguments for species preservation) are not to be
especially as regards persuasive force, can be put in nonchauvinistic
form;
for science and knowledge are not linked essentially with, for
example, the feature of being human.
Often however - e.g. where the
wilderness defended has, so far as it is known, little that is very
special to offer - such arguments appear to be merely a conventional front
for the real (or deeper) reasons - and in sofne instances, correspondingly
weak and unpersuasive (as Fraser Darling has remarked, and Passmore has
tried to show in (a)) - the real reasons being based on the perception of
nonuseful properties of value.
This is particularly marked in the case
of arguments for preserving the most complex and beautiful of the world's
plant communities, tropical rainforest.
Such arguments as that various
uninvestigated rainforest trees may at some time be found to contain
useful drugs, by no means exhaust the true value of the rainforest.
For it
is in the intrinsic, i.e. noninstrumental, value of the rainforest that
the main reason for not unduly interfering with it, e.g. not interfering
in ways that threaten its stability or viability, lies.
In particular,
destruction of a wilderness, such as a rainforest, would significantly
diminish intrinsic value, and so should (in general) be resisted.
Environmentalists who are aware of these sorts of problems and
dangers with resource use approaches to wilderness preservation sometimes
attempt to formulate their alternative view in terms of one of the lesser
traditions, most popularly in terms of the
image, in
which man is seen as the steward of the earth - an analogy which, as
Passmore points out (in (a)), is problematic outside a religious context.
For who is man steward to?
If not to God, then how is the analogy to be
unpacked, and what conditions must "stewardship" conform to?
If "good
stewardship" is management in the interests of humans, or humanity, then
the position does not go beyond Resource Conservation; if it is manage44
ment to serve intrinsic values, or God,
then good stewardship is but a
cover for the recognition of intrinsic values, which are better introduced
directly.
Thus admitting values which are not instrumental, which do not
answer back in some way to states or conditions of humans is a feature of
all satisfactory deeper ecological alternatives.
In order to allow for
such intrinsic values and/or associated attitudes of respect, e.g. for
44 on some interpretations;
chauvinism.
on others theism may serve to reinforce human
43
nature and various
natural things, it is however unnecessary to adopt a
religious backdrop such as the "Good Stewardship" image suggests, or even
a semi-religious framework such as a mystical or superstitious one with
taboos and sacred places as symbolic and ritual elements.
A theory of
intrinsic value which assigns intrinsic value to wilderness and species
of free animals, for good reasons, can be entirely naturalistic (in a
main sense of that much-abused term).
The third, somewhat amorphous, cluster of positions Rodman describes,
Nature Moralisms, do just that, assign intrinsic,
noninstrumental,
value to natural items, such as - on some versions of the position wilderness.
[An] alternative perspective ...
[to] the theme of wise use
45
...
is provided by the tradition growing out of the humane movement,
recently radicalised by animal liberationists, and sometimes
generalised to embrace non-animal beings as well.
to the economic ethos of Resource
In contrast
Conservation and the religious/
esthetic character of Wilderness Preservation, this perspective is
strikingly moral in style.
Its notion of human virtue is not
prudence or reverence, but justice.
In contrast to the caste
bound universe of the Resource Conservationist, the Natural
Moralist affirms the democratic principle that all natural entities
(or, more narrowly, all forms of life) have intrinsic value, and
that wild animals, plants, rivers, and whole ecosystems have a
right to exist, flourish and reproduce - or at least that human
beings have no right to exploit or unnecessarily harm or destroy
other members of the biotic community.
In contrast to the aristo
cratic universe of Wilderness Preservation, where some places
(and
some forms of recreation) are holier than others and certain types
of natural entities ... are traditionally more worthy of being
saved than others ..., the world of the Nature Moralist is
characterised by an apparent egalitarianism ((b), p.50, my
rearrangement).
Each of the sweep of environmental alternatives indicated can be seen as
an
of conventional Western ethics:
intrinsic value is extended
uniformly to all animals or certain favoured features of all these, e.g.
their experience, happiness, avoidance of suffering, or is extended to all
living creatures or systems, or is extended to all natural items or even
to objects - it may or may
45
be distributed uniformly or equally;
Human use and human experience, it might be added.
44
rather independently, rights may be ceded to all animals, or to some or
all living things, or to all things, or, alternatively and differently,
right-holders' rights with respect to some or other of these classes are
restricted;
and similarly other deontic notions, justice, obligation,
even perhaps duty, may extend to apply to larger classes of items than all
humans or persons.
The sweep, which is impressive, is intended to include both extended
utilitarianisms, e.g. Bentham's utilitarianism as revamped by Singer
according to which all sentient creatures are entitled to equal consider
ation of interest, and extended (legal) rights doctrines, e.g. the
assignment of rights or legal standing to all natural objects as suggested
by, for instance, Stone. 46 It also includes Darwin's ethic and Leopold s
47
"land ethic".
In order to capture some of the intended examples of
Nature Moralists, and all the Moral Extension positions, Rodman's
characterisation requires some adjustment - which will be taken for
granted in what follows.
For example, Singer and other animal liberation-
ists do not assign intrinsic value to all forms of life, or even to all
animals;
but (as Rodman is well aware) to all sentient creatures;
that
is, further classifications have to be taken into account.
The egalitarian, or uniformity, assumptions that serve in character
ising Natural Moralism are mistaken.
Not all objects are of equal value;
some are more valuable then others, while some have little or no value
(and some have a negative value).4^
Impressive though the sweep of extensions is, all the positions
indicated should be rejected on one ground or another, and sometimes on
several grounds.
Against positions which do not extend the class of
objects of moral concern and candidates for value to include all objects,
variants of the counterexamples to the Western super-ethic can be
directed.
Consider, for instance, the positions (of usual animal liber-
ationists) which extend the moral boundaries just to include sentient
creatures (or e.g. preference-havers).
Adapt the Last Man and Last
People examples, the Wilderness example, etc., by removing all
(inessential) animals from the examples, e.g. the wilderness contains no
animals, in the Last People situation there are no other animals than the
46 p. Singer,
.4 ZVozJ
Random House, New York, 1975;
for (7%r
C. Stone, op. cit.
<?y
47 At least on a straightforward reading of Leopold's eventual position,
but not according to Rodman; see his contrast of Leopold with Stone,,
p.110.
Darwin's ethic, which anticipates Leopold's, is presented m
C. Darwin,
of Muzz, Second edition, J. Murray, London, 1883.
4 8 On next page.
45
1*
Then the counterexamples apply as before
last people themselves.
against the liberation positions.
It is unnecessary to go quite so far afield to fault such positions,
at least in practice:
as Rodman might put it, they are countered by the
facts of experience:
... I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon
to feel uneasy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion
that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of
anything but sentient animals (p.89).
But an advantage of the counterexamples is that the same examples, among
many others (e.g. situations devoid of sentient creatures, situations
where the message of experience conflicts with justice or fairness),
reveals the erroneousness of the well-sponsored thesis, a simple analogue
of empiricism, that all value
or sentient, objects).
derives from experience (of experiential,
A corollary is that value is not to be assessed
either, in any simple way, in terms of the facts of experience.
Insofar as Nature Moralism relies upon simple extensions of
utilitarianisms, or of subjectivisms, to include a larger class of
subjects,
(a larger base class), such as all present sentient creatures,
or all preference-havers at any one time, etc., it is open not merely to
adaptations of the argument against chauvinism (animal chauvinism is not
that much more satisfactory than human chauvinism), but most of the
Nor, on Moral Extensions, need all objects that have rights have equal
rights.
Rights may not be very democratically distributed. Some things
have rights, e.g. as a result of agreements, of a sort others do not
hold or are not capable of holding. Even rights to exist, to flourish
and to reproduce (each case is different) are in much doubt where there
is scarcity or conflict and where some right holders are taken to be
worth much more than others. Nor are such leading examplars of Natural
Moralism as Singer and Stone, though they are concerned to extend
principles of justice, committed to equality of rights assumptions.
Stone explicitly rejects equal distribution of rights; but the
principle that all natural objects are equal in having rights, which
really says no more than that they all have rights, is at best a very
weak egalitarian principle.
Singer offers (and presumably would offer)
no equality of rights principle, rejects an equality of treatment
principle, and proposes as a principle of equality a (near vacuous)
principle of equal consideration of interests.
Not, this time, knowledge. But amusingly "value empiricism" collapses
into empiricism proper given the Socratic identification: Value
(generalising Virtue) is knowledge.
The only natural stopping point under value empiricism is, of course,
with all creatures that have (or could have) the relevant experiences:
again not with humans.
46
standard
objections to utilitarians,
subjectivisms,
etc.
Many
versions of Nature Moralism may than be defeated on rather conventional
grounds.
There emerges, further, a dilemma for extensions.
Either the crucial
notions of right and intrinsic value are extended to all sentient
creatures (experience-havers), in which case the objections just lodged
apply, or they are extended more sweepingly, e.g. to all natural objects.
But the latter involves attributing to such items attributes they do not
have, most obviously rights to such objects as stones;
it also violates
the conditions that have to be met for the holding of rights and for the
entitlement of rights.
Thus, for example, Stone considers underpinning
his extension of rights, beyond sentient creatures in the ordinary sense -
or of legal rights beyond recognised "legal persons" - by a postulate of
50
universal sentience or consciousness;
in short, by an unacceptable
metaphysics, or myth.
There are several further objections which work against many versions
of Natural Moralism to which Rodman draws attention:
(1)
Moral Extensions are 'inadequate to articulate the intention that
sustains the [environmental] movement'
wilderness preservation movements.
(p.88), specifically wilderness and
It takes but little argument to show
that utilitarian ethics, such as Singer's, so far from assisting the
environmental movement, can (if adopted) reinforce the case
wilderness and preservation of wild species.
But an extension like
Stone's extension of legal rights can help, and has helped, at least in
the courts where its meta-physical underpining is unlikely to be glimpsed.
The basic point is however that the rights talk does not connect with, and is
insensitive to, the experiential basis.
Mere extensions of moral notions
such as interest or right or justice are insufficient to treat and do just
ice to the multi-dimensional depth of environmental issues, such as the
damming of a river (p.115). Part of the reason is said to be that the usual
moral aparatus, which was evolved in the case of certain person-to-person
50 See Rodman's discussion, pp.92-3.
But Rodman overstates his case m
claiming that 'some such postulate as universal consciousness is there
fore necessary if the notion of rights for trees is not to seem a
rootless fancy'. For , as explained below, extended rights can be
defined by a rather "natural extension" of the familiar notion of right,
without any such postulate; and grounds of entitlement can be traced
back to value of the items.
Certainly extended rights sever what linkage there may have been between
rights and liabilities, but with the modern separations of rights from
responsibilities that linkage was already damaged or broken.
47
*
relations, is inadequate for getting to grips with a new dimension of
moral experience, that concerned with environment, and inadequate to
reflect ecological sensibility.
Rodman tries to press, however, a much
stronger, and rather more dubious, theme, the
By adapting the moral/legal theory of 'rights',
[the movement] may
sell its soul, its roots in mythic and ritual experience, to get
easier judicial standing (p.88);
and more savagely,
the progressive extension
model
of ethics, while holding out the
promise of transcending the homocentric perspective of modern
culture, subtly fulfills and legitimates the basic project of
modernity - the total conquest of nature by man (p.97, also
'p.119)7*
"
While neither of these large claims is strictly true - soul-selling is
simply avoided through adoption of the notion of extended-right, which
can yield a conservative extension of the original position;
and even
utilitarians may be committed to blocking projects which threaten free
animals - each has a substantial point.
Part of the point behind the
latter claim is worth developing separately:-
(2)
Moral Extensions typically cast natural objects, notably animals, in
the role of inferior humans,
'legal incompetents', imbeciles, human
vegetables, and the like.
They
are ... degraded by our failure to respect them for having
their own existence, their own character and potentialities,
their own forms of excellence, their own integrity,
a degradation usually reflected in our reduction of 'them to the status of
instruments for our own ends', and not removed 'by "giving" them rights, by
assigning them to the status of inferior human beings'
(p.94).
Many of us know where the treatment of natural objects as mere means
for human ends tends to lead and has led.
The mistaken treatment of them
as inferior humans, a treatment which fails to see and 'respect the
otherness of nonhuman forms of life', leads in the same direction.
For
given that animals, for example, are inferior, it is legitimate to treat
them also as inferior;
a greater value principle, which moral extensions
typically endorse, yields a similar result.
The needs of increasing
populations of superior humans will eventually outweigh, if they do not
do so already, the cases of inferior inhabitants of this finite earth for
the retention of their natural habitats.
48
For their rights and their
In the larger perspective, the Moral
values will be less than "ours".
Extensions, with their built-in greater value assumptions, do legitimate
the conquest of nature by humans.
Thus too they fail seriously, on what
will soon enough be quite practical grounds, as satisfactory environmental
ethics.
(3)
The extensions, like the parent ethics which they extend, are
narrowly individualistic, and insufficiently holistic. This is particularly
conspicuous in the case of utilitarianisms, which in principle arrive at
all assessments by some sort of calculations, e.g. summations and perhaps
averaging, from an initially given unit conforming to requisite equality
conditions, e.g. equal consideration, equal units of suffering.
In
practice of course the method is, almost invariably, to pretend that the
calculations will yield results which agree with alternatively and
previously arrived at, usually intuitive, often prejudiced, evaluations;
that is, in practice the method is not applied except in a handwaving
back-up fashion.
The method is not applied in part because there are
serious, well enough known, problems in applying it.
The individualistic
bias carried over in other moral extensions, e.g. any experiential theory,
likewise limits their satisfactoriness.
It is to understate the matter to
say merely that 'the moral atomism that focuses on individual animals and
their subjective experiences does not seem well adapted to coping with
ecological systems'
(p.89),
'to explore the notion of shared habitat and
the notion that an organism's relationship to its natural environment may
be an important part of the organism's character'
((b), p.52).
A moral atomism that focuses on individuals, discounting their
interrelations, is bound to result in ecological complexes that
matter
(such as ecosystems, wilderness, and species) getting seriously
short-changed.
To illustrate:-
Under atomism, the value of a complex, or
the rights of a complex, amount to no more than those of its individual
members;
but since these are, in isolation from the complex, no more
valuable than other things of their order, e.g. one gentian than another,
a bush rat from a Norwegian rat, there no special merit in a complex, or
rights attaching to it, in virtue of its rareity or uniqueness or special
features as a complex.
Thus, for instance, a utilitarianism under which
only individual animals count assigns, and can assign, no special value to
species, and can (as remarked) be used to argue against preservation of
species:
Since all animals are equal - or at least all animals of the
same genus are more or less equal - one can substitute for another.
For a
rare species of rat to die out painlessly cannot matter while there are
plenty of other rats.
A rights theory is in similar difficulties so long
49
w
as rights are assigned only to individuals, taken in isolation from their
environmental setting (i.e. only to the usual separable individuals of
philosophical theory).
These problems may be avoided, in part, by assign
ing rights to complexes (given the notion of rights will take that much
further stretching;
which it will not if right holders are assumed to be
conscious or to be preference-havers), and by attributing independent
value to complexes.
But, since the value of a whole is sometimes more
than the sum of the separable values of its individual members, this move
involves the rejection of usual atomism, utilitarianisms in particular.
The objection against the narrow individualism of the extensions - a
defect they share with standard ethics which do not admit of ready
extension, such as contract theories - soon broadens into an objection
that these extensions are built on an inadequate metaphysics, a metaphysics
of rather isolated individuals who (or which) are seriously depauperate in
An ethics presupposes a metaphysics at
their relations with other objects.
least through its choice of base class:
thus for example, usual homocen-
tric formulations of utilitarianisms and contract theories suppose a base
class of narrowly self-interested humans.
The remedy is not (as Rodman
suggests in various places in his elaboration of Ecological Resistance)
to move to holism:
to do so would be to accept the other half of a false
dichotomy mainstream philosophical thought engenders (cf. Routley (g), this
volume).
It is rather to move to a metaphysics that is built on a concept
ion of objects (which may or may not be individuals) which are rich in
their interrelations and connections.
In summary, the moral extensions are the wrong direction in which to
seek a satisfactory environmental ethic.
But the failure of Nature
Moralism does not mean, as Rodman tends to assume, that all positions
51
that are moral in style are thereby ruled out.
For one thing, Nature
Moralism, as characterised (or generalised), is far from exhaustive of
the range of prima facie viable moral positions.
More satisfactory
positions will simply avoid the damaging assumptions of Nature Moralism
(and likewise those of inadequate ethical positions, such as contract
theories or naturalism, and those linking morality to legality;
For another, if the quest is for an
ruled out.
cf. p.103).
moral notions can hardly be
Even if it is assumed that the call for a 'new ethic' is 'to
guide the human/nature relationship (p.95) - a somewhat unfortunate way
of putting it - whereas what matters is the human/nature relationship
itself, and that in coping with that relation fixation on morality or
51 His thesis of the 'limitation of the moral/legal stage of unconscious
ness' is investigated in more detail in what follows.
50
G.
$
legality is a serious handicap, and may contribute to the problem of the
relationship rather than helping solve it (pp.103-4);
still part of the
problem is that of indicating entitlements of agents with respect to their
environment, what sort of exploitation, if any, is permissible, what the
limits on conventional morality are, and discovering 'a larger normative
order within which we and our species-specific moral and legal systems
have a niche'
(p.97).
Nor, in outlining Ecological Resistance, does
Rodman shrink from using - he could not avoid the effect of - axiological
terms such as 'good' and deontic terms such as 'should';
he does not
doubt, for example, that some of what is natural that is threatened is
valuable and that threats to it should be resisted;
and he admits that
'prudence, justice, and reverence may be essential parts of a[n ecologic
ally] good life'.
Ecological Resistance, which is said to be the alternative 'most
faithful to the integrity of experience', exhibits indeed the negativity
of resistance.
The position is founded on action, resistance, and theory
only emerges retrospectively (if perhaps at all).
Its (insufficiently
qualified) central principle is 'that diversity is natural, good and
threatened by the forces of monoculture'.
The struggle between these
forces, diversity and monoculture - between (ecological) good and evil occurs in several different spheres of experience, i.e. at various levels,
which reflect one another.
Resistance is not undertaken for self-interest
or utilitarian reasons, or for moral reasons, or for religious or mystical
reasons (such as preventing profanation), but
because the threat to the [natural object or system]
... is perceived
aZso as a threat to the self, or rather to the principle of diversity
and spontaneity that is the endangered side of the basic balance that
defines and sustains the very nature of things ((b), p.54).
The disjunction,
'or', separates however two rather different (though combin
able) reasons-cum-motives for resistance.
The second disjunct yields the
following reasons for resistance (which are linked by a metaphysical
assumption connecting diversity and spontaneity with the nature of things):
(i) The threat to the natural item is a threat to the principle of
diversity and spontaneity.
So, by the central principle, it is a threat
to what is good, etc.
(ii) The threat to the natural object 'is a threat to the very nature
of things':
(as to how consider the example of the wild river threatened
by a dam, p.115).
So - by an unstated, but nonetheless implied and
assumed, principle, that the very nature of things is good (and natural) it is a threat to the forces of good.
51
W-
The first disjunct yields
a
further,
different, argument;
in simplest
form:
(iii) The threat to the natural object is a threat to oneself.
What
is a threat to oneself is bad and to be resisted, so what is a threat to
the natural object is bad and has to be resisted (since what is bad should,
in general, be resisted).
Although the arguments are valid, the underlying principles are
faulty;
for instance, the diversity (and spontaneity) principle because
it is too simple (and so too does not harmonize with the nature of things) ;
and the second principle, the intrinsic merit of the very nature of the
things, because not everything that is the case or is natural is meritor
ious, e.g. genuinely natural disasters.
Rodman plans to avoid obstacles
to adopting nature as an absolute standard and, at the same time, to
bridge the gap the principle spans, by resort to a version of naturalism
which equates 'the "natural" with the "moral"'
(pp.96-7).
But for well-
known reasons which can be supported (e.g. those telling against objective
ethics of the sort such naturalism would yield), substantive evaluative
assumptions cannot be removed in this fashion;
though they can be
suppressed, they reappear as soon as connections between empirical
grounds and evaluative judgments based upon them are queried.
The
trouble, characteristic of reductionism, arises from the mistaken attempt
to collapse a grounding, or founding, relation to an identity, to close
the gap - which is not problematic but is widely thought to be problem
atic - between value and empirical fact by a reduction of value to fact,
of the thesis that evaluative features are grounded on natural features
to the thesis that evaluative features are nothing but certain natural
, 52
features (e.g. to be good is just to have certain natural features).
52 Rodman interprets naturalistically the statement of Jonas's that he
quotes approvingly (p.95):
Only an ethic which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely
in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the
scheme of things ... an ethics no longer founded on divine authority
[or upon human arete], must be founded on a principle discoverable
in the nature of things ... .
He interprets it in terms of 'an ontologically-grounded moral order in
the "the phenomenon of life" or "the nature of things".'
In this way
can be avoided the reduction of 'the quest for an ethics ... to prattle
about "values" taken in abstraction from the "facts" of experience'.
But Jonas's statement can be construed nonnaturalistically, by taking
the founding or grounding relation seriously, as connecting, but not
reducing, values to empirical facts.
So construed the statement does
help in delineating the sort of environmental ethics sought.
52
*
C
Such reductions commit the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies which can be avoided neither by thinking 'our way through or around them'
(p.97), nor by holistic assimilation of morality in a 'more encompassing
ethical life' (p.103 and note 66). But details of the fallacies need not
detain us, since we can consider immediately Rodman's important suggestion
53
for circumnavigating them (pp.103-4).
Under natural social conditions, such as are obtained in some
traditional societies and in some free animal societies (as ethological
studies reveal), but have been lost in modern societies, law and morality,
at least in their coercive aspects, would disappear, as they did in
William Morris's
yrow TVozj/zgre, and somewhat as they would in a Kantian
community of fully autonomous beings.
In terms of modern physics,
morality and law are not invariants but vary under transformation of axes,
and in fact vanish or prove eliminable under a suitable transformations,
e.g. to a natural condition.
There is a similar natural condition for
morality and legality,
a condition in which the prohibitions now prescribed
54
Conscience and the State would have operated "naturally
by God,
(i.e. from
inside the organism, as a matter of course) , and patterns now stated
prescriptively could have been stated descriptively. When the Way
is abandoned, then we get Humanity and Justice (T<2<9 T6
, #18)
(p.103).
Even if a change of social axes could place us back on the Way, or on the
way to the Way, morality is not really avoidable in our local frame where
we are far from the Way.
So ethical disputes over environmental matters
are also unavoidable;^ for those a satisfactory ethic is a desideratum,
and can help in bringing about a change of social axes.
Thus too, the
identity of the prescriptive with the descriptive, of "ought" with
(suitable) "is", is a merely contingent (extensional) one and fails in
The suggestion helps explain not only Rodman's naturalism, but his
thesis of the limitation of morality and legality;
it also introduces
the anarchistic social change view that suffuses much of the (very
uneven) later parts of (a): the view appears therein as the elabor
ation of what is 'unthinkable'.
Given prevailing socio-economic conditions it should be rather: that
would (ideally) be prescribed. Let us hope, for environmental reasons,
that the principles that are lived by in natural conditions bear not
too great a resemblance to those now prescribed.
Nor is there, in the local frame, much alternative but to resort to
legal strategies, where they can be applied (where standing is granted)
to delay "the war against nature".
53
V
alternative situations;
*
hence, as always, there is no deduction of
"ought" from "is", since deducibility would require coincidence in the
alternative situations.
Nor would morality — as distinct from legality,
which requires some codification - strictly disappear under natural
conditions, though its coercive aspects would:
on the whole, as they ought to be.
things would simply be,
But while deontology would have a much
diminished role (as it does on the preferred environmental ethic),
axiology (the theory of value) would still have its place - some objects
(e.g. diverse landscapes) would be more valuable than others (monocultural
landscapes), some not valuable, etc.
(As things stand, of course,
axiology does have an important place in working out the theory of
Ecological Resistance, especially in assessing its central principle of
diversity.)
The upshot is that without much elaboration (like that indicated
below) of an axiological kind; which connects value through a grounding
relation, as distinct from an identity, with the run of things (but not
aZZ things) that are natural, reason (ii) for ecological resistance
fails.
Does reason (i), which is premissed on the central principle that
diversity is good and natural and threatened by monoculture, fare any
better?
While it is a matter of fact that that diversity is threatened,
indeed is being very rapidly reduced by the forces of monoculture, diver
sity is not, as opponents of ecological values are wont to point out, an
entirely unqualified good.
Nor is diversity is always natural:
a
temperate rain forest can be "enriched" and rendered more diverse by
interplanting of exotics (a practice foresters have applied, e.g. in
New Zealand) but the result is not natural and sometimes at least bad.
Or, differently, ecological diversity can often be increased by increasing
edges between ecosystems, but the practice of increasing edges can easily
be unnatural and far from good, as, e.g. in rainforest logging with (say)
50% canopy retention.
So although a reduction of diversity is commonly
bad, since the reduction reduces the quality of an ecological whole, and
increase in diversity good, diversity can not be accepted as a solo
principle.
In fact, Rodman often couples diversity with other factors,
such as naturalness (inadmissible in determining, noncircularly, what is
good and natural), richness, spontaneity and integrity, which help to
remove various of the counterexamples to a diversity principle.
procedure points in the direction to be pursued:
The
replacement of the over-
simple principle of diversity by a principle combining all relevant
ecological factors. After all ecological sensibility - ecological resist
ance is assumed to be the position of the person of ecological sensibility -
requires sensitivity to all such ecological factors.
54
Once it is determined,
*
through consideration of a mix of ecological factors, that, or whether,
a natural object is good or valuable the reasons for resistance can be
restated:
(iv) Where a natural object is valuable - as
natural objects
are, a natural object does not have to be very ecologically distinctive
to be valuable - the threat to the natural object is a threat to what is
But, other things being equal, threats to what is valuable
valuable.
should be resisted.
So, similarly, threats to natural objects should
often be resisted - and always (on whatever level) resisted where the
objects are valuable and the costs of resisting are not overridingly high
(to begin to spell out the ceteris
paribus
clause).
It remains to tie in reason (iii), a key premiss of which can now
take the initial form that the threat to a valuable natural object is a
threat to oneself.
A threat to what is valuable, to what one as a valuer
values,
is athreat to the valuer, to oneself, for these are one's values.
To make
some of those connections good again requires an excursion into
axiology, one, this time, that connects what is valuable with a valuer's
values.
But Rodman, in trying to connect the threats to natural objects
and to oneself, is forced further
microcosm:
afield, and resorts to the myth of
'Ecological Resistance involves a ritual affirmation of the
Myth of Microcosm'
universe' (OED).
((b), p.5.4), i.e. the view of man 'as epitome of the
While such an affirmation - without the ritual - would
yield the requisite connection, it is a classic piece of anthropocentric-
ism, quite hostile to a nonchauvinistic position, and, fortunately,
inessential to genuine ecological resistance.
What Rodman reaches for
from the myth (which could be restated in terms of seZ/, without its
classic homocentric bias) is however extremely important:
account of the
it is an
which is not a separate subject
isolated from its (natural) environment (as a Humean individual is),
but
is connected intensionally and causally interrelated with that environment.
Rodman introduces this metaphysics in rather old-fashioned terms:
Ecological Resistance ... assumes a version of the theory of internal
relations:
the human personality discovers its structure through
interaction with the nonhuman order.
I am what I am at least partly
in my relation to my natural environment, and changes in that environ
ment affect my own identity.
If I stand idly by and let it be
destroyed, a part of me is destroyed or seriously deranged ((b)
p. 54).
Not Man Apart, in the terms of Friends of the Earth.
55
w
For among my interests are its interests, part of my welfare is its
welfare;
I am identified in part with it.^ The metaphysics deepens,
then, the reasons for resistance.
A resister 'does not stand over against
"his environment" as manager, sight-seer, or do-gooder;
he is an
integral part of [it]' ((b), p.56).
But the environmental metaphysics, that underlies and helps support
the ethics, that is part of a fuller environmental theory, need not be,
and should not be if it is to be coherent, as (Hegelian and) holistic as
Rodman immediately goes on to suppose that it is:
__ By making the principle of diversity central, Ecological
Resistance can incorporate the other three perspectives as moments
within the dialectic
of a larger whole.
an esthetic religiosity have
niches
Economics, morality, and
in the ecology of our experience
of nature, and each has its limits (p.56 continued).
But a principle of diversity which opposes the forces of monoculture will
not yield f/z-fs pluralism, unless illegitimately extrapolated to theories
where its merit is much less evident, especially when some of these
theories are not only mutually inconsistent but false. Rodman risks the
distinctive features of Ecological Resistance for a dubious synthesis.
It is only true that the positions can be combined if the first three
positions are verz/ limited indeed, and then a trivial combination with
each theory working where it works (which may be nowhere actual in the
case of the religious component) can be managed.
Moreover Ecological
Resistance properly developed, will lead to economic and ethical theories
which compete with the rather conventional, and environmentally defective
theories of, respectively, Resource Conservation and Natural Moralism.
Not only is Ecological Resistance severely handicapped by having
implausible holistic theses tacked in to it (not all of which have been
discussed);
further, Ecological Resistance is too negative. A more
positive theory - which includes a theory of value and, ultimately, for a
fuller environmental position, a metaphysics - is required, not only for
orientation and to meet felt needs of environmentalists already noted,
but for more effective, coherent and systematic resistance.
S'? it is but a short step to the ; fully ecological sensibility [which]
knows with Carl Sandburg that:
There is an eagle in me ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky
Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want ... . And I got the eagle ... from the wilderness, (p.118)
The poem almost admits of neutral logical formalisation.
56
§5.
THE VIABILITY OF THE SORT OF ALTERNATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC SELECTED
It is not necessary for an environmental ethic to take a set position
on all the issues so far raised for environmental ethics (or others, such
as whether, and if so which, ecological principles should be integrated
for example, it does not
with the ethical system) ;
to decide exactly
But it can hardly avoid determining
which items do or can have rights.
some of the boundaries in a way different from conventional ethics if it
is to count as an environmental ethic.
In particular, the issues of what
sort of items have or carry noninstrumental value, and how they obtain it,
cannot be escaped indefinitely.
Without the assignment of (intrinsic)
value to some items independent of the states and conditions of humans,
an ethic would remain within the confines of human chauvinism.
But how,
it is all too often asked, is such an assignment possible, or rational?
In any case, the environmental examples already relied upon (in §3) pre
suppose
items.
the assignment of intrinsic value to nonhuman, and to nonsentient
So a theory of value is not only unavoidable but owed.
that can be adopted on an environmental
Of the many accounts of
ethic, the following has much to recommend it:-
Some values are instru
mental, i.e. a means or an instrument to something else that has value,
and some are not, but are non-instrumental or intrinsic.
Some values at
least must be intrinsic, some objects valuable in themselves and not as a
means to other ends.
not, however, imply
That a value is (reckoned to be) intrinsic does
that
it
is
absolute
or system independent;
the
values that are intrinsic on one ethical theory may be instrumental or
relative on another. More controversially, values may be
in one
way or another, on other things, on other values or, importantly, on non
values (such as experiences or felt needs, or facts or natural objects);
but while some values are reducible to others, others are not but are
That is, contrary to naturalism and to other forms of
For
reductionism such as subjectivism, some values are irreducible.
analogues of the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies, formulated in
irreducible.
terms of 'valuable', are fallacies.
In particular, evaluative judgments,
such as those as to what is valuable, are not deducible from nonvaluative
judgments, such as those as to what is conventionally valued or what is
58
experienced.
That values in natural items are intrinsic does not imply
that they are naturalistic.
eliminating
or
Indeed intrinsic value cannot - on pain of
- amount to being natural, or reduce
to the experiences of humans or of sentient creatures, to their suffering
or happiness or preferences.
58
On next page.
57
w
Although some of these things, some of these experiences,
some do not, but have no value, or a negative value or disvalue;
value,
59
and
some things, e.g. some experiences or some natural objects, have more
value (are more valuable) than others.
of value, but by no means everything is.
Almost anything can be an object
Value is distributed unevenly
throughout the universe in something the way that electrical charge is;
some items have positive quantities of varying degrees of intensity (e.g.
a thundercloud may carry a positive charge, and have positive value), some
negative, and some none.
There are however important differences:
elect
rical charge is a quantitative notion, value a qualitative, comparative,
one;
charges are always commensurable, values less certainly or straight
forwardly so;60 and the distribution of values (and especially of
intrinsic values) is much more theory (system, or viewpoint) relative than
.the di^sbributtdn of charges.
For example, on an environmental view, matiy
of the plants Mr Last Man eliminates have (intrinsic) value, whereas on
animal liberation (usual animal chauvinist) views the plants have no value
if no animals remain:
there would be no similar disagreement about
whether the plants were electrically charged.
Evaluative features such
as worth, merit, beauty are features which behave in rather the way that
philosophers of science now mistakenly suppose that
behave:
empirical features
they do not have a hard observational basis but are decidedly
theory-dependent, though the theories involved are evaluative in character
and not empirical.
To assert that value or redness or remoteness is distributed through
the universe is not to imply that these features, value or redness or
For an outline of how this nondeducibility thesis, which yields a
nondefinability thesis, may be proved (in limited contexts), see the
final section of R. and V. Routley, 'The semantics of first degree
entailment', ZVoMS, 6 (1972), pp. 335-59.
A simpler argument against naturalistic reducibility of values is a
consequence of the intensionality of values and the fact that intensional notions cannot be extensionally analysed (syntactically), which
is what naturalistism characteristically assumes.
Strictly the account of instrumental value should be widened if
disvalues as well as (positive) values are to be taken proper account
of.
That is, mcrg
may be at best a partial order, and so an
inadequate basis on which to define total utility functions, and on
which to rationally reconstruct modern economic theory.
If this is so,
as Godfrey Smith has suggested, and the orderings cannot be completed,
applications of the optimistisation models subsequently introduced will
have to work with partial functions.
58
remoteness, exist,
or are to be found in the universe.
undermines much criticism of nonsubjective values;
The point alone
for example, Mackie's
empiricist case is premissed on the false assumption that the existence
of values
is necessary to objectivism, which he does not distinguish
from nonsubjectivism.
Mackie's "argument from queernessis similarly
broken at the outset:
since values are not entities at all, they are not
strange sorts of entities.
To see how unpersuasive Mackie's argument
should be, replace '(objective) values' throughout by, e.g.,
ordinals'.
universe;
'transfinite
They too would be 'utterly different from'anything in Mackie's
but that does not show that there are no transfinite ordinals.
Thus too, since values are not entities, the account of value being
developed is Met a reaZ-Zst one (in the ordinary sense).62
Values, of one sort or another, are features objects may have or
lack;
they are not subjective, they are not features which reduce to
states or conditions of subjects or valuers.
But no more are they object
ive features, natural or empirical features of objects, features entirely
detached from valuers.
A largely unquestioned false dichotomy between
subjective and objective ethical theories has served to rule out important
options (it has been helped by a connected false dichotomy between
instrumental and detached accounts of value:
see Routley (b)).
In simplest terms, an objective account of value has values "located"
in objects entirely independently of valuers, in the way that (inertial)
mass is located in physical objects independently of observers;
more
satisfactorily, objects have values and masses irrespective of valuers or
observers.
Objectivism forces intuitionism, when it is inquired how
values are apprehended or known;
thus a fuller objective theory is almost
always accompanied by an account, so far always unsatisfactory,
61 The position is that for properties and relations argued in (e)
R. Routley,
EepcTX'd, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1979.
Such objects do not exist, but they have
important theoretical, explanatory, and other roles.
62 j.c. Mackie, Ft/zZcs.
especially pp.38-9.
F-ZpTzt
Penguin, 1977;
see
62 So undermining 0K6 part of D. Mannison's claim that we
want to defend a reaZ-Zst theory of values, i.e. a theory of values
that accounts for the truth of "x has value" with no ineliminable
reference to the interests and concerns of the evaluating group
('Critique of a proposal for an "environmental ethic'", this
volume).
The further parts of Mannison's claim are assessed in what immediately
follows. We are indebted to Mannison for forcing us to try to work
out what is wrong and right about detached value theses.
59
3
characteristically modelled on sense perception, of the way in which
64
values are intuited or apprehended.
It is also regularly assumed on
objective accounts that values exist, in the world;
noneism) that is a separable assumption.
but evidently (given
By contrast, a subjective
account finds values in, or not independent of, actual subjects, and
commonly as linked with the pyschological states of valuers.
Although
subjectivism, like objectivism, comes in a variety of forms, it is always
required that where an item is valued there exists, at sometime or other,
a valuer who values it:
"no values without a valuer" holds, in a strong,
an excessively strong,implausible and erroneous, form;
namely, a world
without existing valuers in it is, by that very fact, a world without
values.
Fortunately - since both objectivisms and subjectivisms suffer
from serious, and mostly well-known, defects - the positions are not
exhaustive.
The way between is perhaps best revealed in terms of alter
native worlds.65 Although values in a world (more precisely, that items
in that world a have evaluative features) always depend upon a valuer
existing in sows world, the valuer may not exist in the world of the
values
(i.e. the valuer may not exist in a).
For example, our claim that
a certain world without valuers, e.g. a pure plant world of botanically
rich form, is a fine world, depends on our existing in this world (in
order to make the claim, in fact);
"make sense"
but it does not demand in order to
(of course the claim is significant) or to be true, what is
ex hypothesis ruled out, the existence of valuers in the pure plant world.
That the world is a fine one, is dependent on a valuer in some world (and
that valuer's assessments of value and, if you like, theory or overview
of what is valuable and not);
by contrast, that the world contains only
plants of this or that leaf type, biomass or colour, does not depend upon
a perceiver.66 since values are not entirely independent of a valuer in
the way that empirical properties are independent of an observer, the
An important corollary is that
resulting account is not objective.
transworld evaluation does not require objectivism, nor (as we shall see)
intuitionism.
Call the resulting account, which is neither objective nor,
(short for, neither objective nor
as is evident, subjective,
subjective:
the term is ugly but memorable).
For a fuller account and worthwhile criticism, see N. Smith,
Penguin, 1954.
The use of worlds in ethical theorising, which is old, soon leads into
world semantical analyses of ethical notions, which is newer but will
also be taken for granted: it is ^problematic.
On next page.
60
The replacement of the (no detachable values) thesis,
(1)
There are no values without a valuer,
by the revised thesis,
(1°) There are no values which are entirely independent of a valuer,
still affords the requisite semantical connections between values and
valuers subjectivists have been at pains to maintain, still allows for
the requisite theory dependence and cultural relativity of values, and
still avoids the extravagances of objectivism.
The replacement enables
the defeat of various sophistical arguments designed to show, in virtue
of the conceptual character of evaluative terms, that the case so far
presented against human (or person) chauvinism collapses.
argument of this sort
runs thus:
A simple
Objectivism is untenable;
but that
leaves subjectivism, which validates (1), as the only alternative; and
subjectivism undermines the counterexamples to chauvinism.6&
One defect
of this argument lies in the assumption that a theory can just dispose of
counterexamples, when commonly examples are harder data than any theory.
Note that the difference between evaluative and empirical properties
is not adequately explained counterfactually:
if an appropriate valuer
- it cannot be an arbitrarily chosen valuer - were placed in the world
it would rate the world fine, to be sure; but equally a suitable
observer would perceive perceptual properties.
Both these things
objectivism can quite well allow. Partly for this reason Rescher's
attempt to maintain his initially subjectivist thesis that value must
be benefit-oriented, while admitting Moore's comparison of unoccupied
worlds, is unsuccessful.
Rescher's thesis really gets modified to:
value must be potential-benefit-oriented - with which an objectivist
might well agree, since it becomes a truism if 'benefit' is construed
sufficiently widely (e.g. as 'value'), once unscrambled counterfactually
thus:the unseen sunset has aesthetic value because of the potential
benefits it affords ... [i.e.]
someone were placed on to such a
world, he
be able to appreciate and enjoy this sunset.
(N. Rescher,
Prentice Hill, 1969 ,
pp.136-37.)
But insofar as Rescher wants to suggest that value comes down to
potential-benefit-orientation, that the unseen sunset has value jMst
because of the potential benefits, which are entirely captured counter
factually, objectivists will rightly object; even if no one were
placed in this world, the sunset which delivered no benefits
the
world, would still have value, still be beautiful.
In short, a counterfactually-extended subjectivism remains inadequate.
The requisite relation of entire independence is explained semantically
in terms of worlds.
The truth of A is not entirely independent of b
iff, in every model, for every world of the model in which A holds
there is some world of the model in which b exists.
The valuer of (1°)
need not exist; it is only required (in each model) that it exist in
some world.
Such an argument appears, in essentials, in R. Elliot,
species?', this publication.
61
'Why preserve
9
Such a procedure is methodologically unsound.
In this case the examples
tell against subjectivism, and point to another defect in the theoretical
argument, namely the reliance on the false objective/subjective dichotomy.
It has been objected 69 that the nonjective way between subjective and
objective is unsatisfactory, for the reason that (1°) results in
unacceptible assignments of value.
But the objection depends upon under
standing 'a valuer' in (1°) not in the intended way, as 'a certain (or
definite) valuer' , the determination of valuer being
MpoM the
values concerned, but as a choice term, as 'an arbitrarily chosen valuer',
or 'some valuer or other (you choose)' - which would require, what can
never happen, that every hypothetical valuer agrees in the values assigned.
A precisely similar misunderstanding of (1) likewise gives strange results:
namely that any state of affairs, however environmentally appalling, is
valuable because we can find a valuer, e.g. a spokesman for your local
development association., who would account it valuable.
understood yields no such bizarre results:
But (1) properly
all it guarantees is that,
where a state of affairs has a value then there is a certain valuer
(zj/z^cT? depending upon the state of affairs and the value assigned, i.e.
the choice is heavily constrained) who assigns that value to that state.
Similarly in the case of (1°) choice of appropriate valuers is a dependent
choice, not an arbitrary one.
There are several, deeper (because metaphysically grounded),
sophistical arguments that conclude on the basis of (1) among other
70
things, that human, or at least person, chauvinism is unavoidable.
These arguments too fail with (1).
It is simply a (common) mistake to
think that values and rights do not have a meaning, or an application,
outside the human context or situation:
to establish this point (on
which Moore rightly insisted) it is enough to point out again that
(hypothetical) valuers, not necessarily human or persons, can assign
69
For example by R. Elliot op. cit.
Elliot's objection depends on a
misconstrual.
The original draft of this paper pointed out that
principle (1)
is strictly mistaken: it would be a little more accurate to assert
that there are no values without possible valuers. A world in which
there are no valuers extant may still contain valuable items.
It does not follow from this, what Elliot infers, that 'a state of
affairs has value if it is such that it would be valued by some
sentient individual if such an individual were to exist', with 'some'
read 'some or other'.
70 These arguments are examined in detail in Routley (a), and found
wanting.
The objections there lodged apply equally against variations
of the arguments built on (1°) . What follows in the text on sorne of
these arguments is largely a condensation of some of the points
developed more fully there.
62
C
Q
values with respect to situations and worlds devoid of humans and of
persons altogether.
But though these deeper arguments strictly fail
with the demise of (1), they can be readily restated in terms of (1°),
which can equally be taken (given further assumptions) to support the
thesis that persons (or preference-havers)
are the primary items of
value or, more strongly, that persons are the ozzZ-y items of intrinsic
value.
One of these arguments relies on the idea that persons are the
source of value.
But the argument trades on an ambiguity.
A person is
the source of value-judgements and values in one sense, i.e. s/he is the
valuer;
but not in another, namely s/he is not responsible for valued
item having its valued properties.
Nor is there any licence for reducing
the values assigned to those that serve the interests of the valuer.
The
argument is likely to be given the following sort of initial elaboration:
By (1°), whatever has a value has its value in virtue of an assignment
from certain valuers.
But valuers are always persons.
The argument is however
ever has a value gets its value from persons.
defective.
Therefore what
For even if values were always assigned by persons the items
their values from persons
assigned values do not thereby yet or
(or those of persons).
They have what value they have partly in virtue
of features of their own.
Nonetheless, the argument continues, the empirical features of
objects valued are relevant because they are taken into account in
preference rankings on which valuers base their assignments.
By (1°)
(or
a derivative) values are relational properties not properties simpliciter
as objectivism would have it.
They are relational properties which
depend on certain features of the related item.
Which features, of values?
Well, obviously, preferences and interests of valuers.
So, it is con
cluded, values answer to, or reduce to, interests of persons:
no alternative to chauvinism.
there is
Rather similar arguments lead to such
(mistaken) conclusions as that rights are interest-oriented, that
71
obligations must answer to people's interests,
etc. etc.
The arguments
can furthermore - in case the transit seemed excessively swift - be
filled out, for example as follows:
By (1°),
Thus, e.g. K. Baier, T/ze AforczZ Po^yzt o/
Ithaca, 1958.
63
Cornell University Press,
-B.
Values depend upon valuers, upon their value assignments
or rankings.
-A.
These value rankings depend upon valuers' preference
rankings.
A.
Hence
Values depend upon, or are determined through, the preference
rankings of valuers.
B.
Valuers' preference rankings are determined through valuers'
interests.
C.
Valuers are humans [persons].
Therefore
D.
Values are determined through, or depend upon, human [or
72
persons'] interests.
Hence, it is sometimes concluded, not only is it perfectly acceptable for
humans to reduce matters of value and morality to matters of human,
interest, there is no rational or feasible alternative to doing so:
any
alternative to chauvinism is simply incoherent.
With the replacement of (1) by (1°), premiss (C) is rendered
implausible unless 'human' is supplanted by 'person'
(where the variable
'person' is so characterised that all valuers are persons, something some
accounts of person would rule out).
Thus, without (1), the argument
leads at best to person chauvinism.
Nor does -B follow from (1°):
"not
entirely independent of" does not imply "dependent upon", but at best
"partially dependent upon".
However it does seem that values are, in a
sense, determined through value assignments - assignments made certainly
in virtue of features of the objects valued and of preference rankings of
valuers, that is having dual factual and attitudinal bases - but assign
ments nevertheless.
Accordingly, the central part of the argument can be
reformulated, in a way which locates the main source of damage, thus
A'.
Values are determined through value assignments [preference
rankings] of valuers.
B'.
The value assignments [preference ranking] of valuers are
determined through valuers' interests.
In order to reach what amounts to chauvinism
73
from B', however,
'interest'
has to be narrowly construed, after the fashion of egoism, as 'own, self-
centred or selfish, interest'.
D'.
Otherwise the conclusion,
Values are determined through valuers' interests,
Many variations on this argument are considered in Routley (a); and
obviously there are yet other variations, e.g. value assignments could
be directly linked with interests.
On next page.
64
c
Q
is innocuous;
valuers.
it does nothing to confine what determines value, to
For valuers' interests may concern almost anything, and in
particular may include the interests of nonvaluers(as in 'its interest
is among my interests') and the welfare of natural systems.
understood, is no more chauvinistic than:
D', so
Values are value-centred.
To
succeed the argument has to narrow the elements assessed in determining
value to features of the base class of persons [or humans];
their interests and welfare alone.
e.g. to
For if we have to look beyond this
class to assess value - even to determine interests and welfare - then
the argument to chauvinism fails. Thus the argument has, in order to suc
ceed, to rely upon assumptions either of egoism - valuers' interests are
restricted to their own (perhaps enlightened) self-interest - or of a
group analogue - valuers' interests are restricted to those of the group,
the base class - where (to indicate the final trick in the argument)
there is, in each case, a slide on the elastic term 'interests', e.g.
from ^?z) f/z^r ozjzz
ozjyz Mses or purposes.
to
t/z^^r ozjzz u^urztape., or
t/ze^r
It is evident enough that in order to succeed the
argument has to assume one of the very points at issue, that interests,
which are progressively restricted to chauvinistic interests, are so
restricted.74 But consider, to expose the character of the assumptions
made, parallel arguments to egoism and groupism, i.e. group egoism:
AE.
Persons always act (in freely chosen cases, or rational cases)
in the way they prefer or choose, i.e. in accord with their
(revealed) preference rankings.
BE.
Individual [group] preference rankings are always determined
through (reflect) self [group] interest.
71 What amounts to chauvinism; for if a position were reached in
this
way by a sound argument, then the position would not be chauvinistic,
being justified. For this reason, it is absurd for a rational creature
to present itself (as some philosophers have) as a human chauvinist or
a person chauvinist.
There is however a descriptive analogue of chauvinism, in which the
justificatory clause is omitted; and this use of 'chauvinism' we have
resorted to ourselves (as the astute reader will have observed) as an
interim step.
In the end of course such descriptive-chauvinism is
chauvinism, since the discrimination involved is unwarranted.
74 The claim generalises: it is not possible to mount an argument for
person [or human] chauvinism on the basis of the meaning, or analysis,
of such notions as, o^Z^pa^o/z or r^pTzf or
without assuming, in
the analysis or the course of the argument, the very points at issue.
This is an outcome of the viability of nonchauvinistic analyses of
these notions, together with the content preservation character of
genuine deductive arguments.
65
Therefore
DE.
Individual persons [groups of persons] always act in ways
determined in their own self [group] interests (or that
reflect their own interest^).
Thereafter follows the slide from "in their own interests" to "to their
own advantage", or "for their own uses or purposes".
The eventual con
clusion of egoism, again parallelling the class chauvinism case, is not
only that the egoistic position is perfectly in order and thoroughly
rational, but that there are no alternatives;
least ought to be, no other way of acting,
that is, there is, or at
'that men can only choose to
do what is in their own interests or that it is only rational to do
Thus,person or (human) chauvinism, as based.on the central argument,
3
stands revealed as like group selfishness, "group egoism" one might
almost say.
Likewise the criticisms of the
as we shall now call the argument through D or D', parallel those of
egoism;
in particular, premiss B'
to those that defeat premiss BE.
(or B) succumbs to similar objections
Group selfishness is no more acceptable
than egoism, since it depends on exactly the same set of confusions
between values, preferences, interests, and advantages (encouraged by
slippery terms such as 'interests' and 'self-interest') as the arguments
on which egoism rests.
Briefly, because one may discern or select one's own preference or
value rankings, it does not follow that these rankings are set up or
selected in one's own selfish (or enlightened self) interests;
similarly
in group cases, because a group determines its own rankings, it does not
follow that it determines them in its own interests;
the group includes environmental individuals.
certainly not if
Thus just as BE is refuted,
at least prima facie, by a range of examples where preference, and value,
rankings run counter to self-regarding interest, e.g. cases of otherregarding interest or altruism, so prima facie at least, B is refuted by
examples where value, and also overall preference rankings, vary from
group interests, e.g. cases of group altruism and extra-group-regarding
interests, as in resistance movements, environmental action groups, and
so on.
It is often in selfish human interests (no less selfish because
pertaining to a group) to open up and develop the wilderness, strip mine
the earth, exploit animals, and so on, but ecological resistance workers
Nowell Smith, op. cit., p.140. Nowell-Smith's very appealing critique
of egoism (pp.140-44) may, by simple paraphrase, be converted into a
critique of group selfishness.
This is obvious once B' and BE are
compared.
66
who oppose doing so are commonly not acting just out of (their own or)
human intragroup interests, but out of direct concern for the environment
and its welfare.
But, just as BE is not demolished by such counterexamples of
apparently other-regarding and altruistic action, neither is B:
in each
case it can be made out that further selfish (i.e. self-regarding) inter
ests are involved, e.g., in the case of B, that an agent did what he did,
an altruistic action, because he
in the egoism case,
doing it.
As Nowell-Smith explains
'interest' is written in as an internal accusative,
thereby rendering such theses as BE true at the cost, however, of trivial-
More generally, valuing something gets written in as a
further sort of "interest"; whatever valuers value that does not seem to
ising them.
be in their interests is said to provide a further interest, either the
value itself or an invented value surrogate;
for example, the environ
mentalist who works to retain a wilderness he never expects to see may be
said to be so acting only because he has an interest in or derives
benefit or advantage from just knowing it exists, just as he would be
said to in the egoist case.
"retained";
By such strategies the theses can be
for then a valued item really is in valuers' interests, in
the extended sense, even if they are in obvious ways seriously incon
venienced by it, i.e. even if it is Mot in their narrow interests in the
customary sense.
Thus B, like BE, is preserved by stretching the
elastic term 'interests', in a way that it too readily admits, to include
values, or value surrogates, among interests.
Then however the conclus
ion of the Group Selfishness argument loses its intended force, and
becomes the platitude that values are determined through valuers' values,
just as egoism, under the extension which makes us all covert egoists,
loses its sting and becomes a platitude.
Human chauvinism in this form,
like egoism, derives its plausibility from vacillation on the sense of
'interests', with a resulting fluctuation between a strong false thesis
when interests are narrowed through group interests to group restricted
interests - the real face of human chauvinism - and a trivial analytic
thesis, between paradox and platitude.
To reject the reductionist conclusion D, or D', is by no means to be
committed to the view that the valuers and their preference rankings play
%<? role in determining values and that values are a further set of
In the sense of Wisdom's (meta)philosophy.
The technique of rescuing
philosophical theses by shifts, which begin with natural extensions of
terms, enforced by accompanying redefinitions of terms - including the
thesis "We're all selfish really" - is delightfully explained in
J. Wisdom, dt/zer
Blackwell, Oxford, 1952, especially chapter 1.
67
mysterious independent items somehow perceived by valuers through a
special (even mystical and non-rational) moral sense.
An intuitionist
theory of value is not required, and is not lurking in the background.
One can simply admit that valuers' preference rankings play an important
role in evaluation;
one is not thereby committed to D unless one assumes
- what amounts to premiss B - that these preference rankings reflect, or
can be reduced to, valuers'
(narrow) interests.
Even so important
problems remain unresolved, in particular, precisely what role valuers'
preference-rankings play, and how this role enables the damaging features
of intuitionism to be avoided.
The arguments against genuinely environmental ethics from the
character of
are sometimes followed up by the objection that such
a ethic can be given no, or no satisfactory, theory of value (or metaethic, to.use the current, but questionable, jargon transferred from
logical theory).
It is true that several theories of value are quickly
ruled out, including mainstream noncognitive theories, which are objection
ably chauvinistic, allowing no non-instrumental value to any non-sentient
natural items.
While an environmental ethic, like almost any other
normative ethic, ca?? be supplied with an intuitionist theory of value,
an environmental ethic, unlike most other ethics, wa?/ appear to have no
option to such a theory, though the theory is unsatisfactory and causes
especial problems for the ethic. 75 The unsatisfactoriness of intuitionism
is in part for the usual reasons:
apart from the perceptual comparison
which is problematic in several ways (e.g. evaluative properties are not
like perceptual properties, the moral sense is rather different from
other senses), the theory is (like a purely axiomatic theory) too much of
a black box, which gives no explanation of many things that call for
explanation, e.g. the semantics of value, how value judgements are based
on factual and emotional or attitudinal bases;
but it is in part because
intuitionism provides little guidance or assistance in accounting for the
intrinsic value of environmental objects.
These difficulties can be evaded and the problems largely resolved
through a semantical theory of value, and more generally of ethical terms.
Thus D. Mannison, 'the "new environmental ethic" is ... irredeemably
intuitionistic' (op. cit.), and H.J. McCloskey:
As far as I can see of the known, plausible meta-ethics, the only
one available ... is an intuitionist one.
... [There] would still
be ... the problem of associating it with a non-human-centred
normative ethic, one which did not locate all values in human
capacities states, goods, but accorded to environmental phenomena
value in their own right. ('Ecological ethics and its justification:
a critical appraisal', this volume.)
68
For the truth-conditions, 7 8 and resulting interpretation conditions,
will supply an account of meaning not only of axiological expressions
but also of deontic expressions, and moreover in a way that is plainly
nonchauvinistic;
e.g., it enables natural items to be awarded intrinsic
value in much the way that states or conditions of humans are on
chauvinistic theories.
Something of the shape and character of the semantical analyses
emerges from the evaluation rules for important axiological and deontic
79
functions.
The semantics are set within the framework of the semantics
of entailment:
in this way several paradoxes possible world semantics
induces in deontic (and axiological) theory are automatically removed.
The semantical analyses of the central axiological functor,
'that ... is
better than that __ ', abbreviated 'Bt', and the key deontic predicate
'that ... is permissible', abbreviated 'P', restricted to sentential
terms, take respectively the following forms:
I(A Bt B, a) = 1 iff [B]
i.e.
[A], where [C] = {c e K:
I(C, c) =1},
[C] is the range of C, the class of situations where C holds, some
times called the proposition C expresses.
In short, that A is better
than that B holds in world a iff from the perspective of a, the proposition
B expresses is less preferable than the proposition A expresses, where
the ordering relation is spelt out in terms of a preference ranking.
I(PA, a) = 1 iff, for some world b such that Tab, I(A, b) = 1;
i.e., that A is permissible holds in a iff for some world b permitted as
far as a is concerned, A holds in b - where the relation T is spelt out in
terms of a relative permittedness relation.
Enough of the semantical theory has been exposed to indicate some
important features.
Firstly, betterness - and something the same holds
for other value terms - is assessed semantically in terms of a world-
relativised preference ranking.
In the simplest case, where betterness is
assessed as to truth (rather than interpretation, or meaning), i.e. at
actual world T, the assessment just is in terms of a preference ranking
(so validating a form of premiss B above, for a technical sense of
70
Ethical judgements, both axiological and deontic, have truth values,
relative to their context of occurrence. By use of context, objections,
e.g. from relativity, to the attribution of truth-values to such
judgements can be straightforwardly avoided.
79 Full details of the semantics are presented elsewhere, in Routley (c),
and in R. Routley, R.K. Meyer, and others, PeZevuzzf
TZzeZr
P-ZfaZs, RSSS, Australian National University, 1979.
69
'determined').
Secondly, the semantics of
can be given in
descriptive terms; similarly for deontic terms such as
The
semantical analysis bridges the fact-value gap, by a functional linkage,
without however closing it.
preferential basis.
For it provides no
of value to its
The linkage enables a simple explanation of how
environmental considerations can count:
criteria may be preferred.
worlds satisfying environmental
Sets of worlds where human interests or needs
are not met but ecosystems are maintained may, for example, be prefer
entially ranked above worlds where human needs are met at the expense of
ecosystems.
The way in which the factual basis, which includes environ
mental facts - the descriptive better-making characteristics - enters into
the evaluative judgments of quality, is in outline as follows:
factual
criteria delimit preference rankings on worlds in the same way that
descriptive features of objects delimit preference rankings of these
objects.
It is not the case, then, that we are unable to explain zj?zz/ a natural
item is valuable if we cannot point to some human interest or purpose
which is served.
This again assumes mistakenly, that because a valuer
relative preference-ranking is involved, the evaluation must somehow be
reducible to the interests or purposes of the valuer.
That there is an
allusion in the semantical unpacking of value to the preference system of
a certain valuer no more requires that the items valued are valuable only
insofar as they serve the valuer's interests or preferences than it does
in more familiar cases such as valuing a work of art, a library or an old
building.
Valuers can and do value items because they perceive in them
properties they take to be valuable, and in the interests of other things
whose interests are their own, and not simply for what they can get out of
them or how far they serve their own interests.
The answer to the question
'Why is it valuable?', for a natural item, will not always be, as it must
always be on the instrumental view,
'Because it is good for such and such
purpose or end of the valuer or those of his group', but may be:
'Because
it has properties A, B and C which the valuer holds to be valuable in virtue
of considered preferences, including iterated (second order) preferences
which reflect the preferences of other preference-havers.
In the end, then, environmental value systems are
cvz different
How a seTnaTzt-fcaZ analysis - as distinct from a
analysis may make bridges without involving a reduction - but leaving everything
as it is - is more fully explained in R. Routley 'The semantical meta
morphosis of metaphysics',
JoMruaZ
P/z^Zosop/zz/, 54 (1976),
187-205. For more on how the fact/value gap is semantically bridged
see Routley (c).
70
preference rankings, which take into account different facts from the
chauvinistic systems they are beginning to compete with and aim to
supplant - a different group preference ranking and network (emanating
from the valuer and those like her) which is grounded in a different
perception and emotional presentation of nature.
The semantical meta-ethic is not as neutral as an intuitionistic
meta-ethic:
for the preference-rankings involved require a valuer, i.e.
thesis (1°) is applied, thereby excluding objective theories.
The fact
that the semantical theory will work (perhaps after minor adaptions) for
a range of normative theories is no serious objection.
not have to be precisely tailored to a given ethic:
A meta-ethic does
the same (sort of)
metalogic may work satisfactorily for many different logics.
It is not merely that the distinctiveness of the meta-ethic may be
what is more serious is that the
contested;
(normative) ethic, even
newness
of
the
within Western traditions, may be challenged.
It has been suggested, for instance, that such ethics are but versions
or minor variants of ideal utilitarianism
McCloskey, op. cit.).
(cf. Elliot, op. cit.;
To assess this claim, and to reveal how much the
preferred environmental ethic has in common with such utilitarianism and
how much it differs, considering what counts as ideal utilitarianism is
unavoidable.
In indicating what does count, there is real point in going
back to Rashdall's original explanation:
... all moral judgements are ultimately judgements as to the
value of ends.
This view of Ethics, which combines the utilitarian
principle that Ethics must be teleological with a non-hedonistic
view of the ethical end I propose to call Ideal Utilitarianism.
According to this view actions are right or wrong according as they
tend to produce for all mankind an ideal end or good, which includes
but is not limited to pleasure.
... The right action is always that
which (so far as the agent has means of knowing) will produce the
greatest amount of good upon the whole.
(H- Rashdall, TTze T/zeorz/ o/
Fzz-z^Z, Oxford University Press, 1907, p.184.)
Ideal utilitarianism is thus, according to Rashdall, nonhedonistic
utilitarianism, and so conforms to the core theses of utilitarianism,
namely:
(i) The ethical or ideal end (the good) is determined simply by
maximisation of net utility or value of certain factors or ends, typically
(but not invariably) experiences or states of consciousness such as
pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction of desires or preferences
71
!*
(ii) The ends or experiences are those of some given base class,
e.g. mankind, present persons, sentient creatures (Pase <?Zass r^Z-az^z^sut-Zczz);
and
(iii) Other ethical notions, right in particular, are defined as
determined in terms of the ethical end (^eZeoZ-c^-ZcuZ re^zzc^-Zozz-Zsw).
A corollary of the reductionist assumption - which can take various forms,
e.g. act, rule, average utilitarianism - is that maximisation is uncon
strained by deontic requirements.
The core principles are also readily
discerned in that other paradigmatic ideal utilitarian, Moore,
who like
Rashdall, objects to (hedonistic) utilitarianism on the grounds of its
hedonistic principle (e.g. p.184), and accordingly widens the ends
admitted in (i), and, again like Rashdall, takes the base class to
consist of humans.
as assessed through its
paradigm exponents *Zs thus chauvinistic, and zzo
e^zz-ZrczzwezztuZ.
sc/zewa /or azz
Human chauvinism is in fact integral to both
Rashdall'sand Moore's work.
For example, Rashdall characterises r-z^TzZ; in
terms of good for mankind, and endorses a strong form of the greater value
assumption (p.215).
And Moore
not only identifies the best poss-ZbZe
state of things in this world with Human Good (p.183), but considers 'by
far the most valuable things we can know or -z^azy-Z/ze, are certain states of
consciousness', Zzzz?n<27z consciousness (p.188, my italics).
Each one of the core theses of utilitarianism is false (the case is
argued in detail in Routley (b)).
Contrary to (i) optimisation needs to
be constrained, deontically constrained, else serious injustices to and
ill-treatment of objects within the base class and, more important,
objects outside that class, are all too likely.
But, as against (iii)
this destroys prospects of successful deontic reductions, which are, on
independent grounds, improbable.
To avoid the chauvinism, typically built
See Pr-Zpzc-Zp-Zu Ez^/z^cu, Cambridge University Press, 1903, chapters V and
VI.
Moore does say (p.188) that
No one, probably, ... who has asked himself the question, has even
doubted that personal affection and appreciation of what is beautiful
in Art or Nature, are good in themselves.
But 'appreciation of what is beautiful' reduces, on Moore's account, to
'enjoyment of beautiful objects'; and any independent value in what is
beautiful is 'so small as to be negligible in comparison with that
which attaches to the cozzsu^ozzszzess of beauty', (p.189).
Moore's chauvinistic account thus appears open to familiar objections e.g. those based on enjoyment machines (cf. the wilderness experience
machine discussed above), and on beautiful worlds lacking conscious
beings-which help show that beauty is what counts and not just, or
primarily, experiences of beauty. Moore was not, however, entirely
unaware of such points:
cf. pp.194-95.
72
*
into (ii),
(i) requires restatement in terms of factors which avoid base
class relativisation;
then clause (ii) is eliminated.
The need for con
straints in optimisation modellings of utilitarian or economic sorts can
be seen from the phenomena of interrelated interests and preferences:
that my interests include, or depend upon, yours, means that these cannot
vary independently, but are interrelated.
Repairing the defects of ideal utilitarianism results in more
adequate optimisation modelling.
notion of
The recipe elementary analysis of the
item leads to is, in essence, as follows:
Maximise a
weighted function (e.g. a sum) of the factors that value a determines
subject to appropriate constraints:
symbolically, maximise n-place
function E = E(x) subject to constraining relations Rj(x)
and x = <x^,...,x^>).
(with j an index,
Special cases of such optimisation modellings are
familiar from engineering and economic applications (e.g. determination
of optimal social welfare in concave programming). What is more general
82
about the model indicated,
is, in particular, the form of constraints
permitted, which can include
that ... Xi ... X2 ..."
bounds for optimals).
deontic constraints, e.g. "It is forbidden
(which has the effect of putting a subspace out of
Since there is nothing to prevent moral prohibitions,
requirements of fairness, and the like, from appearing among the constraints
ethics, economics, and practical reasoning can in principle be success
fully amalgamated.
The optimisation modelling of general value theory differs
significantly from that of (ideal) utilitarianism.
Although maximization
is fundamental in both, in utilitarianism value is characteristically
replaced by net utility, measured usually in terms of experiential units
of some sort, whereas in general value theory this reduction is rejected.
In each case there is a
of an ethical calculus, but the currency
is different, being values in one case and base class or individual
utilities (units of utility) in the other;
but in both cases the calculus
is so far (equally) unworkable except in very special cases.
In each
case there is an analysis into components of the objective (function)
maximized, but the analysis is very different.
In utilitarianism net
utility is broken down into individual utilities of members of some base
class.
In general value theory such a reduction is rejected (except
perhaps where appropriate hypothetical valuers are admitted);
analysis into factors that carry value is made.
instead an
(But in Moore's ideal
The general model is motivated, explained, illustrated, applied and
defended in Routley (b) and (d) and also in R. Routley, 'The choice of
logical foundations: nonclassical choices and the ultralogical choice',
L<9<2"f<?a, 38 (1979).
73
utilitarianism, unlike utilitarianism proper, the way is opened for
factors, such as beauty, which carry intrinsic value and are not reducible
to features of the base class or its members.)
In utilitarianism deontic
notions, such as right, are analysed in terms of the value theory;
general value theory deontic notions are taken as given
constraints are imposed on optimisations.
but in
and deontic
Whereas the maximisations of
utilitarianisms proper are (single element) unconstrained maximisations
(hence the injustice, unfairness, and ill-treatment such ethics condone),
general value theory optimisations are constrained.
in principle
While there is room
for constraints in ideal utilitarianism, as there is for a
switch to factors which are base-class independent - though the theory has
never been elaborated to the point where these things are done - deontic
constraints cannot be noncircularly imposed, given the teleological
reduction thesis (so the problems of unfairness and ill-treatment remain).
It is a fairly evident corollary of the differences that general
value theory removes leading objections to utilitarianisms.
It is not
perhaps so evident, however, how it applies to environmental cases or
what the factors of environmental relevance are.
To expose some of the
factors - and to indicate just how far an environmental ethics is dis
tanced even from a comparatively liberal ethic like Moore's ideal
utilitarianism
- consider the very difficult optimisation problems as to
the determination of the Ideal.
Moore distinguishes (1) The Ideal,
from, what is more interesting,
state of things
the best possZbZe state of things in this world',
toward which our action should be directed'
absolute ideal'
(KI)
and (2)
'the
(2)
'the MZtZ/naZe end
(p.183).
Call (1)
'The
'the T ideal' or 'the this world ideal'
(TI).
A crucial difference between the two problems lies in the constraints:
determination of TI is constrained by features - many of them unknown -
of the actual world T (now and in the immediate future), by its populations
of humans and of various species of living things on its various earths,
by its natural features, by its physical and technological resources,
limitations of which will impose characteristic scarcity constraints.
By
That does not imply that no analyses can be given of deontic notions.
Although axiological reductions are ruled out, others are not.
Certainly semantical analysis, like that already sketched for permissib
ility, can be supplied and elaborated.
Moore's teleological ethic is not far removed from Aristotle's ethic
more than 2000 years earlier (which exhibits features of ideal
utilitarianism) . From the point of view of this long relativelyunchanged base line, environmental ethics are not merely new and
radical, but represent a paradigm shift.
74
-
contrast, KI is presumably not constrained by resources or technology
(in relation to populations);
this is just one reason why Leibnitz's
equations of TI with KI and with things as at present fails.
theless constrained.
8S
KI is none
There will, for example, be constraints forbidding
unfair or ill-treatment of various sorts (given that such treatment is
possible), and there will be constraints interrelating factors that are
not independent.
The factors entering into the modelling will no doubt represent, in
some way, many of the positive goods, such as enjoyment of the "meritor
ious" sorts that Moore managed to discern - positively weighted - and
many of the evils he found - but negatively weighted (but some of these
things are better represented through constraints). There remain,
86
however, many features
of ecological importance that Moore never con
templated;
for example, diversity of systems and creatures, naturalness,
o7
integrity of systems, stability of systems, harmony of systems.
Optimising a mix of factors, which are mutually constrained, meets
constant reproaches made against such ecological values as diversity.
The objections take the form that enhancement of diversity as a sole
factor can lead to undesirable ecological results, indeed can diminish
Op
net value and so be wrong on utilitarianism grounds.
On the multiple
factor model diversity is constrained by naturalness and stability, for
example;
thus net value is not going to be increased through increasing
the diversity of a simple temperate rainforest by felling some of its
trees and replacing them with exotic species.
On the other hand, diver
sity will be increased by planting the banks of a stream, eroded through
excess clearing and overgrazing, with suitable exotic species - then birds
Perhaps, moreover, there are no limiting natural laws, such as con
servation principles, but the universe operates according to beneficient natural laws.
There are distinctions here between worlds and
physically possible worlds which Moore did not make.
There may also be, at least in the case of KI, as Moore observed,
factors that we are unaware of - at least under the intended construal
of 'conceivable'.
Rough and ready measures of such factors as diversity are not so
difficult to come by, and, in important respects, present fewer problems
than obtaining measures of pleasure that encompass, in ways that take
account of interspecies and interindividual comparisons, all sentient
creatures.
Compare the objections made in §4 to Rodman's reliance on the single
criteria of diversity; and also Passmore's points in (a) against
diversity as a single criterion in arguments for preservation.
75
and other animals will increase as well as plant diversity - and in such
a case stability will also be increased in the longer term and natural
ness not diminished (since already removed);
thus overall value will be
increased (it may also be increased by the enjoyment of conservationists
formerly appalled by the stream landscape).
Diversity,though (like enjoy
ment or pleasure) good in itself, is (again like hedonistic values) not an
unconstrained value (compare, e.g., enjoyment obtained through secret
maltreatment of animals or by impoverishment of an unvisited streamside).
The multiple factor model also solves the problem of how to combine
traditional values, such as the virtues and creature enjoyment with what
many in the West are only beginning to discern, environmental values;
namely, by a constrained optimisation which takes due (i.e. weighted)
account of them
Thus in moving to an environmental (or nonchauvinist)
ethic one is not
ordinarily acknowledged welfare values for persons
or humans, but simply recognising a further set of values to which such
welfare values should be added.
welfare values are retained;
Nor is one
humans, for human
one is simply aiming to remove - through
constraints which may reduce assignments to human values in favour of
other values - the unwarranted privilege and chauvinism of the displaced
Western super-ethic.
One would not have come very far if, despite the claim to have
recognised environmental values, one assumed that wherever there is con
flict between natural values and human values, the latter must always
prevail.
This would be equivalent to assigning them very low weight, or
even zero value, in all serious conflict cases.
One would not have
advanced far past rejection of axiological principle (A) if one then
accepted, in assessments as to how things should be done, the yreafer
namely that even though other things may have intrinsic
value, people or humans are more valuable than anything else, and rank
more highly (no matter how large their number).To allow that sows
in human welfare values may sometimes - or even often,
especially with increasing human populations - have to be accepted in
cases of conflict is an essential part of assigning a genuine positive
value to nonhuman factors.
Sometimes humans, their states and conditions,
do not come first:
the greater value assumption should be rejected.
Such an assumption - in popular form, that people come first - is
extrgTMgZ-z/ widespread and is even included in animal liberation theory;
cf. Singer, op. cit.
For striking examples of the damaging assumption
at work, see the (chauvinistic) resolutions of the United Nations
Conference on the Human Environment.
o
4
There are many kinds of examples.
Conspicuous examples are provided by
recognisedly evil people (there are, under current social arrangements,
plenty), whose welfare, or even lives, do not rank above, for example,
valuable natural items, or the welfare of future persons.
More con
troversial are evaluations which rank the preservation of an animal
species, such as the tiger, above the increase (or even retention) of
human population in given areas.91 But, for the most part, the compar
ative value of humans as opposed to other creatures and things has been
greatly exaggerated.
The arguments used in support of the greater value assumption are
but variations of those for human chauvinism already considered, and
largely rejected (in §1).
Thus, for instance, Keller argues for a greater
value thesis on the ground that a 'human being is the most complex thing
which we know; its depth and range of experience far transcend that of
any other known living thing'
(p.209)
Ecological Concern', Zz/^o/z, vol.6
(J.A. Keller,
(1971), pp.197-209).
complexity the claim is almost certainly false:
are much more complex.
'Types of Motives for
As regards pure
tropical forest ecosystems
The claim about range of experience is open to
doubt, even for "normal" humans, since many animals have a much wider
range of such sensory experiences as smells; and it is false of many
humans.
More important, range and "depth" of experience, of certain
have) , does not, on its own,
select sorts (those that normally
establish greater value in any routine or regular way.
Often enough it
is no good basis for assigning greater value.
The generalised optimisation model will commonly give way, in
applications less sweeping and more feasible than that of the determining
TI, to such special cases of it as Bayesian decision theory and cost
benefit analysis, where these analyses allow properly for environmental
values and duly incorporate ethical constraints (see Routley (a)).
90
91
It
The fact of the matter is that prevailing unqualified attitudes to
human welfare or the "sanctity" of human life - as opposed to other
life - are shot through with inconsistency. For instance, despite
common claims that human life is sacrosanct, neither the largely
unquestioned military ethics nor medical ethics nor the state or "the
law" take such a position: most individual humans are regarded as
expendible, replaceable, and not particularly or uniquely valuable.
On the prevailing ethic quite a different evaluation is taken for
granted: e.g.
It would be unrealistic to agree, of course, that preservation of
wildlife should take precedence over providing for human needs.
(S. Richardson, writing in T/ze CuTZ&erru
November 29, 1974 ,
p.12)
On an environmental ethic, while it might not be politically expedient,
it would not be at all "unrealistic", to so agree.
77
&
is these more special methods that should normally be applied in trying
to determine a best course of action in a range of difficult decision
cases thrown up for an environmental ethics, especially cases where there
is a conflict (i.e. constraining conditions) between retention of natural
values (e.g. preserving a wilderness or a national park) and maintenance
of humanistic values (e.g. keeping some humans alive, commonly reckoned
one of the highest human-values).
But for a cost-benefit weigh-up to be
attempted such cases have to be described in
more detail
usually provided by chauvinistic philosophers who
than is
to direct such
examples against environmental evaluations - as if furthermore, the
examples were quite conclusive, when they almost always presuppose from
the very beginning what is in dispute, a greater value assumption.
In
connection with such intended counterexamples to properly environmental
ethics, two further points are worth recording:
firstly, resort to such
analytical methods is the rational procedure in such cases (unless a time
urgency intrudes, as seldom happens, or should happen, in philosophy);
secondly, an environmental ethic should not, any more than other ethics
or economics, be expected to provide a decision procedure for any and
every case that may arise:
the theory (and accompanying intuitions) may
have to be developed to resolve some cases, while other cases may go
(cheerfully) undecided.
On similar test or decision cases, e.g. one
group of starving people versus another group in a situation of limited
resources, or quality of life versus number of humans, conventional ethical
theories may offer no quick, or clearcut, resolutions, etc.
The optimisation model indicates, among many other things, how
axiological principle (A) is to be modified.
For best choice and best
course of action are now determined by taking account of the further
range of values, not just those that are human-based.
Then (A) vanishes
into the truism that only those objects that are of intrinsic value are
of intrinsic value, or need be taken into account in the values of the
optimisation model.
How to rectify the deontic principle (D) is rather less obvious than
how to adjust (A).
An obvious strategy, is, however, to add further
92 Even when a case is more fully described there will, of course be
(unavoidable) difficulties in quantifying some of the values, e.g.
those of "intangible" factors; but these difficulties are not sub
stantially worse than those already encountered in routine business
accounting in quantifying such assets as good-will and such matters as
wage relativities for different work.
As L. Tribe has pointed out
(in 'Ways not to think about plastic trees:
new foundations for
environmental law', YaZ-e AuzJ
vol.83 (1974) , pp.1315-1348) the
difficulties of transferring or adapting rather standard methods of
assessment, such as decision theory and cost-benefit analyses, to pro
vide rational decision methods in the case of environmental matters has
been much exaggerated, to the detriment of the environment.
78
*
provisos.
way;
But it is unsatisfactory to do this in a piecemeal sort of
it hardly suffices, for example, to simply add further riders
excluding unnecessary cruelty to animals, speciescide, etc.
What has to
is unwarranted interference with other preference
be ruled out
havers (and goal-possessors)
and the degrading of items of value.
A
revised principle appears then to go something like this:-
DN.
One is free to act as one wishes provided that (i) one does not
unwarrantedly interfere with other preference-havers, and
(ii) one does not damage or ill-treat or devalue anything of
value.
Though the revised principle has a rather more complex and restrictive
character than freedom principle (D) and Western variants thereon, it
still does the requisite task (D) set out to do, namely to state that out
side certain prescribed areas one is free, that select behaviour is
permissible.93 it is simply that the proscribed area is far larger than
inadequate homocentric ethics have envisaged.
But perhaps the whole conception underlying (D), and the way it
fixes onus of proof, should be stood on its head.
On the view behind (D),
one starts from an unlimited position permitting unlimited interference
and exploitation;
restrictions are added primarily because other ones
(again ones of the privileged class) are also starting from a similar
unlimited position whose freedom of action may be (impermissibly) curtailed
by one's own.
So results the initial position, e.g. of (D).
For inter
ference in others' projects (no matter how exploitative) beyond this
"evident" initial position,good reasons have always to be offered.
alternative thoroughgoing
On the
respect view, which is illustrated by various
nonexploitative non-Western ethics, one starts from a restricted position,
a position of no interference and no exploitation, a position at peace with
the natural world so to say, and allows interference - not as on
thinking, restricts interference - for good reasons.
thus entirely inverted:
stop interference.
Western
The onus of proof is
good reasons are required y<2r interference, not
The good reasons include the collecting of fruit
and nuts (and other natural "produce") for life support purposes, but not,
for example, the collection of a substantial surplus of forest orchids on
whim or in the hope that they may be sold at a profit.
A theory of value like that outlined, though it takes it for granted,
93 The revised freedom principle is not incompatible with, but can be
combined with and supplemented by, a bill of rights, charter or catechism specifying positively types of rights and of permissible
conduct.
79
A
in the constraints imposed in optimisation, that there are deontic
principles limiting what is done to many objects other than persons,
leaves main deontic issues open, and in particular does not thereby imply
that such objects have rights.
For woraZ
forbidding certain
actions with respect to an object (fo not, in general,
that object a
94
corretattle r-^p/zt.
That it would be wrong to mutilate a given oak or
landscape painting does not entail that the tree or painting has a correl
ative right not to be mutilated - without (what has a point) stretching
the notion of r^p*7z^.
An environmental ethic like the respect ethic being
advanced does not automatically commit one to the view that natural
objects or artifacts sometimes have rights.
It is sometimes held that some such objects do have rights, e.g.
under the influence of pantheism.
But construed literally, pantheism is
false, since artefacts, and other inanimate objects, are not alive.
The
view that the class of right-holders extends beyond the class of
preference-havers can however be placed on bases less extravagant than
pantheism - most obviously in terms of a suitable deontic analysis of
r^p?zt, for instance along the following lines:
others
d has a right to
iff
(obligation-holders) are not entitled to interfere with d's cj)ing
(if d (f)'s or were to (j)).
Under this account, of
which
emerges straight-forwardly from modern analyses of r^p/zt, a painting or a
tree may indeed have "rights", such as to continue existing.
Although
the term 'right' can no doubt be 6^ctezz<ie(i along some such lines, the
analysis leaves out essential elements of the normal notion, namely the
involvement of choice.
There are, once again, various competing environ
mental ethics, some simple extensions of Western ethics which extrapolate
the notion of r^p/zt, some not, some rationalistic, some not, and so on.
Environmental positions can - but need not - adhere to the familiar
assumption that rights divide into the following two broad classes:First, there are rights held by those (persons, in o?z6 sense) who can
duly claim their rights themselves, a class which excludes many humans
So rejected also is the s^rozz^ correlation thesis, presented e.g. in
S.I. Benn and R.S. Peters, Pocz^aZ Pr^Tzc^pZes a7z<i ^Tze Pew<9<?r<2^<?
Allen and Unwin/1959, pp.89-9, according to which 'right and duty are
different names for the same normative relation, according to the point
of view from which it is regarded' (thereby also elevating what is at
best a coentailment into a stronger identity relation).
For example,
that d has a duty to look after the painting does not entail that the
painting has a right to be looked after by d, in any sense of 'right'
Benn and Peters are prepared to acknowledge.
The weaker correlation thesis - that d has a right to R entails that
at least someone else has a duty with respect to R - is not at issue.
80
&
and (so far as we know) almost all nonhuman animals.
Such rights are
often supposed to carry with them various responsibilities.
Secondly,
there are rights held by certain other (sometime sentient) creatures;
though the extent of this subclass of right-holders is a controversial
matter, it is generally taken to include at least infants, mentally
defective humans, dead humans, and some animals.
These rights do not
carry corresponding responsibilities, though they are, of course, the
However the assumption that certain rights -
ground for various claims.
the really central rights - are restricted to those who can claim them on
their OM% behalf, seems to be based on the faulty idea of private (or
separable) individuals as the basic metaphysical units.
In a community
of socio-environmental individuals there is no reason why one creature's
rights should not be claimed, as infants' and animals' rights frequently
are, by another:
these rights are others' responsibilities.
right-holder has itself no specific responsibilities.
Often a
Moreover the
supposed division leaves it quite vague what responsibilities "central"
often, it seems, they have none that
right-holders are supposed to have;
connect relevantly with their rights.
be put on the alleged division:
a primary nonderivative way).
Accordingly but little weight will
any preference-haver can hold rights (in
That any preference-haver can hold rights
is a consequence of the account of rt<y72t that usage of 'right to' appears
to lead to, namely for very many (action-type) predicates cj), d has a
right to
iff, for every other (obligation-holder) z, z is not entitled
to interfere with d if d chooses or would choose to <&.
Thus that d holds
rights requires of d only that it be the sort of creature that can make
choices, that it be a preference-haver.
The result holds good generally.
Consider the other main case, where the right is to some object b:
d has
a right to b iff, for certain ot (a class of obligation holders, which may
consist of a single person), members of a have an obligation to cede b to
d if a chooses or would choose (to have) b (cf. Benn and Peters, op. cit.,
p.89).
To be sure, there are other cases where rights to are attributed,
but these appear to reduce to the cases given;
which seems to amount to something like:
to work.
e.g. a has a right to work,
a has a right to an opportunity
Similar analyses - again with significance restrictions on the
class of (])S and bs - apply to rights ??ot to, e.g. an animal has a right
not to be kept in a cage.
Rights of this sort can likewise be held by any
preference-haver (but once again such rights
be extended beyond this
class to all natural objects).
Not every right-holder bears responsibilities or carries obligations :
infants for instance do not.
Responsibility-bearers and obligation
holders are a very proper subclass of humans and may only overlap the
81
A
t*
class of humans, and likewise the class of potential responsibility
bearers only overlaps the class of humans.
Thus more demanding deontic
notions afford no point of access for human chauvinism.
To be responsible
for something requires more than ability to have preferences or capacity to
make choices;
it implies liability to be called to account for the thing,
answerability for it.
Similarly, the undertaking of obligations involves
entering into binding relations which imply answerability.
Responsibility
bearers and obligation-holders are thus a subclass of preference-havers,
in accord with the annular theory.
For answerability and accountability
involve some level of linguistic competence - at the very least an ability
to answer, in some language (usually presumed
to be translatable, easily?,
into some human language) - which many preference-havers do not possess.
But responsibility and obligation lead a kind of a double life.
For a
creature that does not have responsibilities, may nonetheless be responsible
for various things, in the sense of having done them, and sometimes done
them deliberately;
as, e.g., the wallaby who breaks down protecting
netting and branches time and again is responsible for the demise of a
Japanese plumtree.
Rather similar oz^p/zf-statements hold true of subjects
who do not carry obligations;
consider, e.g., "wombats ought to be more
careful in crossing roads".
The upshot is that an environmental ethic can - despite its very
different value theory - retain, in large measure, and sharpen, rather
standard accounts of, and distinctions concerning, rights and obligations.
It is in this respect, however, that the sort of environmental ethic being
advanced differs markedly from alternative environmental ethics, e.g.
those which would, implausibly, confer rights to trees, assign obligations
to the soil, and so on.
JM<?7z 6J?fe?zs^o?z pos^f^o/zs, of which Leopold's
would be a leading example,
^Tzaf <2% eM^iro^z/??6?zfaZ ef/z^c
znz^sf yoZZozJ i/zg paffgru cy hosier?? ef/z^<?s
&ase <?^uss.
orzZz/
a zzzzzcTz
The way to a satisfactory, environmental, ethic is to reject
the pattern of the Western super-ethic, not to simply extend it.
The way
is through some sort of annular theory which recognises categorial distinc
tions between different sorts of things, not through a theory which would
delete the legitimate distinctions between the sorts of things.
latter mistaken way is unnecessary.
The
For example, in order to reject the
instrumental view of value, and to assign natural objects intrinsic value,
it is unnecessary to take Leopold's course of viewing all natural objects
as having r^p/zfs in the same way as persons and preference-havers are
regarded as having rights, or of persons as having obligations
natural
objects such as trees in the same sort of way as to other persons.
Thus too there is no need to see the rejection of the instrumental
82
<!
view as mystical or anti-rational, or as reverting to the view that
trees and other natural items house spirits (a view which in any case may
have simply been a way of expressing an allotment of value to natural
items), and hence as gross superstition.
An environmental ethic can be as
tough, practical, rational and secular as prevailing Western ethics.
so such an ethics will
lose much
Even
if it loses contact with its felt bases
in natural things and appreciation of natural things.
An environmental ethic will be much the poorer too if it limits
itself to the moral terminology, and variations of the categories, of
chauvinistically shaped ethics.
There will much more as to care, concern
and respect in the presentation and main principles of such an ethic than,
what occupies standard Western ethics, duties, obligations and rights.
In
this way too, further problems and puzzles for environmental ethics can
be resolved.
For example, the view that ethical concepts can apply to the
non-human world in an irreducible way is often seen as very puzzling.
Much of this puzzlement is generated by attempting to transfer intact a
strongly legalistic and person-oriented category of moral concepts, such
as rights, moral obligations, duties, and so on, to items in the natural
world where they give rise to such apparg^tZ-y problematic questions as
'Do stones have rights?', 'What are our moral obligations to trees?', and
so on.
If we attempt instead to apply a broader, less legalistic class of
moral concepts, such as care, concern, responsibility and respect, much of
the puzzling character of these still essentially moral attributions
vanishes.
There is no great problem for example about how we can legitimately
apply notions such as respect to natural items, once a few distinctions
are made.
The view that the land, animals, and the natural world should
be treated with respect was a common one in many hunting and gathering
societies, and it is clear that this respect was not seen as generated
merely by moral obligations to other persons.
dimension to relations
with
Respect adds a moral
the natural world.
Respect - or the lack of
it - comes out in everyday actions concerning the natural world.
The
following passage contrasts the Western treatment of the land which lacks
respect with the careful and respectful treatment of some American
Indians:
The White people never cared for land or dear or bear.
we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up.
little holes.
When we dig roots we make
When we built houses, we make little holes.
burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things.
acorns and pinenuts.
dead wood.
When
We don't chop down the trees.
When we
We shake down
We only use
But the White people plow up the ground, pull down the
83
St
trees, kill everything
(Tozzck ike Furik,
(ed. T.C. McLuhan,
Sphere Books, London, 1973, p.15).
The great care with which so many of the Indians utilized
every portion of the carcass of a hunted animal was an expression,
not of economic thrift, but of courtesy and respect
(D. Lee, in
Tonck ike Forik, p.15)What the respect position is based on is the fact that it is possible
to make use of something without treating it as something which is no more
than a means to one's ends.
That is, it is possible to make use of some
thing in limited, constrained ways - with constraints which may
not
derive entirely from considerations of the welfare of other humans, as in
the case of the Indians' use of animals - without treating it as available
for any kind of use.
To so use something without treating it as available
for unlimited or unconstrained use for human ends is characteristic of
use.
In contrast non-respectful use treats the use of the item
as constrained by no considerations arising from the item itself and the
user's relationship to it, but as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare and so forth of other humans.
The Western view, as the Indians realised, is the non-respect position,
that the world is available for unconstrained human use.
People who hold
respect positions, such as the Indians, see such a position as indicative
of a lack of moral sensitivity, and sometimes in even stronger terms.
The conventional wisdom of Western society tends to offer a false
dichotomy of use versus respectful nonuse - a false choice which comes
out especially clearly again in the treatment of animals.
Here the choice
presented in Western thought is typically one of eiiker use without respect
or serious constraint, of using animals for example in the ways character
istic of large-scale mass-production farming and a market economic system
which are incompatible with respect, or on the other hand of not making
any use of animals at all, for example, never making use of animals for
food or for farming purposes.
What is left out in this choice is the
alternative the Indians and other non-Western people have recognised, the
alternative of limited and respectful use, which enables use to be made of
animals, but does not allow animals to be used in an unconstrained way or
merely as a means to human ends.
Such an alternative can have some applic
ation in a Western context (for some limited examples of respectful use
in the operations of a small farmer, see John Seymour, Tke Cowpiete Rook
of
Faber, London, 1976).
A limited and respectful use
position would condemn the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals, and
also the treatment of animals as machines, as in factory farming.
84
It
would also condemn unecessary and wasteful killing and especially killing
for amusement or "sport", which is incompatible with respect and assumes
that animals can be used merely as a means for ZrZz?ZuZ human ends.
But
it would not necessarily oppose the use of animals in the case of approp
riate non-trivial need, e.g. for food, although here again it would
insist that the ways in which use can be made are limited, and not just
by considerations of effect on other humans.
The limited and respectful use position avoids some of the serious
problems of the no-use position of the animal liberationists, although it
shares many of the same beliefs concerning the illegitimacy of factory
farming and similar disrespectful methods of making use of and exploiting
animals.
The no-use position faces the problem that it proposes that
humans should treat animals in ways which are quite different from the
ways in which animals treat one another, for example, prohibiting needful
use for food.
Thus the no-use position seems obliged to say either that
the world would be a better place without carnivores, or else that
carnivorous animals themselves are inferior, immoral,
moral creatures - whichever
alternative
amoral or non-
is taken here the bulk of
animals emerge as inferior to humans, or at least vegetarian humans.
It
implies too that an impoverished natural order which lacked carnivores -
and given what we know of ecology this would be a very highly impoverished
one indeed, not to say an unworkable "natural" order - is preferable to a
rich natural one with a normal proportion of carnivorous and partly
carnivorous species.
carnivores,
Since it would imply the moral inferiority of
the no-use position appears to arrive at the negation of its
own starting point,
(as regards e.g., the equality consideration) of all
animals, human and non-human.
In thus seeing humans as capable of a moral
existence which most animals are not capable of, it sees man as apart from
a largely
amoral (or immoral) natural world, denies community with the
animal and natural world,and indirectly reinforces human chauvinism.
§6.
TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
OF THE EXTENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REVISION ENSUING ON
ABANDONMENT OF CHAUVINISTIC ETHICS
A radical change in a theory not uncommonly forces changes elsewhere
- conceptual revision which affects not only the theory itself but many
neighbouring areas.
The phenomenon is well-known in the case of major
physical theories, but it holds as well for ethical and philosophical
theories;
for example, a logical theory which rejects the Reference
Theory in a thoroughgoing way has important repercussions throughout much
of the rest of philosophy, and requires modification not only of logical
85
systems and their semantics, but also, for instance, of the usual meta
theory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is
95
tailored to cater only for logics which do conform.
A
thorough-going environmental ethics likewise has a substantial
impact and forces many changes.
The escape from human chauvinism not
only involves sweeping changes in ethical principles and value theory but
it induces substantial reverberations elsewhere - both inwards, for
example in metaphysics, in epistemology, and in the philosophy and method
ology of science, and outwards (in subjects that presuppose value theory)
in social theory, in politics, in economics and in law, and beyond.
For
human chauvinism is deeply embedded in Western culture, and affects not
only the ideology and the institutions but the arts.
Thus, for example,
much of literature, and especially of ballet and film, is given over to a
celebration :of things' human,', of .'the species. ,-;Eveh the. ti.RfeLy herw,eYnphas.is,
for instance of the counterculture, on-human relations (a-s opposed to selfcontained private individuals of social theories)
remains well within
the inherited chauvinistic framework.
As to the changes, let us begin again with ethics.
As we have begun
to see, an environmental ethic can retain, though in a much amended
theoretical framework (which affects meanings of terms), virtually all
the standard ethical terminology.
But even at a superficial syntactical
level, there will be conspicuous alterations:
firstly, ethical terminology
will be enriched with new environmental terms, drawn in particular from
ecology, somewhat as it was expanded in the late nineteenth century by
terminology from evolutionary theories;
and secondly, accompanying the
attitudinal shifts the new ethic involves, there will be a marked shift
in ethical terminology, away from the predominance of such terms as (and
examples associated with)
'obligation',
to such expressions as 'care',
'respect',
'consciousness'.
'duty',
'concern',
'promise',
'contract',
'responsibility', 'trust',
Because the theoretical and attitudinal
frame is changed, an environmental ethic forces - as we have already
found with such notions as z)oZ-Me, cZzotce, interference and (Zowa^e reexamination of, and modified analyses of, characteristic ethical notions.
It requires, furthermore, reassessment of traditional and conventional
analyses of such notions as nctnraZ- ri^/zt, ^ronn^Z of ri^Zzt^ and perznissib-
iZitz/., especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions - much
as it requires the rejection of most of the more prominent meta-ethical
These points are explained in detail in Routley (e);
and also in
L. Goddard and R. Routley, TZze Lopic of Cipnificonce an^Z Context,
Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, 1973, chapters 3 and 4.
86
0
46
positions.
Cursory examination of recent accounts of TzuZ^ruZ rZpTzZ^
zzzoruZ-Ztz/-,
and
ucf-Zczz will help illustrate and confirm these
points.
Hart, for example, accepts (subject to defeating conditions which
are here irrelevant) the classical doctrine of natural rights according
to which, among other things,
any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is
under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons
Hart,
(H.L.A.
'Are there any natural rights?', reprinted in PcZ-ZZ-ZcuZ
P/z-fZoscpZzz/,
(ed. A. Quinton), Blackwell, Oxford 1967).
But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on
accepting the basic chauvinist principle - a variant of (D) - environmental
ethics reject;
since if a person has a natural right he has a right.
So
too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective
principle.
Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straightforward matter now
that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are,
like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major
re-evaluation.
Another example of chauvinism at work in the very setting up of the
field of discussion and problems in ethics is provided by recent accounts
of woruZ-ZZy, where it is simply taken for granted that 'moral' distinguishes
96
among ZzMzzzu?z actions, policies, motives and reasons,
and that what is
moral refers essentially to human well-being (contentment, happiness or something of this general sort, tied with appropriate states or
97
conditions of humans).
Such criteria for what is moral are chauvinistically based, assuming that what does not bear on human states or conditions
cannot be a moral matter.
What happens in worlds without humans,
how animals fare or are treated, what is done or what happens to plants
or other natural objects - none of these are directly moral matters,
except insofar as they impinge on human welfare.
That is human
96 Thus for instance, B. Williams, AfcruZ-Ztp; 24% P^z^rodMcf-Zo^ fo Ff/z-Zcs^
Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p.79. Williams does, however, remark in
his Preface (p.xiv) how 'shaky and problematic' the distinction - which
he subsequently takes for granted - is.
97 See, for example, P.R. Foot, TZzeor'Zes
Ft/z-Zcs, Oxford University
Press, London, 1967, and G.J. Warnock, Ccwfewporurz/ AforuZ P/z-ZZosop/zz/,
Macmillan, London, 1967, and also TZzg
o.f MoraZ-Zfz/, Methuen,
London, 1971.
87
t*
chauvinism at work, and is at the same time a reductio
such criteria.
s-
ad absurdum of
A different nonchauvinistic account of what is moral is
required (a beginning can be made by adopting certain of the maligned
formal criteria).
It is evident that any account which meets even weak
conditions of adequacy will serve to meet the objection that an environ
mental ethic is not concerned with what is moral but is really an aesthetic
theory.
For the objection as usually presented depends squarely on a
chauvinistic restriction on morality, all the rest of value theory being
classed, or dismissed, as "(mere) aesthetics".
The case of morality
illustrates the characteristic way in which theories - in this case
chauvinistic ethics - redefine crucial notions in their own terms to suit
their own ends, such as entrenchment and fortification of the theories
against objections.
Further corollaries of the rejection of chauvinism include the
inadequacy of recent fashionable attempts, mainly derivative from Hobhouse,
at characterising a^naZf^z/ and justifying it in ways that argue from man's
humanity^98 and the inadequacy of much recent, largely chauvinistic, work
in the philosophy of actdan, which takes it for granted that action and
99
rationality requirements on action are bound up with human nature.
The abandonment of chauvinism implies the rejection not only of much
ethical analysis, but of all current major ethical positions.
The bias of
prevailing ethical positions, and also of economic positions, which aim to
make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is
especially evident.
These positions typically employ a single criterion
p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically
each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps
including future humans, is supposed to have (at least) an ordinal p-
ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy);
then
some principle is supplied to determine a collective p-ranking of these
states in terms of individual p-rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the
Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism in
terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking.
The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class.
And
98 Among such unsatisfactory liberal egalitarian positions are those
presented in G. Vlastos, 'Justice and equality' in SacZaZ JnstZae
(ed. R.B. Brandt), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, and
B.A.O. Williams, 'The idea of equality' in P^Zasap/zz^., PaZfZfcs and
JacZafz/, Second series (ed. P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman), Blackwell,
Oxford, 1963.
99 see, e.g.^T. Nagel, T/ze Pass-Z&'ZZ'Ztz/ a/ ^ZZrnZszzz, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1970.
88
even if the base class is extended to include persons or some animals
(at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that
the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to
unjust principles.
To take a simple example, if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes'
behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will
rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (still
unfortunately the evaluation of most Australian farmers, though it lacks
any requisite empirical basis).
Likewise it would just be a happy
accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from
individual demand) for a state of the economy with sperm whales as a
mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands;
for
if but few in the base class happened to know that sperm whales exist or
cared a jot that they do, then even the most "rational" economic decision
making would do nothing to prevent their extinction.
But whether the
sperm whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what
they see on television.
Summed human interests, or preferences of certain
private individuals, are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis
for deciding upon what is environmentally desirable.
Nor would such
accidental bases be adequate.
Moreover ways out of the problem do not bear much investigation.
It cannot be assumed, for instance, that the base class is on the whole
good, and hence will not enjoin reprehensible behaviour, because such an
assumption seems false, would at best be contingently true (so that the
theory would fail for different circumstances to which it should apply),
and would involve a deep problem in the theory, since it would then seem
to admit the determination of goodness - that of the base class, on the
whole - independently of what the theory was set up to determine, among
other things, goodness.
Nor can it be assumed, without serious circularity,
that the optimisation is constrained by requirements of justice or fairness
(see Routley (b) and §5 above).
The ethical and economic theories just singled out (which are based
on optimisation over select features of the base class) are not alone in
their species chauvinism;
much the same applies to west going meta-
ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some
rationale for their basic principles.
That is, the argument against
utilitarian—type ethical and economic theories generalises.
For instance,
on social contract positions, obligations are a matter of mutual agreement
89
between individuals of a given (but again problematic) base class;
on a
social justice picture, rights and obligations spring from the application
of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the base class, usually
a rather special class of persons;^00 while on a Kantian position, which
has some vogue, obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the
base class, persons.In each case, if members of the base class happen
to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class, then that is unfortun
ate for them: that is (rough) justice.
Looking outwards from the ethics, the abandonment of chauvinism has
likewise a wide set of consequences, both theoretical and practical, in
economics, politics and law, and generally in the social sciences.
One
major practical economic impact of environmental ethics is in the extent
to which free enterprise can operate unimpeded or unchanged.
of business and enterpreneurial activity - to
But
consider <9722 option - will
involve, in turn, either legal constraints, or reallocation of activity
by such devices as environmental pricing, which directs activity away from
environmentally undesirable pursuits.
For example, if it is wrong to
destroy a rare ecosystem in order to make a few more dollars, then
restrictions should be imposed on business activity by one method or
another.
To some limited extent this is already happening in the field of
pollution, but primarily because of the likely effects, direct or not too
far removed, that pollution comes to have on other humans, not for a wider
set of reasons, and often not for the right reasons.
With a wider environ
mental code, the public and legal intrusion into areas typically regarded
as "private" and open to the free enterprise operations (of "open go")
would be much more extensive.
The same applies in the case of private
Thus for example,
[Rawls'] original position seems to presuppose not just a neutral
theory of the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception
according to which the best that can be wished for someone is the
unimpeded pursuit of his own path, provided it does not interfere
with the rights of others.
This view is persuasively developed in
the later portions of the book, but without a sense of its controver
sial character (T. Nagel, 'Rawls on justice' , P/z^Zcsop/ztcczZ
82 (1973), p.228).
Nagel also effectively argues that Rawls' original position is not
neutrally determined but involves substantial moral assumptions (e.g.
pp.232, 233); they are mostly, as it happens, of a chauvinistic cast.
While the first of Kant's maxims is not so restricted in actual form
ulation, others are (see H.J. Paton,
AforuZ P<2M, Hutchinson, London,
1947) . And, firstly, such maxims are s^ppast?^ to be equivalent to ones
formulated in terms of persons; secondly, they are supposed to be
derived from features of, or connected with, people.
90
-4
property;
for example, given that it is not permissible to erode hill
sides then there should, in this setting, be (legal) restrictions on
farmers' and foresters' activities.
Although the impact on the practice of economics of a thoroughgoing
environmental ethic would be drastic - market negotiations, firms'
activities, international trade, all would be affected - the impact on
the underlying theories of preference and choice is comparatively
For much of economics is squarely founded
but still far from negligible.
on chauvinism.
less,
The theoretical bias follows directly from the utilitarian
bases of the theory, which is fairly explicit in welfare theory and rather
heavily disguised in neoclassical theory.
But although choice and value
theory are, as characteristically presented in economics and elsewhere,
damagingly chauvinistic, they do not have to be.
For the theories can be
reformulated in a non-chauvinistic way, as was indicated (in §5) above
for utilitarianism - upon which economic theory is modelled.
On such a
revamped foundation an environmental economics to match the chosen
environmental ethic can be built (for some preliminaries on this approach,
see Routley (d), appendices 1 and 6).
Several of the objections to base class theories such as utilitar
ianism apply not merely against orthodox economic theory, but also to
voting theory, to representative democratic systems of determination of
political action.
If, for, example, the base class consists of private
individuals motivated by their own self-contained interest then such
procedures can readily lead to most undesirable results, especially if
these individuals
compromise
representative individuals.
their autonomy through the election of
For the more powerful of these representative
individuals can be - and typically are, as their behaviour if not their
protestations show - not favourably disposed to (the welfare of) things
outside the base class or even to many members of the base class.
Nearer the theoretical surface, especially in such branches of
economics as "resource management", the chauvinism is more conspicuous.
The following narrowly utilitarian assumption is quite typical:
The goal of resource managers should be to communicate and act in
ways that maximize human satisfaction (H.J. Campbell, 'Economic and
social significance of upstream aquatic resources' in Forest
Fs^s
Oregon State University, Corcallis,
1971, p.14, also p.17).
When
management - where such is
management becomes
needed at all - the goals will be changed from such chauvinistic ones.
91
The method of interference in
"free economic enterprise", of
controls and regulations, of legal and political constraints, is only one
way in which leading principles of an environmental ethics can be put
into effect.
A quite different, and ultimately far more appealing,
approach is by way of structural change, by changing the socio-economic
structure in such a way that it comes to reflect on environmental ethics
(by altering the frame of reference, or axes, to use the physical picture
of §4, so that major problems vanish).
Requisite structural change is
.
102
far-reaching, both practically and theoretically
in every reach of
social science.
For example, while on the
position,
capitalist markets are subject to further regulation, either directly
imposed or by way of suitable pricing policies, in the s^rz^g^raZ. c/zaMgre
position, capitalist markets are eliminated;
while under state
regulation private property is subject to further Controls,given approp
riate structural change private property disappears.
Looking inwards, an environmental ethic has an impact on the
practice of many sciences other than the social sciences - what they do
experimentally with natural objects (e.g. the treatment of animals in
laboratory testing);
how their research programmes are organised and
directed (consider,e.g., projects involving irradiation or broadscale
herbicide treatments of rainforests);
the way classifications are made
and which are made (consider, e.g. the extent to which human perception
enters into classifications in botany);
recommended on the basis of such sciences.
and, of course, what is
For as it stands human
chauvinism is deeply embedded in the practice of science, directly in
research and experimentation and in shaping classifications, theses and
theories.
Indeed the effect of a different ethic may extend even to the
theory of such sciences, in particular through the bearing the ethic has
103
on metaphysics which m turn influences the foundations of such sciences.
Such a new ethic would quite properly upset (as §1 should indicate) the
extent to which humans are seen at the centre of things and things as
accountable through them and scientific theories as 'human constructions
wrestled from a hostile nature'
(after Popper).
It would help overthrow
the pernicious chauvinistic idea that, apart from certain elementary facts,
4ZZ-es
value.
Me?zs<?/ze?zzjgr^, all necessity, all intensionality,
all
It should result too in the shattering of still widespread
As (g) V. and R. Routley, 'Social theories, self management and
environmental problems', this volume, begins to explain.
Cf. R. Harre, TTza P/z^Zosop/ztes c/ S'c^eyzcg, Oxford University Press,
1972;
and also Routley (e).
92
*****
assumptions as to the nature of animals and plants, for instance that
their apparently goal—directed and intensional behaviour can be explained
(away) mechanistically, and the deeply-rooted idea that some sort of
Cartesian metaphysical picture of natural, as distinct from spiritual or
rational, objects can be maintained (cf. again §1).
In metaphysics there are at least two further important classes of
effects. Firstly, the orthodox views of man's relation to nature, the
dominant and modified dominant and lesser traditions, have to be abandoned
and new positions worked out.
In this sense, a new environmental ethic
implies a similarly new metaphysic redefining Man's place in nature and
human/nature relationships.104 Such a new philosophy of nature will
recognise various natural objects other than humans as of independent
value, so it will not be naturalistic.
Nor will it view natural objects
as simply available for the use, wise or otherwise, of humans.
Several
principles derived from the orthodox metaphysical positions will have to
be abandoned and replacements worked out (as in the case of (D) in ethics)
Thus superseded, for example, will be the principles of total use of
natural areas for human use and of maximum long-term productivity of the
earth's resources (principles criticised in their application in forestry
in Routley (d)). At a deeper level, such a philosophy of nature will
involve a turning away from the leading ideological principles of both the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment and of much that went with them (e.g.
with the Renaissance,
the rise of commerce, bureaucracy, professionalism,
formal education, and subsequently, with the Enlightenment, the rise of
the modern state, capitalism and scientific enlightenment).
For it means
the dismissal of the chauvinistic principles of theRenaissance,with 'Man
as the kernel of the Universe', a creature 'half-earthly and half-divine,
his body and soul form[ing] a microcosm enabling him to understand and
control Nature ...'.1°5
It means too removal of the humanism of the
Enlightenment, the reduction of what formerly was assigned to the religious,
such as ethical and political principles, to the human, a reduction which
104 As Passmore has observed - inconsistently with what is claimed m his
(a) - in 'Attitudes to Nature', Roz/aZ
of PTz^oscp/zy Lectures,
volume 8, Macmillan, London, 1975. As against Passmore (a) p.3, such
new ethics and metaphysics need involve no abandonment of 'the
analytical, critical approach which is the glory of the West : on the
contrary, they may well mean a more thoroughly critical and analytical
approach than hitherto.
105 goth quotations are from T^ze
<?y tTzg 7?e7z<2^ss(2%<3g (ed. D. Hay)
Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp.7-10, where too main movements,
practical and ideological, of the Renaissance are usefully
indicated.
93
was based on the false dichotomy, which has still not lost its hpld:,
religious or humanistic.
Secondly, the removal of humans from a dominant position JhT the
natural order renders immediately suspect a range of familiar philosophical
positions of a verificationistic or idealistic kind such as phenomenalism
in epistemology (how can what exists depend on what is perceived by
members of such a transitory and perhaps not so important species or ^on
whether there exist
perceivers?), intuitionism in mathematics, con
ventionalism in logical theory, the Copenhagen interpretation ir^ micr<^-
physics, and subjectivisms not only in ethics but in every other*
*
True, most of these positions are defeated on t^e
basis of other considerations anyway; but it is an immediate and fur,t^ier
philosophical sphere.
point against them that they are damagingly chauvinistic.
Thus a corollary of the thoroughgoing rejection of human chauvinism,
of very considerable philosophical importance, is the rejection of all
the
usual forms of idealism, i.e. all positions which accord primacy to
the human subject and make the existence of a world of things or the
nature of things dependent upon such subjects.
A paradigmatic example is
phenomenalism; other examples are Kantian idealisms, Hegelianisms and
later German idealisms, Christian philosophies based on the primacy of
human (and superhuman)
consciousness, existentialisms;
more surprising
examples are empiricisms - inasmuch as all knowledge and truth is supposed
to be ultimately derived from human experience - and their holistic
images, dialectical materialisms and Marxisms.
A satisfactory environ
mental philosophy will be significantly different from all these
positions.
94
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�HUMAN CHAUVINISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
*
Richard and Vai Routley
Class chauvinism has been and remains a cardinal weakness of most
moral codes - including, so it will be argued, Western ethics.
A most
serious failure of Western ethics is its human chauvinism or anthropocentricism - a chauvinism which emerges in a refined, and apparently more
reasonable, form as person chauvinism in much modern ethical theory.
What is chauvinism?
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is
differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment (by
sufficiently many members of the class) for items outside the class, for
which there is not
justification. PLzwan chauvinism is class
chauvinism where the class is humans, zzzuZe chauvinism where the class is
human males,
chauvinism where the class is animals, etc.
It would be bud, to say the least, if Western ethics, in its various
strands, were to turn out to rest on human, or person, chauvinism.
For
Western ethics would then have no better foundation than, and be open to
the same sorts of objections as, moral codes based on other sorts of
chauvinisms, e.g. on familial, national, sexual, racial or socio-economic
class chauvinism - in particular it would be open to the objection that
*
This paper (which considerably elaborates R. Routley 'Is There a need
for d ew, an environmental, ethic?',
of f/ze XVfb VorZd
P3 1 (1973), pp.205-10), was drafted in 1973 and
read in 19
he University of Indiana, Bloomington, at Notre Dame
University, an
t the Conference on The Good Society held at the
University of
Canada. Since the main virtue of the paper has
been that it h
ed much interesting discussion, the original
form has been retained,
the authors are no longer especially
happy with the form, an
theses remain insufficiently developed or
e the previous and continuing
defended.
But in order
have been made, even though the
criticism, no substanti
paper has been raided and segments o it presented in improved form
'Against the inevitability
elsewhere, especially (a) R. and V. Rou
of human chauvinism', in MoruZ P/zfZosopbz/
e University Press,
(edited by K. Goodpaster and K. Sayre), Notre
1978, and (b) R. and V. Routley, 'An expensiv
, Choice
utilitarianism', paper presented at the Colloquium on
some
u?zd VuZz^g, RSSS, Australian National University, 1977.
sizeable additions have been made, with a view to incre
intelligibility and enlarging the scope of the original draft,
ing some of the many objections.
1
�v'
it discriminated against nonhumans in a prejudiced and unwarranted way,
and would thereby stand condemned.
For it is hard to see how an ethic
based on simple species loyalty could have any greater claim to absolute
ness or deserve any more respect than moral codes based on simple loyalty
to national, sexual, or racial classes.
Such an ethic could no more
command allegiance - once the facts are brought into clear view - than
other normally-deplored examples of localised class chauvinism, such as
the Mafia or protection agencies or rackets or enclaves of slavery.
Unfortunately prevailing Western ethics appear to be of just this sort.
§1.
THE WESTERN CASE FOR ITS HUMAN (OR PERSON) CHAUVINISM:
THE FIRST LINES OF DEFENCE
It is important, then, for defenders of the Western ideology to be
able to show - i/ it can be shown - that an ethic which discriminates
strongly in favour of humans, as Western ethics apparently does, is not
chauvinistic.
Otherwise the ethic stands condemned.
Of course not every
distinction in treatment qualifies as chauvinistic - the distinction in
treatment may not be substantial or systematic, and there may be an
adequate and explicable basis for the distinction, so that some discrimin
ation is warranted.
In order to escape the charge of human chauvinism,
it has to be shown how and why the drastic and general discrimination in
favour of humans sanctioned and enjoined by modern (as by historical)
Western ethical systems is warranted, and that it has an adequate basis.
The extent of this chauvinism, especially with respect to animals, is at
last - after centuries of a priori prejudice and gross distortion of the
characteristics of wild animals and wilderness - beginning to be spelt
'x
out. 1
'X
It is at least clear from the outset that an adequate justification
cannot be provided which simply selects all and only these members of the
species human (i.e. Zzcmo sup^e^s) as zoologically defined.
nothing about the characteristic of
There is
itself (as distinct perhaps
from its accompanying properties) which could provide a justification for
overwhelmingly favourable treatment for humans (and unfavourable treatment
for nonhumans) as opposed to other possible, and possibly some actual,
nonhuman creatures.
Once again, an adequate ethic and justification can
not possibly be based on blind and unthinking species loyalty.
The same
1 See, e.g., S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds), 4^iwcZs^
and*
Morals.
4%
<?y
Gollancz,
London, 1971; P. Singer,
4 net.)
/or
cy
Cape, London, 1976; S.R.L. Clark, 7'Zie
-Staffs <?y 4^iwaZs, Clarendon, Oxford, 1977.
2
�Meeds argument:
objection applies against the simple
the commonly
assumed domination of human needs over all else (e.g. over all environ
mental considerations) has, if it is to have any merit, to be based on
2
more than speciesism.
We shall have to look then for some other not
merely taxonomic characteristic to provide the sought justification.
It
will emerge however, that any such characteristic is held or may be held
by nonhumans, and is not held, or potentially not held, by all items of
the species human.
Of course there are many characteristics which can, as a contingent
matter, be used to distinguish human beings as a general class from other
higher animals - although in fact with increasing knowledge of animals it
is no longer clear that some of these characteristics distinguish as
clearly as was assumed a priori in the past.
For example, humans have a
language, and a culture of a certain sort and even various logics.
And,
as we are accustomed to have people point out, other terrestrial animals
do not conduct philosophical discussions on environmental ethics.
However
not only is participation in these activities potentially available to
nonhuman creatures, and these characteristics possibly possessed by some,
but these activities are not generally engaged in even by humans
(particularly the power elite), many humans lack the requisite competence,
and even among those who do qualify, such activities are carried out to a
very varying extent.
We run the risk, then, in applying such demanding
criteria, of ruling out, of classing as deserving of "sub-human" or "sub
person" treatment, a considerable class of human beings - items most
humans would consider as worthy of better treatment than that normally
accorded by humans to nonhuman animals.
What is more important however is that such criteria as human
language, culture, human civilization, human intentionality, or whatever,
appear to provide no satisfactory
for the substantially
unfavourable treatment allotted those falling outside the privileged
class.
should there be such strong discrimination in favour of
language or a higher level of
creatures having a (certain sort of)
intelligence and against creatures or items which do not, in favour of
things with a certain sort of culture or a certain logic and against
those without?
Especially when some of these criteria are clearly, and
As McCloskey remarked (in a letter dated 5.7.77 containing many helpful
comments) 'talking about needs does little but obscure the problem, as
needs, to be normatively relevant, involve reference to goods;
and
that merely transfers the problem'.
On next page.
3
�unjustifiably,loaded in favour of human interests, achievements and
abilities (cf. the cultural loading of various intelligence tests).
By
contrast the very many respects in which some uvimuT-s or sorts of animals
are corsftierabZi/ s^pericr to /zMwars (many are noted in V.B. Droscher, T^e
Mayic o/
*
t^e Senses.
/VeM Diseorerfes tn ^nfmat Perception, Allen, London,
1969) are rarely considered;
yet some of these features would, if taken
in the same serious way as some respects in which humans excell, justify
a reverse chauvinism (which could be reflected as, /or example, in the
Hindu treatment of cows).
The only sort of justification for the discrimination that might
appear convincing - that those who have the given characteristic (e.g.
those that are more intelligent, or more rational, or richer) are more
valuable or worth special treatment - is vitiated by the fact that were
it accepted by Western ethics it would warrant similar discrimination
hcfMccv humans (or persons).
For how do we show that the allegedly
warranted discrimination is sufficiently different from making substantial
(class) distinctions between humans in terms of their level of intelli
gence, linguistic or logical ability, or level or kind of cultural
achievement - so that those with "lower" levels of these valued abilities
are treated in a consistently inferior way and regarded as available for
the use of the others?
In short, these characteristics do not provide
adequate justification for the substantially inferior treatment accorded
those not having them, and so the charge of chauvinism is not escaped by
producing them.
A similar set of points applies against a number of other criteria
traditionally or recently proposed to distinguish the privileged class.
4
Often these are propounded in terms of personhood and criteria for being
a pgrscyz (the class marked out for privileged treatment being the class
of persons) rather than criteria for being /zvmuTZ - in order to escape
difficulties raised by young, senile, decrepit, stupid, irrational,
For undoubtedly many mammals, birds and insects can communicate, some
times in ways analogous to language, even if the honorific term
'language' is withheld (see - to select an unfavourable source - the
discussion in E.O. Wilson,
TZze ZVetJ SpvtTzesis, Belknap,
Cambridge Mass., 1975, chapter 8 ff.).
It is becoming increasingly
evident, however, that the ascription of some linguistic ability, and
of elementary languages, to nonhuman creatures should not be withheld;
see, e.g. the details assembled in E. Linden, 4pes^ Mev
Lavpvupe,
Penguin, New York, 1976.
(But contrast Wilson, op. cit., pp.555-59,
and to set this in proper perspective, consider Wilson's discussion of
ethics and aesthetics a few pages later, pp.562-65.)
Many of the criteria that have been proposed are assessed, and found
wanting, in Routley (a).
4
�damaged and defective humans, extraterrestrial creatures, and super
animals;
to avoid the merely contingent connections between being human
and having requisite person-determining characteristics (such as ration
ality or knowledge) supposed to warrant discriminatory treatment;
and to
defeat, though it is a pyrrhic victory, the charge of human chauvinism
(or
equivalents of the charge, such as anthropocentricism or
speciesism).
But much the same problems then arise in terms of criteria for
a person, and the chauvinism problem reappears as the problem of furnish
ing criteria which are suitably clearcut, and do separate persons from
assumed nonpersons, and which would provide an adequate justification for
substantially privileged treatment for persons and inferior treatment for
nonpersons.
Unless such a justification is forthcoming the charge of
person c^unrin^sm is not escaped.
Most of the criteria proposed for
personhood fall down in just these sorts of ways, e.g. being autonomous,
the having of projects, the producing of junk, the assessing of some of
one's performances as successful or not, the awareness of oneself as an
Not only does it appear that (the more worthy of)
such criteria apply (or could apply) to many nonhuman animals - thus
agent or initiator.
animals are generally more autonomous (in main senses of the term) than
humans, many animals have projects (e.g. home and nest building), and they
are well aware of themselves, as opposed to rivals, as initiators of
5
projects - and that they do not apply uniformly to humans or indeed to
persons in any ordinary sense;
but again it is extremely difficult to
see what there is in these characteristics which would warrant or justify
the vast difference in treatment between the privileged and nonprivileged
classes, or justify regarding the non-privileged class as something
available for the
of the privileged class.
Similar objections can be lodged against the proposal that knowledge
or the possession of knowledge, provides f/zg (or a ur^c-Lai!-) distinguishing
It can hardly provide the appropriate filter, since it not only
gives no sharp cut-off point, 6 but does not even always rank humans or
feature.
persons above nonhumans or nonpersons.
Moreover, taken seriously it
should lead to substantial moral differentiation between persons, a
person's moral rating also fluctuating during his lifetime.
In any case,
For example, the shiftless intelligent person, or the primitive person,
who has no projects and engages in no moral reflection, and thus offends
protestant ethics, is not thereby deregisterable as a person, any more
than an intelligent animal with projects can join the union.
.6 on next page.
5
�why rank knowledge so highly:
for (paca Socrates) knowledge is not the
foundation of virtue, but is frequently turned to evil ends, and even
where it is meritorious it is not the sole (or even a crucial) criterion
of worth.
Similar difficulties apply too to the historic criterion of
along with the added problem that it is very difficult to say
what it is in any clear or generally acceptable way, or to prevent it from
degenerating into a simple "pro" word.
If a hallmark of rationality is
commitment to the consequences of what one believes and seriously says,
then many humans fail the test.
If, on the other hand rationality is, for
example, the ability to discover and pursue courses and actions likely to
achieve desired goals (direct action toward goals), ability to solve
problems concerned, etc., then plainly many animals have it, and possibly
to a greater extent than humans in some cases (and of certain humans in
If it were the ability, e.g. to do
(say propositional calculus) or to assess reasoning verbally, then the (biassed)
almost all cases).
criterion would be far too strong and rule out many humans.
Again, why
should one make such a marked discrimination on this basis?
What is so
meritorious about this characteristic, that it warrants such a marked
distinction?
Nothing (at least in the ordinary academic's view, or
logicians would receive more favoured treatment).
Other criteria, which yield an analytic connection between being a
person and enjoying freedom or having rationality, in part beg the
question.
For in
persons - are free.
respect is it that persons - or worse, just
Also the justificatory problem, as to how the
claimed freedom or rationality warrants such differential treatment,
remains.
Characterisations of persons vary enormously, from so strong
that they rule out suburban humans who are not "self-made" enterpreneurs,
to so weak that they admit very /nanp animals.
An (unintentional) example
of the latter is the following:
persons, that is, ... beings who are not only sentient but also
capable of intensional autonomous action, beings that must be
ascribed not only states of consciousness but also states of
belief, thought and intention (A. Townsend,
/iMstraZasfar
'Radical vegetarians',
PAfZosopTip, 57 (1979), p.89).
6 In addition, the relation "a has at least as much knowledge as b" is
only a partial ordering.
For example, a dog's and a child's knowledge
may be incomparable, because they know about different matters, how to
do quite different sorts of things, etc.
(The idea that knowledge is
the key to moral discrimination, that it is what makes humans rank the
way Western ethics ranks them, may be found in C.B. Daniels, TZze
6>y FZ^fcaZ Y'/ieorfgs, Philosophy in Canada Monograph, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 1975.)
6
�Most rats and rabbits satisfy the conditions:
they are sentient,
conscious animals that have intentions (e.g. to get through some barrier
such as a floor or a fence), beliefs and thoughts
preferred food beyond the barrier).
(e.g. that there is
For his further argument Townsend
shifts - without notice, but in a way that is quite typical of this
scene - to
stronger requirements upon being a person (such that one
who does not meet them is incapacitated as a person) which rule out many
humans, e.g. 'The person must recognise canons of evidence and inference
warranting changes in his beliefs, and be capable of changing his beliefs
7
accordingly' (op. cit., p.90).
In meeting hypothetical objections, Townsend slips in a further require
ment of rationality, but the characterisation of person given does not
include any such requirement. Subsequently, however, Townsend commits
himself, without argument, to the thesis that 'a fairly high degree of
rationality is prerequisite' to attributing 'intensionality' (as dis
tinct from 'intentionality').
This is not going to help much.
For,
firstly, rationality is very much a notion which admits of degrees,
without the relatively sharp cut-off stages required for pgrscvz as a
notion of orthodox moral relevance, or possessed by the notion of
to which Townsend sneaks back in his chauvinistic conclusion (p.93).
Secondly, TzozJ high a degree is prerequisite for being a person? If
only enough to satisfy the conditions for being a person, then the
animals that are persons have it.
If more, then either the initial
characterisation of a person fails or the thesis breaks down.
The much stronger requirements upon being a person that Townsend sub
sequently appeals to are said to derive from S.I. Benn.
But, if any
thing they strengthen one of the stronger of several KOHegtcZvaZenf
characterisations of (%afMruZ) person - none of them equivalent to
- that Benn has at various times offered. While Benn's weaker
characterisations appear to admit at least many "higher" animals, e.g.
that of a
natural person as a chooser, conscious of himself as able to make
a difference to the way the world goes, by deciding to do this
rather than that, having projects, therefore, of his own, whose life
experience may consequently be understood, not simply as a chronicle
of events, but as an enterprise, on which he puts his own construct
ion ((a) 'The protection and limitation of privacy, Part I',
LazJ <7a^r?za:Z, 52 (1978), p.605);
the stronger characterisations which invoke (rather vaguely specified,
and (Ziy/greuf) minimum conditions of rationality in belief and action said to imply respcHsfbiZitp on bhe part of the person for what s/he
does, though they do
- exclude many of the creatures admitted by
weaker characterisations. For such stronger characterisations see
'Individuality, autonomy and community' in CowwL/yrZfp (ed. E. Kamenka)
Edward Arnold (forthcoming) and (c) 'Freedom, autonomy and the concept
of a person',
c/ thg
PocZefp, 76 (1976),
pp.109-30.
7
�The foregoing points, taken together, support our contention that it
is not possible to provide criteria which would
distinguishing,
in the sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have preferg
ences or preferred states.
For such criteria appear to depend upon the
mistaken assumption that moral respect for other creatures is due only
when they can be shown to measure up to some rather
and traded tests for membership of a privileged class (essentially an
elitist view), instead of upon, say, respect for the preferences of other
creatures.
Accordingly
sk<2rp nzoraZ
commonly accepted in
ethics by philosophers and others alike, hgfzjggzz uZZ Tztzwuzzs
Zacks a satfs/cctcr^ cokcrcrzt basfs.
anZmaZ
aZZ ofker
The distinction,
which historically rested on the assumption that humans possessed a soul
(or higher reason) but that other animals, brutes, did not, appears to
have been uncritically retained even after the religious beliefs or
philosophical theories underpinning it have been abandoned.
Given that the distinction underlying human chauvinism fails, is
there anywhere satisfactory demarcations of moral relevance can be made
9
among things? Yes, several divisions of wcrcZ
can be made;
but
of these coincides with a division into human and others.
Consider, first, the question of consideration
others, and the
matter of which offers are to be taken into account in cases where
others' interests and preferences are affected by some action.
Insofar
as moral consideration for others (among sentient items) is based on
analogical
(empathetic, and essentially inductive) principles, such as
taking account of their worthwhile preferences, objectives, interests etc.,
There are of course further arguments for the contention, for example
from the anatomical and physiological affinities of human and other
animals, from their common evolutionary history, and so on. These
arguments are of varying force;
for example, evolutionary arguments
can be arrested, temporarily, by the claim that there was a "quantum
jump" in human evolutionary development which did not occur with other
creatures with a previously shared evolutionary history (cf. Wilson,
op. cit.).
Although the divisions may be conceptually sharp enough, they are any
thing but sharp when applied in the field to the variety of creatures
and circumstances that occur.
For example, preference-havers is, so
far at least, sharp enough, but it is far from clear which creatures
qualify, e.g. which, if any, Crustacea? For the present most of these
potential decision cases are cases for cheerful indecision; but,
alternatively, the divisions may be viewed - perhaps better - not as
sharp boundaries, but as gradation states, as where two colours in a
rainbow meet.
8
�it is difficult to see how such consideration can fail to apply to all
(including nonhuman) preference-having creatures;
and one does not need
to apply criteria such as linguistic ability, navigational ability,
intelligence, piano-playing, hunting skill, etc., to obtain a basis for
such consideration (indeed one cannot).
of preferences (and
The
of preferences revealed through choices) is however a quite sufficient
basis for
sort of consideration and concern.
It is at this point,
we suggest, that the requisite, important and non-arbitrary distinction
is to be drawn which marks out the class of creatures towards which
obligations may be held;
that is, the usually recognised principles of
consideration towards others (of the privileged class) properly extend or
should be generalised to consideration for other creatures having prefer
ences, and t/ze corresponding penerut defecsihZe odtipution principle is
not to pnt others ("ot/zer pre/erence-Zzurers? into a dispre/erred state for
no pood reason.
Insofar as moral behaviour is based on consideration for others and
not harming others, preference-having provides an adequate basis, and
does appear to provide a sufficient justification for substantially
different treatment for preference-having over non-preference-having
items - because items without preference cannot (literally) be put into a
dispreferred state.
Thus preference-having appears to tie in with an
important basis for moral obligation, and appears to provide a superior
criterion, for a certain serf of moral consideration, to other criteria
sometimes proposed such as sentience - or, differently, intelligence especially since in the absence of preferences such notions as Jzurminp
something (in a way that does affect it) and damaging its interests
become difficult of application (not to say nonsignificant, except in
extended senses).
The unsatisfactoriness of the sentience criterion for
what one can hold obligations towards can be grasped from the case of the
sentient machine or purely sentient creature which does not have preferen
ces, does not care what state it is in or whether it is destroyed,etc.
The sentience criterion is often converted by utilitarians into a suffer
ing criterion, by taking pain as a paradigm of sentience:
but plainly
the two criteria diverge since some sentient creatures may never feel
pain or suffer.
Suffering is even less satisfactory than sentience;
for
suffering is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in a dispreferred
state (consider masochists who suffer but are not in a dispreferred state,
and well-treated workers who are in a dispreferred state but do not
suffer).
Preference-having provides a lower bound;
it is a sufficient but
-not necessary condition for being an object of this sort of moral
9
�consideration and concern.
That it is not necessary is revealed,
independently of environmental examples, by the following sorts of cases:
the treatment of "human vegetables", successful stoics, and science
fiction cases in which people are brain-washed into performing certain
goals and having no dispreferred states apart from the programmed goals.
In all three cases the question of dispreferences does not arise, but
relevant moral issues can.^^
The necessary condition, that corresponds
to preference-having as a sufficient condition, appears to be capability
at some time (e.g. previously, when developed) for preference-having.
It has been taken for granted that many animals (from species higher
on the evolutionary scale) have preferences, make choices, and the like.
This is the merest commonsense, which can be readily confirmed in a
scientific way.
For example, some of the preference-rankings of a black
tail wallaby as to types of foliage to eat are readily established by
observation, and it is fairly straightforward verifying that bushrats
prefer cheese to soap, this preference being revealed by regular choices.
It has however been claimed by some recent philosophers, for reasons
apparently different from those offered by traditional philosophers such
as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes,H that animals do not have intentions,
or at least do not have them in a full sense.
It is unclear whether these
intentions, which are taken to include thoughts and beliefs and, perhaps,
desires, include preferences;
but it is hard to see how preferences,
which are intentional, are excluded if desires are included in intentions.
The recent arguments to show that animals do not really have intentions,
which do not bear much investigation even in such central cases as
12
belief,
appear extremely feeble when applied to preference. For the
arguments start from the claim that we cannot say zj/zuf it is that animals
As N. Griffin, who supplied the examples, remarked a similar thing
happens also in less extreme cases of the type brought in to prominence,
e.g., by the women's movement: that it is possible, by means of
indoctrination, to limit the range of someone's dispreferences;
treatment of such persons may still remain immoral even when it does
not place them outside the (artificially widened) range of their
preferred states.
The traditional reasons look slight also in the case of preferences
and choices.
It would have been claimed - the theory forces the claim
- that animals' choices could not be rational.
Interestingly, choices
of many animals conform to behavioural criteria for rationality pro
posed in economics.
See J. Bishop, 'More thought on thought and talk',
(forthcoming)
and R. Routley, 'Alleged problems in attributing beliefs to animals',
paper prepared for the FeZig/ conference, University of Queensland,
1979.
10
�believe (of course very often we can, and unproblematically) and fall back
on the claim that animals lack concepts of a fit sort.
In the case of
preferences, however, there is often no problem in saying what it is
animals prefer, or in confirming the claim.
Nor is it that we cannot
attribute propositional-style preferences to animals; if black-tail
wallabies prefer, as they do, new foliage to old then they prefer the
foliage's being new over the foliage's being old.
As for the concept
claim, in the sense in which concept is delineated in psychology, animals
have concepts.
And if a philosopher's notion of "concept" gets in the
way of the claim that free dogs prefer bones to carrots (or other
vegetables) then it is not the claim that requires revision, but the
philosopher's notion.
The preference-having criteria appear to distinguish non-arbitrarily
and sharply enough between higher animals and other items, and to rule out
of the relevant class elementary animals, trees, rocks and also some human
items, e.g. human kidneys.
The criteria plainly exclude inanimate objects,
and they separate animate objects.
For while living creatures such as
plants and elementary animals can be said in an extended sense to have
and also optimal living conditions, e.g., for healthy develop
ment, and in
sense to have preferred states or environments, they do
not have preferences, and cannot strictly be harmed or have their welfare
affected, in that they can be put into states they disprefer.
Nor do
empathy and analogical considerations extend beyond preference-having
creatures:
for only these can care about how they are treated.
At the same time the criteria indicate another important division.
For in a wider sense, animate objects which do not (significantly) have
preferences or make choices, are sometimes said to have 'preferred states'
or 'preferred environments'
(as, e.g., in 'the plant prefers a sunny
frost-free location with a well drained soil').
us say that the
or
To avoid confusion let
of animate objects and also such
biological items as ecosystems can be affected in one way or another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.
For instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it can be reduced to zero by
sandmining, and it can be seriously threatened by pumping waste detergent
In this broad sense too, living things, things that participate in the
growth process, have interests. However under a narrower and more
common determinate of the slippery term 'interests', only preference
havers have interests (again sentient creatures do not provide the
boundary).
Because the term 'interests' so readily admits of high
redefinition, and the infiltration of chauvinism, its use is better
limited (or even avoided), in favour of other more stable terms.
11
�into the nearby ocean.
There is a general obligation principle
corresponding likewise to this more comprehensive class of welfare
bearers, namely, z-zat fa jaaparjise tTze zJaHhefzzp a_f ?zatzzraZ abjaafs or
sz/sfews zjft/zaz^t paad reasor.
Moral coroerr does not of course end with what is in some way
animate, much as the class of valuable objects is not tied to what relates
suitably to central preference-havers.
In suitable settings, a
(virtually) dead landscape, a rare stone, a cave, can be items of moral
or aesthetic concern;
indeed any object of value can in principle be of
such concern, and arzp abjact car., in principle at least, be ar object a/
value or disvalue, and so of morat corcerr.
corcerrfry almost any sort of object.
There can then be obligations
Naturally only a fraction of the
things that exist have especial value, and only a few of the things that
exist will be things concerning which some of us have obligations.
Furthermore these sorts of obligations do not in general reduce to the
conditions or arrangements (e.g. contractual or joint welfare arrangements)
of preference-havers or some select subclass thereof (what will sub
sequently be called, as the argument is developed, the base c^ass).
Just as there are relevant divisions beyond the class of preference
havers, so there are within the class.
Thus the suggestion that the class
hazards which moral obligations (and a corresponding serf of moral concern
which takes account of creatures' states) may be held is bounded by the
class of preference-havers, does not of course imply that %a dfsfizzcfiazzs
can be made zjffbfrz the class of preference-havers with respect to the kind
of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example, cazifracfzzaT- obligations -
which by no means exhaust obligations - can only be held directly (as
distinct from by way of a representative) with respect to a much narrower
class of creatures, from which many humans are excluded.
The class is
also distinct from the class of persons, at least as 'person' is usually
characterised.
What emerges is an ann^Zar pfcfzzra of types of objects of moral
relevance, some matched by types of moral obligation (described toward the
end of Routley (a)), with nested zones representing respectively different
sorts of objects - such as, objects of moral concern, welfare-having
objects, preference-havers (and choice-makers), right-holders, obligation
holders and responsibility-bearers, those contractually-committed-and the
different sorts of obligations that can significantly apply to such
objects.
Not all the types of objects indicated are distinct, nor is the
listing intended to be exhaustive but rather illustrative.
For strictly
the labels given should be expanded, as the distinctions are categorial
ones, so that what matters is not whether an object is, for instance,
12
�contractually committed in some fashion but whether it is the sort of
thing that can be, whether it can significantly enter into or be committed
by arrangements of a contractual kind.
is to
Similarly
function as a categorial marker, that marks out the sorts of things that
can (significantly) have preferences:
the assumption that preference
havers coincide with choice-makers is based on this categorial reading.
Although the annular picture is (as will become clear in §5) important
for the environmental alternative to be elaborated, and in meeting object
ions to it, the countercharge has been laid that it reintroduces chauvin
ism through its inegalitarian distinctions.
This is a mistake:
not
every sort of ethical distinction, certainly not a justified distinction,
involves chauvinism.
Chauvinism is exhibited where, for example, objects
of a favoured class are treated in a preferential way to superior items
of an exluded class, e.g. defective humans as against apes, degenerate
French against normal Pygmies.
The annular picture neither involves nor
encourages such differences in treatment:
it is neutral and unchauvin-
istic, for the reason that it relies only on categorial distinctions
which tie analytically with ethical notions (see the semantical analyses
of §5).
It is certainly in no way species chauvinist or human chauvinist.
For none of the zones of the annular picture comprises the class of
humans (or its minor variant the class of persons); for this class is
not of moral relevance. The reason is that the human/nonhuman distinction
is not an ethically significant one, and can, and should, be demoted from
its dominant, and damaging, position in ethical theory. But dropping the
notion of
out of ethics, is only part of the ethical change that is
called for:
taking due account of nonhumans is also required.
In particular - to return to the theme - what is quite unacceptable,
. .
14
and based on a set of distinctions which are arbitrary and unjustifiable,
is the
differential treatment enjoined nonpersons as distinct
from persons under Western ethics, and the view that only persons or
humans have any (nonderivative) right to moral consideration and concern
as preference-havers and that there are obligations towards other creatures
14 According to Q. Gibson such a criticism of chauvinism is based firmly
on Western ethical equality and egalitarian principles. This is simply
not so:
there is no reliance on such principles. The general argument
takes the form;
feature f cannot be what justifies the differential
treatment of humans and nonhumans, because either f is not morally
relevant or not all humans have f or some nonhumans have f. Neither
equality nor substitutions based upon equality are invoked at any
stage. Moreover Western equality principles - at least as convention
ally formulated - are in serious doubt, especially with the rejection
of human chauvinism (see further §6).
13
�only insofar as these are or reduce to obligations to persons or humans.
§2.
THE EXTENT OF CHAUVINISM, AND FURTHER LINES OF DEFENCE
Western ethics are, then, human chauvinist in that they characterist
ically take humans (or, to make a slight improvement, persons) to be the
only items worthy of proper moral consideration, and sanction or even
enjoin substantially inferior treatment for the class of non-human
preference-having creatures, without - so it certainly appears - adequate
justification.
The prevailing nineteenth century Western attitude to wild
creatures is evident from Judge Blackstone (quoted approvingly in
W. Cobbett,
Penguin, London, 1967, pp.431):
With regard likewise to wild animals, aZZ
bub by tbe
o/ ZTzg Creator a right to pursue and take away
any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the
waters, and any beast or reptile of the field:
and this
natural right still continues in every individual, unless
where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country.
And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while
living his qualified property, or if dead, are absolutely
his own.
Prevailing Western attitudes have not shifted markedly since that time;
for example, foresters, widely regarded as socially responsible, think
nothing of dislodging from their homes and environment, or even destroying,
communities of animals which do not directly interfere with human welfare.
But there is another very important broader respect in which
Western ethics are human (or person) chauvinistic, namely in the treat
ment accorded to and attitude taken towards the broader class of natural
items such as trees and forests, herbs, grasslands and swamps, soils and
waterways and ecosystems.
Unlike higher animals such items cannot liter
ally be put into dispreferred states (and in fbbs obvious sense, as
opposed to the wider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare, they have no
interests), but they can be damaged or destroyed or have their uaZ^e
eroded or impaired.
The Western, chauvinistic, assumption is that this
can only happen where human interests are affected.
The basic assumption
is that value attaches essentially only to humans or to what serves or
bears on human interests, or derivatively, to items which derive from
human skill, ingenuity or labour.
Since natural items have no other value,
there is no restriction on the way they are treated insofar as this does
not interfere with others;
as far
as -ZsoZufgb natural things are con
cerned anything is permissible.
14
�It is, at base, because of these chauvinistic features of Western ethics
that there is a need for a new ethic and value theory (and so derivatively for
a new economics, and new politics, etc.) setting out not just people's
relations to preference-havers generally but also (along with many other
things) people's relations to the natural environment - in Leopold's
words 'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it'
(A. Leopold,
SuTzd"
zlZ-muzzur? zjvt/z
ot/zer essays on Conservation, New York, 1966, p.238).
It is not of course
that old and prevailing ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he
pleases, i.e. his relations with nature - insofar at least as they do not
affect others, as pollution and vandalism do - are not subject to moral
censure.
Thus assertions such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating
those trees' are significant and morally determinate but inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not
hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.
It is to this,
to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold,
Fraser Darling and many others, both earlier and later, take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on
prevailing views is morally permissible.
But it is not, then, as Leopold
seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing
ethics and that merely an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right in his
criticism of prevailing conduct, what is required is a change in the
ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations;
for example, what is
permissible on the prevailing ethics will be no longer permissible on the
new.
For as matters stand, as Leopold himself explains, humans generally
do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever will yield, and then move on;
and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the
moral indignation of others, and is accordingly permissible on prevailing
ethics.
As Leopold says:
A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows
into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected
member of society (op. cit., p.245).
Only recently has such behaviour begun to be seriously questioned and
become the subject of criticism, e.g. by environmentalists.
Under what
will be accounted an erzvvroHwgutaZ. et/zvc, however, such traditionally
15
�permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer
subject to proper moral criticism.
That ethics and morality are not, and never have been, restricted to
human concerns, or exclusively to relations between persons, is important
in rebutting objections to the very idea of an environmental ethic, based
on the premiss that morality just is restricted (definitionally) to human
relationships (and connected values) and is not significant beyond that.
The problem of moral relations with respect to preference-havers other
than persons and to inanimate items cannot be resolved or escaped simply
by declaring morality to apply solely,or as a matter of meaning or defin
ition only to humans (or to persons).
For first, such a solution would
run counter to the common view that humans are subject to seme moral con
straints, even if comparatively minor ones, towards other creatures;
the
having of such constraints cannot be ruled out definitionally, and corres
pondingly the judgments formulating these constraints or prohibitions
cannot be ruled out as nonsignificant, yet they are surely moral.
The
only way in the end, that the claim gets support is by a narrow, and no
longer acceptable, account of what is mcraZ in terms of concern with
humans alone (cf. §6).
Likewise, the question of the moral interrelations
of humans with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrial beings, even if at
present hypothetical, is certainly a meaningful one, and some interesting
and clearly moral issues of this sort are frequently raised in science
fiction.
Only if the extent of morality is, somewhat misleadingly, reconstrued
in terms of the class of constraints on the behaviour of those it applies
to - that is, in terms of limitations, as distinct from moral freedom does the claim that Western morality is restricted to humans (or persons)
begin to gain plausibility.
For it is true that beyond the favoured base
class, humans or persons, few constraints are supposed to operate (and ad
hoc ones at that) unless the welfare of members of the base class is
adversely affected.
Under an environmental ethic, such as that Leopold
advocates, this would change:
previously unconstrained behaviour would
sense the scope of morality would
be morally circumscribed, and in
be extended.
It is not evident, however, that a
ethic, an
ethic
in the case at hand, is required to accommodate even radical new judgments
seriously constraining traditionally approved conduct, i.e. imposing
limitations on behaviour previously considered morally permissible.
For
one reason it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as
a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old.
16
For,
�notoriously, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked
out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
obscure.
They are nonetheless (pace Quineans) perfectly good objects for
investigation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles
together as the one ethic:
e.g. the Christian ethic, which is an umbrella
notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems.
There are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the new principles and evaluations;
that of
an extension or modification of the prevailing ethic, and that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within
the prevailing ethic.
The possibility that environmental evaluations can
be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the not
inflexible framework of prevailing Western ethics, may appear open because
there is not a single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civiliz
ation:
on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as
infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of
principles.
Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and
even a single ethic, need not have. The Western ethic is not so monolithic
In particular, three important traditions in Western ethical views
15
concerning man's relation to nature have recently been mapped out:
a
dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant),
and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custod
ian, and the cooperative position with man as perfector.
the only traditions;
Nor are these
primitivism is another, and both romanticism and
mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental
ethic;
for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free
to deal with it as he pleases
(since - at least on the mainstream Stoic16
Augustine view - it exists only for his sake ), whereas on an
See especially (a) J. Passmore, Afurz's
Duckworth, London, 1974;
also R. Nash,
Affzzd, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973.
(All further references
to Passmore's work are, unless otherwise indicated, to Passmore (a).)
The
dominant position has also been sketched in many other recent
texts, e.g. I. McHarg,
Doubleday, New York, 1969,
while the lesser traditions have been appealed to in meeting criticisms
of the Western ethic as involving the dominant view.
The masculine particles are appropriate;
17
so is the resulting tone.
�environmental ethic man is not so free to do as s/he pleases.
But it is
not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with
one of the lesser traditions.
Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially
when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g.
(as further considered in
§4) who is man steward for and responsible to?
However both traditions
are inconsistent with a deeper environmental ethic because they imply
policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some
worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from sub
stantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces
reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable but ecologically
impoverished European small farm and village langscape.
According to the
cooperative position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potential
ities, the test of perfection being basically
/ur
while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm
manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means
that will deliberately degrade its resources.
Thus these positions
figure among those of the shallow ecological movement (as depicted by
A. Naess,
'The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement',
16 (1973), 95-100):
longer term.
they are typically exploitative, even if only in the
Although these lesser positions both depart from the dominant
position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of
an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible
farmer, and allow for some of the modern extensions of the Western ethic
that have been made, e.g. concerning the treatment of animals and
criticisms of vandalism, they are not well-developed, fit poorly into the
prevailing framework, and do
^<9 /ar
For in the present
situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they
will lead to, and enjoin the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all
natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use, implying
that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used
for
17 if 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for
preservation, this total use principle is rendered innocuous at least
as regards it actual effects.
Note that the total use principle, in the usual sense, is tied to the
resource view of nature (cf. (d) R. and V. Routley, T/ze
/or f/ze
Forests, Third Edition, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1975).
Such a principle, like the requirement of
economic growth, emerges directly from - it is an integral part of neoclassical economic theory.
18
�"humanized".
As the important Western traditions mentioned exclude an
environ
mental ethic, it would appear, at first glance anyway, that such an ethic
- not primitive, mystical or romantic - would be new alright - or at
least new from a Western perspective.
For, from a wider perspective,
which takes due account of traditional societies (such as those of some
American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, and Pygmies), there is, it will
turn out, nothing so very new about what is included in (as distinct from
the theoretical setting of) the "new" ethics.
Even from the narrow
Western perspective, the matter is not so straightforward:
for the
dominant ethic has been substantially qualified, in particular by the
rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this
19
physically interferes with others. " It may be that some such non-inter
ference proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary);
and that it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural
20
items would not affect others (a?2CMfnfcr/cre?Ycc cssz^npffcyz).
Be this as
it may, the wcdfyfeti
pcsfffoz? appears, at least for many thinkers,
to have supplanted the dominant position;
and the modified position can
undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic.
For example
the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the
grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environ
ment for no satisfactory (taxable) returns or which cause pollution
deleterious to the health of future humans can be criticised on the sort
of welfare basis (e.g. that of P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic
Humanization, and humanitarian measures, may be a cloak for human
chauvinism - in which case, far from being virtuous, they may be
positively undesirable.
Also, as Leopold has observed, the class of others has been progress
ively widened, e.g. from the family group, to the tribe, to the nation
or race, even to all humans including often enough future humans - but
rarely further in the West until recently.
20 The assumption is not the same as its relative, Benn's principle of
rzo^-i^fcrycrcuce, 'that no one may legitimately frustrate or prevent
(or interfere with) a person's doing what he chooses to do, unless
there is some reason for preventing him' (Benn (c), op. cit.;
inset
from (a), p.605). The principle is said to derive from 'the notion of
a person' (e.g. (a), p.605), but it only so derives given commission
of the fallacy of conversion of an A-proposition. Moreover even
reduced to a 'formal principle ... locating the onus of justification'
(cf.(a)), the principle is dubious, especially cyiven principles of
respect for objects other than persons, with which persons may be
interfering.
It is, however, a formal principle that will help to
keep entreprenuerial humans happy.
19
�Pggg:2/,
Grczjf??
T^g S
c7Mf7c??
*
f-ggcwgs f/zg PrchZgw^
York, 1972) that blends with the modified position;
be criticised on welfare grounds;
and so on.
New
vandalism can usually
The modified position may
even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have,
since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere
with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position
nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser trad
itions, is adequate as an environmental ethic.
chauvinism.
None moves outside human
They are all encompassed under the Dowz'nic?? t??gsis - the
view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are available
for human benefit or to serve human interests, and hence that humans are
entitled to manipulate the world and its systems as they want, in their
own interests - which is but the ecological restatement of the strong
thesis of human chauvinism, according to which items outside the privil
eged human class have no value except one as instrumental value (both
theses are criticised in Routley (a)).
To escape from chauvinism, and from
its thesis, a new ethic 7s wanted, as we now try to show.
§3.
GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST WESTERN ETHICS
The main argument is directed primarily against the modified
dominant position, but will incidentally show the inadequacy of the lesser
Western traditions.
The strategy is to locate core features of Western
ethics, and to reveal through examples their thoroughgoing chauvinism
and class bias, and in this way to provide decisive grounds for rejecting
For the general argument some more technical points have to be made
them.
first.
(An) gf^7g is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a
spgcffiu ethic, and a more generic notion, a SMpgr-gf^fg, under which
specific ethics are grouped.
(As usual, a wgfu-ethic is a theory about
ethics, super-ethics, their features and fundamental notions.)
An
sz/sfgm s
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e.
a structured set of propositions) or a theory which includes (like
individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory)
a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of
what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights and
responsibilities, what is valued, and so forth.
(On newer perceptions an
ethical system will include rather less in the way of prescriptions, of
duties, obligations and the like, and more as to what are matters of care
and of concern and for respect.)
Since an ethical system is propositional
in character, such notions as consistency, coherence, independence of
20
�assumptions, and the like, apply to it without further ado.
It is
evident, from a consideration of competing or incompatible values and
principles, that t/zgre are Z^z/iz-z-ZteZz/ wary gf/zZcuZ sz/stezns.
Moreover
appropriately general criteria for rationality will not reduce this
class to a singleton. . Accordingly, there is logical space for aZferratire
ratiaraZ etTzies.
A general or lawlike proposition of a system (characterised along
similar lines to a scientific law) is a pr-ZzzcZpZe;
and certainly if
systems Si and S2 contain different principles, they they are different
systems.
It will follow then that an environmental ethic differs from
the important traditional ethics outlined if it differs on some principles.
Moreover if environmental ethics differ from each Western ethical system
on some core principle or other embedded in that Western system, then
these systems differ from the Western super-ethic (assuming, what seems
to be so, that that ethic can be sufficiently characterised) - in which
case if an environmental ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted.
It
would suffice then to locate a common core principle and to provide
environmental counterexamples to it.
It is illuminating (and necessary, so it will emerge) to attempt to
do a little more than this minimum, with a view to bringing out the basic
assumptions of the Western super-ethic.
Two major classes of evaluative
statements, commonly distinguished, are axiological statements, concerning
what is good, worthwhile, valuable, best, etc., and deontological state
ments, which concern what is obligatory, permissible, wrong, etc.
Now
there appear to be core principles of Western ethics on both axiological
and deontic fronts, principles, for example, as to what is valuable and
as to what is permissible.
Naturally these principles are interconnected,
because anything is permitted with respect to what has no value except
insofar as it interferes with what does have value.
A strong historical case can be made out for what is commonly
assumed, that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western
ethical systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the superethic.
example.
The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core deontic
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified
dominant position. A recent formulation of this principle runs as
21
follows (Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., p.58):
21
On next page.
21
�The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that (D) one
should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he
does not harm others {and (2) that he is not likely to harm
himself irreparably}.
The principle, which is built into or derivable from most traditional
ethical theories, may be alternatively formulated in terms of permissib
ility, as the principle that a pgrscu's action is
<ioos not intor/ere zjit/z others,
profide<i if
(i.e. other people, including perhaps the
A related economic principle is that free enterprise can operate
agent).
within similar limits.
It is because of these permissibility formulations
that the principle - which incorporates fundamental features of (human or
person) chauvinism - is sometimes hailed as a freedom principle;
for it
gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions
which degrade the environment and natural things) providing they do not
harm others.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to
It is worth remarking that 'harming others' in the restriction
is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others;
it is
not enough that it is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop
breathing;
you are free to breath, for the time being anyway, because it
does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to exactly what
counts as harm or interference.
Mo'reover the width of the principle is
so far obscure, because 'other' may be filled out in significantly
different ways:
it makes a difference to the extent - and privilege - of
The principle is attributed by Barkley and Seckier to Mill, though
something like it was fairly common currency in nineteenth century
European thought. It appears, furthermore, that Mill would have
rejected the principle on account of clause (2): thus, for example:
Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, ouZi/ in respect of
those actions of each, which concern the interest of
people (J.S. Mill,
f-Zbgrfy
Everyman's Library, Dent, London, 1910, p.74,
emphasis added).
The deletion of clause (2) from (D) does not affect the general
argument: hence the braces.
(We owe this reference and the points in
the next footnote to N. Griffin.)
A similarly modified form of (D) is found in much recent Western
literature, even radical literature which purports to make due allow
ance for environmental concerns. A good example of the latter is
I. Illich, TcoZs /or
Calder & Boyers, London, 1973,
where Mill's (D) appears, in various forms, at several places (e.g.
p.xii, p.41). What this indicates is that Illich's "convivial society"
will not - if its principles are taken seriously - move beyond
chauvinism in its treatment of animals and the natural environment;
it
will at best yield some form of resource conservation.
22
�the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient being';
and it
makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its
economic applicability, to which class of other persons it is intended to
apply, whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote
future others or only to nondiscountable future others, and whether to
possible others.
The latter would make the principle untestable and com
and it is generally assumed that it
pletely unworkable in practice;
applies at most to present and (some) future others, to those to whom it
22
would make a (fairly immediate) difference (thus excluding past others ).
For the purposes of the general argument however, the problems in specify
ing the class of others is not material, so long as the class includes no
23
more than persons that at some time exist.
Fortunately the main argument is not very sensitive to the precise
formulation of principle (D).
Not only can clause (2) be deleted, and
'other' left rather unspecific, but additions can be made;
then even if
the main argument does not succeed, minor oarianfs a/ fba main argument
zjiZ^ snccooti.
An important case concerns the treatment of animals.
Unless (D) is construed widely (extending 'other'), or hedged by further
qualifying clauses,the basic principle fails to take proper account of
concern for animals, especially that one should not inflict "unnecessary"
cruelty or "impermissible" harm.
animals then comes to matter;
these issues can be avoided.
What counts as permissible harm to
and familiar conflict issues arise.
But
For the core principle (0), of basic
chauvinism, can be modified to include (historically recent) moral concern
for higher animals by adding, after 'harm others', something like 'or harm
animals unnecessarily'.
Then however the new principle succumbs to the
Although the interests and preferences of past others are excluded in
conventional utilitarianism, as in (welfare) economic theory and vot
ing theory, these are often respected in ethical and legal settings,
e.g. in wills, last wishes, etc. Similarly (as N. Griffin also point
ed out), in the treatment of "human vegetables", past preferences of
the person when capable of making decisions are often taken to be
morally relevant, or even decisive, to the question as to whether to
keep the body alive.
If merely possible persons are included then the valuational rankings
of environmental ethics, indeed of virtually any ethics, can be
reflected in a "utilitarian" fashion. The argument of (c) R. and V.
Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory', /Vaas (accepted
for publication in 1974;
still forthcoming?), can be used to show this.
Or unless it can be made out, what seems entirely implausible, that
what is wrong with torturing animals is not what it does to them but
the way it affects other people (the Aquinas-Kant thesis).
23
�attitudes, and more comprehensively the associated ideologies, are of
critical importance;
for it is to these and Western influence that the
world's main - serious and very extensive - environmental problems can be
ascribed.
Hypothetical situations are introduced in designing counterexamples
to core principles (D) and (A).
The basis of the method lies in the
semantical analyses of permissibility, obligation and value statements
which stretch out over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even
inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some permitted
situation, what is obligatory in every such situation, and what is wrong
is excluded in every such situation.
'
But the main point to grasp for
the counterexamples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are
universal and are assessed over a class of situations.
Thus hypothetical
cases are logically perfectly legitimate and cannot be ruled out on one
pretext or another, e.g. as rare, as desert island cases, as hypothetical,
The counterexamples to (D) and (A) presented depend largely on
etc.
designing situations different from the actual where there are either too
few or too many humans or persons. But alternative special situations
where interference with others is minimized or is immaterial are readily
devised.
(i) The
example.
The last man (or woman or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system sets to work eliminating, as
far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs).
What he does is quite permissible
according to principle (D) but on environmental grounds what he does is
wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to
regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly and destroying things of value (the
reason being perhaps that radical thinking and values have shifted in an
environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the
Characteristically Westerners have attempted to recast these value
systems, sometimes misleadingly, in a religious guise - probably because
it was thought that there was no non-religious way of presenting them so
as to make them intelligible or have them comprehended.
Thus they get
represented as basically chauvinistic in view of the relations of Man
and God.
On these semantical analyses, which avoid all the usual problems of
modal theories of axiological and deontic terms, see R. Routley,
R.K. Meyer, and others,
T/zefr
RSSS,
Australian National University, 1979, chapters 7 and 8. A sketch is
given in §5 below.
The situations or worlds with respect to which the interpretation is
made permit of different construals;
e.g. instead of permitted situ
ations, the situations can be construed evaluatively as ideal
situations.
26
�formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
The usual vandalism charge does not apply against Mr. Last Man
since he does no damage to others.
Moreover, Mr. Last Man's activities
may be toned down to avoid any vandalism charge, yet succumb to the
(extended) chauvinist charge, e.g. he may simply destroy seme environ
mentally valuable things unnecessarily (without due reason or some need).
(ii) The Zusf pecpZe example.
to the last people example.
The last man example can be extended
We can assume that they know they are the
last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have
blocked any chance of reproduction.
One considers the last people in
order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or
somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet
and destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfect
ing the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting
the lesser traditions, just for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous.
They humanely
exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas,
they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining
natural forests disappear in favour of pastures or plantations,and so on.
They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying
reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people
employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their
impending extinction.
behaved badly;
of value;
On an environmental ethic the last people have
they have done what is impermissible and destroyed much
for they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural
ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform with the core
principles (D) and (A), and as well with the principles enjoined by the
lesser traditions under more obvious construals of these principles.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this extension of the last man
example is because principles (D) and (A) may, as they stand, appear to
conflict with stewardship, cooperation and perfection positions, as the
last man example reveals.
The apparent conflict between these positions
and principle (D) may be definitively removed, it seems, by conjoining a
further proviso to the principle, to the effect (3) that he does not
wilfully destroy natural resources.
But as the last people who are not
vandals do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of
28
reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate.
2 8 On next page.
27
�(iii) The grreat e^frgpre^gz/r example.
The last man example can be
adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
industrialist;
The last man is an
he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms
which he proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among other things,
from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and
recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we do.
Of course he has
the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world
product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be
increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased
output and productivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible;
indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be
quite fine and even meets Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing
notions of being "better off".
It may be objected, however, that there is no reason or warrant for
the great entrepreneur's production and it is simply wasteful.
But we
can easily amend the example by adding consumers who want to use the out
put.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last
people, so we can extend (iii) to the
sociefz/ example (iv):
the society looks depressingly like ours except for its reproductive
incapacity.
(v) The
example. The blue whale (reduced to a
29
mixed good on the economic picture )
is on the verge of extinction
because of its qualities as a private good, as a profitable source of oil
and meat.
whalers;
The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any
good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compen
sate the whalers if they desist;
destruction.
nor need whale hunting be wilful
(Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting
aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species
is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's
2 8 There are however elements in the lesser traditions - especially if
'cooperation' and 'perfection' are reconstrued in less chauvinistic
and homocentric terms - which point the way to a more satisfactory
ethic.
29
The example is adapted from Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., who nicely
expose the orthodox economic picture.
To make the example more difficult for utilitarians in the tradition
of Bentham, it can be further supposed that the killing of the whalesis
near instantaneous and painless, the whale products are very valuable
to humans and indeed irreplaceable, and that the whales led a good
life while they lived.
(Would the killing of remote groups of humans
under similar conditions be then so much worse?).
28
�activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The
behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale
is accordingly quite permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the free-market
mechanism did not cease allocating whales to commercial uses, as a
satisfactory environmental economics would:
instead the market system
ground inexorably (for the tragedy-of-the-privatised-commons type
reasons well-explained in Barkley and Seckier, op. cit.) along the
private demand curve until the blue whale population was no longer viable.
It has been objected that the operation of the free market is
restrained by ethical principles - or rather legally enforced copies
thereof;
for example, it would be profitable to exploit child labour,
but moral prohibitions, legally enforced, exclude such exploitation of
children.
But the case is quite different;
children, unlike young
animals such as vealers, are already shielded under the modified dominant
position.
If anything, the "objection" is a further illustration of
chauvinism at work. 30
Although the vanishing species example given does not apply decisively
against extended utilitarianisms, such as that of Bentham, which widen the
base class to all sentient creatures, the case is easily varied so that it
does:
class of tropical plant species
simply select one of the
currently threatened with extinction.
(vi) The fuufory farw example.
On the farm animals of various sorts
are kept under artificial, confined conditions and simply used for the
market goods they deliver, e.g. eggs in the case of battery hens, milk in
the case of rotor cows, veal in the case of calves.
The animals are
subject to whatever conditions (e.g. forced feeding, iron deficient diets,
constant lighting) will deliver maximal quantities of desired goods for
the human commodity market.
The animals do not necessarily suffer pain
(and insofar as they do in behaviourally conspicuous ways the problem can
For the most part the operation of the free market is only constrained
by chauvinistic principles: otherwise enterpreneurs tend to undertake
whatever apparently profitable business activity they can get away with,
including substantial exploitation of animals and widespread environ
mental destruction, and their lack of concern is illustrated by such
facts as that they are generally prepared to pay taxes (e.g.
to
compensate other humans) rather than to forgo their activities in
cases such as river and lake pollution and forest removal.
In fact,
of course, fairly unfettered operation of the market tends to
encourage more restricted chauvinisms, e.g. the exploitation of cheap
foreign or female labour in the secondary labour market.
29
�be met by antibiotics), but they are imprisoned under dispreferred
conditions.
The threatment of the animals on the "farm" is perfectly
permissible according to the core principle (or at least minor adjustments
to exclude unnecessary suffering will ensure conformity), but on an
environmental ethic it is not.
The treatment of the animals on the farm
also seems to conform to the principles of the lesser traditions, insofar
as these principles are spelled out in a way that can be applied to the
example, that is so long as cooperation and perfection are construed in
intended chauvinistic fashion.
(vii) The MiZderness example.
The wilderness, though isolated and
rarely visited or thought about by environmentalists, is known to contain
nothing of use to humans, such as seed or drug supplies, that is not
adequately replicated elsewhere.
It does contain however some "low
quality" forest that could supply pulpwood on a commercial basis were the
local government to provide subsidies on the usual basis.
The logging
would destroy the wilderness in a largely irreversible way (e.g. it grows
on high sand dune country or on lateritic soils)
and kill many animals
which live in the forest.
The prevailing ethic sees nothing wrong
with the destruction of such a wilderness, nor do the lesser traditions:
a deeper environmental ethic does.
Again the example requires variation, e.g. to a wilderness devoid of
sentient individuals, if it is to counter clearly such extensions of
Western ethics as those of animal liberationists.
For this sort of reason
we do not want to overstate or overrate the role of
as distinct from variations upon such examples.
examples -
Firstly, people deeply
committed to human chauvinism - as many, perhaps most, people are - will
find some of the examples unconvincing because they depend on non-
chauvinistic assumptions.
Secondly, there are rejoinders to some of the
examples based on the prevailing ethic.
In this case what we claim is
that there are variations on, and elaborations of the examples which meet
such considerations.
In connection with this we do not want to deny that
there are other strands supplementing the prevailing ethic which are
critical of some activities of the sort described in the examples, e.g.
anti-vandalism principles and strictures against conspicuous consumption
But, as remarked, these principles
as reflected, e.g. in sumptuary laws.
have not been adequately incorporated in the prevailing ethic in such a
way as to meet variations on the examples or to serve environmental
purposes;
and if the attempt were made to fully incorporate such princi
ples once again a new ethic would be the upshot.
before the change from an ethic which sanctioned
30
(Compare the situation
slavery.)
�In summary,what the examples show is that core axiological and
deontic assumptions of the Western super-ethic are environmentally
inadequate;
and accordingly Western ethics should be superseded by a
more environmentally adequate ethic.
The class of permissible actions
that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on such an
environmental ethic than it is in the Western superethic, and the class
of noninstrumentally valuable objects is correspondingly wider than it is
on the Western super-ethic.
But is not an environmentalist ethic going too far in implying that
these people - those of the examples and respected entrepreneurs and
industrialists and bureaucrats, farmers and fishermen and foresters - are
behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
No, what these people do
is to a greater or lesser extent evil, since destructive of what is
valuable, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who
stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and
impermissible, so also is the destruction of the forest where the people
may live, or the slaughter of remaining blue whales, or the gross
exploitation of experimental or factory-farm animals for private profit
or as part of the latest 5 year plan.
Those who organise or engage in
such activities are (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their
mode of engagement) morally culpable.
Models of permissible respected
life styles and of the good life (for others to emulate) depend upon
what the underlying ethic accounts good and evil, permissible or not,
and changes with change of ethic.
A new ethic is needed not merely to accommodate the evaluations,
and so forth;
prescriptions and models indicated, in a way decidedly different from
Western ethics, but in order to cope with a much wider range of more
practical, and often more controversial, cases where Western ethics yield
(without epicycling, i.e. extensive resort to theory-saving strategems)
unacceptable or inadequately grounded results.
An alternative ethic is
also needed by a growing number of valuers because they have values,
interests and new concerns of ecological sorts which do not fit in with,
but conflict with, central features of prevailing Western ethics.
There
is occurring, it seems, a far-reaching cultural, and ethical change, a
change in consciousness, and in particular a change in attitudes to what
is natural and the natural environment (a change which may eventually be
as fundamental as, and partly overturn, the humanist changes of the
Enlightenment).
A new ethic is accordingly needed to reflect and formul
ate, and enable the defence and application of, a new, increasingly fel,t,
31
�but not so far well-articulated system of values, in much the same way
that a system of probability was needed and formulated to articulate and
systematise likelihood and probability principles, and relevant logic
systems required to capture pre-analytic views of entailment.
The
explication of environmental ethics is a similar theoretical concern;
again, as commonly, theory lags behind the facts of change and the felt
data.
Furthermore, just as entailment systems are not uniquely determined,
or desired or accepted by every thinker, so enoironwontuZ gt/zios will not
be nnip^otp detorwZng<i, or adopted by every valuer.
On the contrary, as
is plain enough, their adaption and furtherance will be vigorously
resisted by many vested interests, as - to take just one instance - the
furtherance of programmes for the determination of environmental sources
of cancer is vigorously opposed by industrial chemical companies.
The matter of persuading other valuers to accept values and
principles of a new ethic is of course a further and somewhat separate
issue from the question of need for such an ethic.
The procedures for
trying to effect changes in values are but variations on the usual pro
cedures, and like them are not fully effective:
excluding coercion and
education, they include, for example, argumentation, and propaganda, in
each case of many sorts. 31
As usual, too, where there is a broad common
32
basis, especially in felt evaluations and emotional presentation,
effecting a change, or a conversion, will generally be an easier task.
In the case of transformation to environmental values, what is often
important are distinctive features regarding the factual bases of many of
the evaluations.
correcting
In particular, there is the matter of removing or
/Tztsoonooptions on a broad range of matters of
Some of these sorts are considered in more detail in (c) J. Passmore,
'Ecological problems and persuasion' in FpnoZZtp arid Freedom.
*
JntornutZonoZ and Comparattvo c/nr-Zoprz/donoo (ed. G. Dorsey), Oceana
Publications, New York, 1977, pp.431-42.
The apposite term 'emotional presentation' is adapted from Meinong;
see especially
FwotZonaZ Prosentatton (trans. M.L. Schubert-Kalsi),
Northwestern University Press, 1972. The notion of emotional present
ation can play an important role in the explanation of how emotions
enter into (environmental) evaluations, the objects evaluated (canyons,
mountains, giant trees) often being emotionally presented. A little
more precisely, the connections are these: A value ranking (e.g. c is
better, more valuable, than d) of a valuer is explained emotionally
through - it does not reduce to - certain preference rankings of the
valuer;
and the preference rankings have in turn dual factual and
emotional bases, in the same sort of way that an item may be preferred
or chosen in virtue of its factual features and the valuer's emotional
responses to those. The main details of such a semantical analysis of
value, which is discussed in §5, are given in Routley (c).
32
�environmental concern;
for example, about animals, their various
behaviour, abilities, etc;
about the alleged gulf between humans and
other animals and the uniqueness of humans and each human;
about the
profitability, or desirability, or necessity, of environmentally destruct
ive enterprises;
about the inevitability of current Western social
arrangements and about the history of the way these particular arrange
ments developed. There is, moreover, the matter of sheer information,
for example as to how free animals live together and what they do;
about
how factory and experimental animals are treated, and in the latter case
for what:
about the sources and effects of various forms of pollution
and the reasons for it;
about how natural creatures such as whales or
environments such as forests are commonly dealt with, for what products,
by what interests, for what ends.
Naturally (given a fact/value division)
none of this information is entirely conclusive support for a change in
ethic;
for many of the evaluations the data helps support can be included
in other ethics (including sometimes modifications of prevailing ethics),
while remaining evaluations can, at worst, be simply rejected (as e.g.,
those utilitarians who extend consideration just to sentient creatures are
obliged to reject versions of the last man argument where no sentient
creatures are affected).
Although a new ethic is needed, for the reasons indicated, and
although such an ethic can,furthermore, be a considerable asset in
practical environmental argument (e.g., as to the point of trying to
retain a piece of not-especially-unique near-wilderness),
for many
practical ecological purposes, there is no need to apply it or to fall
back on it.
For example, virtually the whole environmental issue of
destructive forestry in Australia can be argued without invoking any
unconventional ethical principles or values at all, i.e. entirely within
the prevailing chauvinistic framework.
wap??/ environmental disputes.
The same sort of point applies to
But, it by no means applies to all.
A
corollary is an inadequacy in the presentation of environmental problems
and suggested solutions in standard (human) ecology texts
Tssz^gs
A. Erlich's
(such as P. and
FuoZ-Ctyz/,
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, to select one example), which are set
erzf-freZz/ within the chauvinistic framework.^4
Also, differently, in the way that theories are in enabling one to see
how to move and argue in a discussion.
Quite properly given prevailing sentiments, according to some erring
conservationists, who account themselves "realists".
33
�Since it is sometimes charged - despite all that has been said - that
an environmental ethic does not differ in practice from that of more
conventional "chauvinistic" ethics, there is point in spelling out in
yet other ways how it can differ in practice:
Firstly, many conventional
positions, in particular social contract and sympathy theories, cannot
take proper account of moral obligation to future humans (who are not in
the immediate future).
Since the usual attempt to argue, in terms of
value and benefit to humans, that natural areas
and
ecosystems
generally should not be destroyed or degraded depends critically on
introducing possible future humans who will suffer or be worse off as a
result of its destruction or degradation, it is plain that an environ
mental ethic will differ radically from such conventional positions. That
is, the usual argument depends on the reduction of value of a natural
item to the interests of present and /Izf^re humans, in which reduction
future humans must play a critical role if conclusions not blatantly
opposed to conservation are to be reached.
Hence there will usually be
a very great gulf between the practical value judgements of conservation
ethics and those of conventional positions which discount the (nonimmediate) future.
Secondly, as we have already seen through examples, there are
practical differences between an environmental ethic and conventional
instrumental views which dr take account of the interests of past,
present and future humans, differences which emerge sharply at the
It is, however, unnecessary to
hypothetical (possible world) level.
turn to possible world examples to see that normally there would be very
great differences in the practical valuations and behaviour of those who
believe that natural items can have value and create obligations not
reducible (in any way) to human interests and those who do not, as the
following further examples show.
We need only consider the operation of irtersioraZ- corcepfs
Example 1.
Mif/zizz
uctz^^Z- zjerZ-d, for example, the concept of duwupe to a natural
item, and the associated notion of campezzsaffrr for that damage.
C. Stone, for instance, in S/za^Zd Trees #are Sfardirp?
Tdp^fs /dr /Vaf^raZ. dhj^efs
Thus
Tabards L^pcZ
(Avon Books, New York, 1975) notes the
practical legal differences between taking the damage to a polluted river
as affecting its intrinsic value, and taking it as just affecting human
river users.
In the one case one will see adequate compensation as
restoring the original state of the river (rectifying the wrong to the
river) and in the other as compensating those present (or future) humans
who will suffer from its pollution.
As Stone points out, the sum
34
�adequate to compensate the latter may well be much less than that
required to restore the river to its unpolluted state, thus making it
economic, and in terms of the human chauvinist theory, fair and reason
able, to compensate those damaged and continue pollution of the river.
In the first case, of course, adequate compensation or restoration for
the harm done would have to consist in restoring the river to its
unpolluted condition and will not just be paid to the people affected.
Compare here Stone's example of compensation for injury to a Greek slave;
in the instrumentalist case this will involve compensating the slave's
owner for the loss of his slave's working time;
in the other, where the
slave is regarded as not merely an instrument for his owner, it will
compensate the sZaue not the ozjyzer, for this compensation will also take
account of the pain and suffering of the slave, even where this has not
affected his working ability.
There is a difference not only in the
amount of compensation, but to zj/zow it is directed.
In the case of a
natural item damage may be compensated by payment to a trust set up to
protect and restore it.
The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary
and excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its
Example 2.
nonhuman inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that
there is no other human around to know the difference.
For one to whom
the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conventional utility,
however, there will be no such constraint.
He may avoid unnecessary noise
if he thinks it will disturb other humans, but if he is certain none are
about to hear him he will feel at liberty to make as much and as loud a
noise as he chooses, and this will affect his behaviour.
Examples like
this cannot be dealt with by the introduction of future humans, since
they will be unable to hear the noise in question.
To claim that the
making of noise in such circumstances is a matter of no importance, and
therefore there is no important difference in behaviour, is of course to
assess the matter through human chauvinist eyes.
question-begging.
From the intrinsic viewpoint it
So such a claim is
make a
difference, and be reflected in practical behavioural difference.
Example 3.
Consider an aboriginal tribe which holds a particular place
to be sacred, and where this sanctity and intrinsic valuableness and
beauty is celebrated by a number of beautiful cave paintings.
A typically
"progressive" instrumentalist Western view would hold the cave (and
perhaps place) to be worth preservation because of its value to the
aboriginal people, and because of the artistic merit of the human arti
facts, the cave paintings the cave contained.
35
To the "enlightened"
�Westerner, if the tribe should cease to exist, and the paintings be
destroyed, it would be permissible to destroy the place if this should
be in what is judged to be the best interests of human kind, e.g. to get
at the uranium underneath.
To the aboriginal the human artifacts, the
cave paintings would be irrelevant, a celebration of the value of the
place, but certainly not a surrogate for it, and the obligation to the
place would not die because the tribe disappeared or declined.
Similarly
no ordinary sum of money would be able to compensate for the loss of
such a place, in the way that it might for something conceived of as a
utility or convenience, as having value only because of the benefits it
confers on the "users" of it.
There is an enormous /gZt or
difference between feeling that
a place should be valued or respected for itself, for its perceived
beauty and character, and feeling that it should not be defaced because
it is valued by one's fellow humans, and provides pleasurable sensations
or money or convenience for them.
Compare too the differences between
feeling that a yellow robin, say, is a fellow creature in many ways akin
to oneself, and feeling that it is a nice little yellow and grey, basically
clockwork, aesthetic object.
These differences in emotional presentation
are accompanied by or expressed by an enormous range of behavioural
differences, of which the examples given represent only a very small
The sort of behaviour uurrarzteti by each viewpoint and thought
by it, the concept of what one is free to do, for example, will
normally be very different. It is certainly no coincidence that cultures
sample.
holding to the intrinsic view have normally been far less destructive of
nature than the dominant Western human chauvinist culture.
In summary, the claim that there is no reaZ practical difference,
that the intrinsic value viewpoint is empty verbalisation, does not stand
up to examination.
The capacity - no doubt exaggerated, but nonetheless far from
negligible - of Western industrial societies to solve their ecological
problems (at least to their own pathetically low standards) within a
chauvinistic framework, does considerably complicate, and obstruct, an
alternative more practical argument to the need for a new ethic, t/ze
arpMwezzt yrcm
problems,
that in no other way ...
[than] prepared[ness] to accept a
"new ethic", as distinct even from adding one or two new moral
principles to an accepted common ... can modern industrial
35
societies solve their ecological problems.
On next page.
36
�Not only does the argument encounter various objections - most obviously
that many of the problems can be solved, if not within Western ethics, in
immediate extensions of them - but the case suggested would hardly be a
satisfactory basis for the type of ethic sought.
It is not so much that
it would be a chauvinistic way of arriving at a supposedly nonchauvinistic
ethic, for bad procedures can lead to good results;
rather it is that
important ecological problems, shaping environmental ethics, such as
preservation of substantial tracts of wilderness and just treatment of
animals, tend to be written off in industrial societies as not serious
problems.
But even if the argument suggested has too narrow a problem
base, and so may yield too limited a change in attitudes as compared with
the main theoretical argument, the argument merits fuller formulation and
further investigation.
The argument to need for ethical revision is as
follows:
(1)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems (of modern
industrial societies) implies (the adoption of) an alternative
(2)
environmental ethic.
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems is needed.
Therefore, an alternative environmental ethic is needed.
The argument is valid, given, what seems correct, that pimplies q implies
that p is needed implies that q is needed.
The second premiss is or can
be made analytic, on the sense of 'satisfactory'
'satisfactory' imply 'needed');
(e.g. by having
so the case is complete if the first
premiss can be established (in the same sense of 'satisfactory'), and the
conclusion is then plausible to at least the extent the premiss is.
Al37
though the first premiss, or something like it, is widely endorsed,
cogent
3 5 Passmore (c) op. cit., p.438.
According to Passmore (p.431),
By common consent, there are four major
pollution, the exhaustion of resources,
species, and overpopulation ...
To solve such problems involves finding
types of human conduct or of preventing
having its present consequences.
ecological problems:
the destruction of
a way either of altering
that human conduct from
In what follows the assumption that 'there are four major ecological
problems' gets rejected.
36 Here and elsewhere, 'environmental'
less interchangeably.
and 'ecological' are used more or
37 Even Passmore, though previously (e.g. in (a)) highly critical of
proposals for new ethics, gives qualified endorsement to an assumption
of this sort ((c), p.441).
... I do not doubt, all the same, that our attitudes to nature
stand badly in need of revision and that, as they stand, they form
a major obstacle to the solution of ecological problems.
37
�arguments for it are few and it is no simple matter rendering the
premiss plausible.
Moreover rendering it plausible involves a substant
ial detour through social theory;
for the case for the premiss proceeds
along these sorts of lines:
(3)
Unless there are (certain) major changes in socio-economic structure,
environmental problems will not be satisfactorily solved.
(4)
The major changes in socio-economic structure involve
an alternative
ethic.
A much stronger thesis than (3) has been argued for using systems analysis,
namely that without very extensive socio-economic changes, modern
industrial society will collapse;
but several of the assumptions made
in the analysis are doubtful or disputed.
independently of that stronger thesis;
But (3) has been argued
for example, it will follow from
the thesis (of Falk, Commoner and others)
'that the modern industrial
ethic as we have known it is not sustainable on ecological grounds'. 39
In a sense,
(3) is obvious;
for it is present socio-economic arrangements
that have produced many of the present serious environmental problems;
without major changes in those arrangements most of the problems will
persist or, more likely, intensify.
What is not immediately evident is
that the major changes called for, in satisfying (3), suffice for (4).
However reflection on the specific 'types of changes required - for example
at a superficial level, human population limitation, reduction of poll
ution, more sensible resource usage, selective economic growth - reveals
that significant changes in value, and also in what is considered
permissible, are bound to be involved in the changes.
plausible, and
therewith the intended conclusion.
So (4) is decidedly
But the argument
leaves the detailed character of the needed alternative ethic rather
obscure;
and it may well be that the ethic so yielded is somewhat
chauvinistic in character.
The more practical argument cannot entirely
supplant the main theoretical argument.
In sum, there are good and pressing reasons to investigate the
alternatives to chauvinistic ethics, especially human chauvinism, because
such chauvinistic ethics are discriminatory, because the case for them
38
39
See, in particular, D. Meadows and others, T/ze Limits fa GrgzjfZz,
Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
R.A. Falk, 'Anarchism and world order', FVozncs IX, 1978, p.66.
Falk
refers for the case to B.Commoner, TTze CZrsizzy Circle, Knopf, New York,
1971;
R.A. Falk,
PZuzzef, Random House, New York. 1971;
E. Goldsmith and others
/or SMrrfzJuZ, Houghton and Miflin,
Boston, 1972, and Meadows of uZ-., op. cit.
38
�does not stand up to examination, and because they have been involved in
the destruction of much of value and now threaten the viability of much
that is valuable.
§4 . ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERNATIVES :
NARROWING THE CHOICE AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC
The basic-and basically mistaken-doctrine of the Western super-ethic
is, as we have seen, that people, humans of whatever shape or form, are
the fundamental carriers or objects of value and that all other items are
valuable only in an instrumental or derivative way.
It is important, in
deed mandatory in a genuine environmental ethic, to reject this view and
allow natural items to have a value in their own right, iz? t/ze same /as/ziazz
as CzzaZzza^Ze? peapZe, both for the reasons outlined above, of the theoret
ical unsatisfactoriness and arbitrariness of the traditional view, and for
more practical reasons, namely, to help ensure the ecological sustain
ability of modern society, and in optimising human welfare.
It has often
been pointed out that 'a totally humanised world would diminish us as
40
human beings',
that the traditional view of humans, or classes of humans,
as dominant, and of natural items as without value except where they serve
human or class interests-a view that often carries contempt for nature leads not only to the destruction of much that is of value but (paradoxic
ally) to counterproductive results even with respect to human welfare.
Thus McHarg (in attractively coloured rhetoric):-
Show me a man-oriented society inwhich it is believed that reality
exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos is a struct
ure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is
divine and given dominion over all things, indeed that God is made in
the image of man, and I will predict the nature of its cities and
their landscape.
I need not look far for we have seen them-the hot
dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and
mined landscapes.
centric man;
This is the image of the anthropomorphic, anthropo
he seeks not unity with nature but conquest (op. cit.).
The rejection of this view and its replacement by a view in which
natural items can be regarded as of value and as worthy of our respect for
themselves and not merely for what we can get out of them or what use we
40 See e.g. the discussion at pp.116-17 of (a) J. Rodman, 'The Liberation
of nature', IzzgMfrz/, 20 (1977) 83-145. All subsequent references to
Rodman's work without further indication are to this article.
Note well that the rejection of human chauvinism does z?ot imply that no
chauvinistic arguments - or rather, arguments that are usually stated
in chauvinistic form - carry weight. On the contrary, some chauvinistic
arguments (e.g. those supporting wilderness retention and species
preservation) carry considerable weight; and, since the prevailing
industrial ethics remain chauvinistic, environmentalists would be rash
not to use them.
39
�can make of them, is becoming increasingly widespread in parts of the
environmental movement.
It is this primarily that makes for an important
ideological split in the conservation movement, between what Naess (op.
cit.) called
and Teep ecology, between those who see conservation
as just a matter of wiser, better-controlled topper-term exploitation of
the environment - something which is compatible with denying value to
42
...
everything except man ' and those who see it at least in part as involving
a recognition of value for natural items independent of man, and hence as
involving (at least to some extent) a Ttf^erept uttitp(7e to Mature.
The
first view, the long-term or erttpbteped e^ptoitatior view, which is
closely tied to prevailing more enlightened economic assumptions, tends to
make heavy use of the watershed term 'resource';
the problem of conserv
ation is seen as one of 'zjfse pse of resources', a resource being something
of use to humans or persons.
On this view, which does not get beyond the
confines of human chauvinism, and so is no direction for a satisfactory
environmental ethic to take, items which have no perceivable use to man,
i.e. non-resources, can be destroyed without loss;
and the environmental
problem is viewed as largely one of making people aware of the extent to
which natural items and processes have frstr^meptut value, i.e. of how
far we are dependent on them and they are of pse to us.
There is no
recognition either that some items might be valuable precisely because
they are independent of man.
Resource Conservation, or the shallow position, is the first of the
42
four ideal types that Rodman
discerns in his investigation of the
contemporary environmental movement.
The deeper ecological position gets
split under Rodman's division into three ideological positions - though
Rodman prefers to put the matter in symbolic or experiential terms, in
terms of forms of consciousness - namely Wilderness Preservation, Nature
Moralism, and Ecological Resistance.
Though the positions discerned are
neither characterised in an exclusive fashion, nor exhaustive of ecological
positions, and though we shall have to look beyond all the positions for a
satisfactory environmental ethic, nonetheless they afford an excellent
perspective on the main types of alternative positions that have been
adopted by those within environmental movements.
It is not uncommon to encounter attempts to write the shallow position
into the very meaning or definition of copseraotiop, e.g. 'conservation
is the use of resources to the greatest advantage of man', 4 Sprrep of
/Ipstrotfap Forestry and tVood-Fused Ipd^strfes.
Part PT. Prodpcttop
Forestry Peretopmept PZup.
Draft (31 October, 1974), p.ll - a
blatantly chauvinistic account.
On next page.
40
�According to (Wilderness) Preservation, which focusses on
wilderness, wilderness is to be preserved for the wilderness experience,
wilderness offers a natural cathedral,
a sacred place where human beings can transcend the limitations
of everyday experience and become renewed through contact with
the power of creation ((b), p.49).
The values discerned in wilderness and natural landscape are primarily
aesthetic and quasi-religious, or mystical,
'the experience of the holy
is esthetically mediated'; what is valuable remains human experiences.
Thus the Wilderness Preservation position does not move outside the
sphere of human chauvinism, and can no more than Resource Conservation
offer a frame for an environmental ethic.
conclusion:
Rodman reaches a similar
Resource Conservation and Wilderness Preservation appear
variations on the theme of wise use, the former oriented to the
[efficient] production of commodities for human consumption, the
latter to providing human amenities ((b), p.50).
For this reason, the Wilderness Preservation position fails even on the
score of justifying the preservation of wilderness - on the very task it
was designed to accomplish - in a range of circumstances.
Like other
See especially (b) J. Rodman, 'Theory and practice in the environmental
movement: notes towards an ecology of experience', in
Search /or
i?? a
^orZ-d^ International Cultural Foundation,
New York, 1978, pp.45-56. Some of the types are portrayed in greater
detail in other Rodman papers.
The remainder of this largely new section on environmental ethical
alternatives is heavily indebted, in ways the references mostly make
plain, to Rodman's work. His work covers a vast range of interlinked
topics; only those of immediate relevance have been touched upon.
But there is very much in the remainder that repays careful reading,
and TnMc/z to think about and to question or reject, reaching perhaps
its lowest point in the paradoxical themes:
Just as our statements about other people tend also to be
concealed statements about ourselves, so statements about non
human nature tend to be concealed statements about the human
condition, and movements to liberate nonhuman nature tend also
to be movements to liberate the repressed potentials of human
nature (p.105).
In part because these themes and the related myth of microcosm are
taken seriously, and not for the evident falsehoods they are, in part
because the ethical adequacy of the human/nonhuman distinction is
never seriously questioned (e.g. it is taken for granted, what is not
the case, that rights apply to humans and are problematic beyond them),
and in part because of the characteristically chauvinistic emphasis on
human experience and the endeavour to bring everything within that
experiential purvue, and the associated weight assigned to human
symbolic, mythic and ritual activities, one is left with the feeling,
at the end of all the investigations one can profitably follow Rodman
through, that one has not got beyond the confines of human chauvinism.
41
�instrumentalist accounts of wilderness value, it breaks down entirely
With examples like the Last Man, assuming that Mr. Last Man is never
turned on by natural spendour.
More alarmingly, under readily conceivable
developments, it would allow the elimination of wilderness entirely.
For
consider the Wilderness Experience Machine, a low-impact low-tech
philosophical machine, recently patented by I.M. Diabolic, which can
duplicate entirely, even for groups of people, wilderness experiences,
but in a downtown room.
As far as the psychological experience goes, this
machine can provide a complete substitute for any actual wilderness, and
were the value of wilderness to reside in the experience it afforded,
could entirely replace it and eliminate the alleged need for it.
Most environmentalists would be (rightly) dissatisfied with, not to
say appalled by, the idea that Wilderness Experience Machines could sub
stitute for wildernesses, since they provided the same experiences.
what else they wanted, the answer would of course be:
Asked
Wildernesses, not
merely wilderness experiences.
Wildernesses are valuable in their own
right, over and above the experiences they can afford. 4 3 Really, that is,
they consider wildernesses intrinsically valuable, but have been pushed
by the prevailing ethical ethics into stating, and misrepresenting, their
position in experiential terms.
There is some independent evidence that
the Wilderness Preservation position is frequently a disguised intrinsic
value position, in the attitude taken to examples like the Last Man case,
that purely hypothetical experiencers (who may vanish into counterfactuals)
are good enough, and that in some real-life cases it is enough that
wilderness is there to be contemplated, whether or not anyone actually
takes advantage of its presence to gain experiences, or indeed whether or
not it is in fact contemplated.
Such examples remove the disguise and
reveal the position as at bottom an intrinsic value position.
In that
event it is however better to avoid the disguise; for the case for wilder
ness preservation which starts from the position that some wilderness
tracts have intrinsic as well as merely instrumental value is substantially
stronger than any position which assigns them merely instrumental value.
Wilderness lovers and nature conservationists have in fact worked out
- or concocted - a set of arguments to show why wildernesses and nature
conservation are of benefit to humans, to argue for their instrumental
The concept of
too can vary with the operative ideology,
e.g. on certain views, such as Wilderness Preservation, wilderness
comprises areas that are
(or provide the opportunity for use), e.g.
used for experiential enrichment. By contrast, on a genuine Environ
mental Resistance view, wilderness is a wild area, use of which is not
implied:
it may never be used, and it may not matter that it affords
no opportunity for (human) use.
(Under popular high redefinition of
'wilderness', there are of course no wildernesses remaining on the
earth, and wilderness vanishes as soon as humanly experienced.)
42
�value.
For example, there are various arguments from the scientific
value, or usefulness, of wilderness, e.g. for the study of natural eco
systems, for the investigation of plant history and evolution, as a
repository of genetic diversity, etc.
These arguments, which (like
parallel arguments for species preservation) are not to be
especially as regards persuasive force, can be put in nonchauvinistic
form;
for science and knowledge are not linked essentially with, for
example, the feature of being human.
Often however - e.g. where the
wilderness defended has, so far as it is known, little that is very
special to offer - such arguments appear to be merely a conventional front
for the real (or deeper) reasons - and in seme instances, correspondingly
weak and unpersuasive (as Fraser Darling has remarked, and Passmore has
tried to show in (a)) - the real reasons being based on the perception of
nonuseful properties of value.
This is particularly marked in the case
of arguments for preserving the most complex and beautiful of the world's
plant communities, tropical rainforest.
Such arguments as that various
uninvestigated rainforest trees may at some time be found to contain
useful drugs, by no means exhaust the true value of the rainforest.
For it
is in the intrinsic, i.e. noninstrumental, value of the rainforest that
the main reason for not unduly interfering with it, e.g. not interfering
in ways that threaten its stability or viability, lies.
In particular,
destruction of a wilderness, such as a rainforest, would significantly
diminish intrinsic value, and so should (in general) be resisted.
Environmentalists who are aware of these sorts of problems and
dangers with resource use approaches to wilderness preservation sometimes
attempt to formulate their alternative view in terms of one of the lesser
traditions, most popularly in terms of the
image, in
which man is seen as the steward of the earth - an analogy which, as
Passmore points out (in (a)), is problematic outside a religious context.
For who is man steward to?
If not to God, then how is the analogy to be
unpacked, and what conditions must "stewardship" conform to?
If "good
stewardship" is management in the interests of humans, or humanity, then
the position does not go beyond Resource Conservation;
if it is manage4
4
ment to serve intrinsic values, or God,
then good stewardship is but a
cover for the recognition of intrinsic values, which are better introduced
directly.
Thus admitting values which are not instrumental, which do not
answer back in some way to states or conditions of humans is a feature of
all satisfactory deeper ecological alternatives.
In order to allow for
such intrinsic values and/or associated attitudes of respect, e.g. for
On some interpretations;
chauvinism.
on others theism may serve to reinforce human
43
�nature and various
natural things, it is however unnecessary to adopt a
religious backdrop such as the "Good Stewardship" image suggests, or even
a semi-religious framework such as a mystical or superstitious one with
taboos and sacred places as symbolic and ritual elements.
A theory of
intrinsic value which assigns intrinsic value to wilderness and species
of free animals, for good reasons, can be entirely naturalistic (in a
main sense of that much-abused term).
The third, somewhat amorphous, cluster of positions Rodman describes,
noninstrumental,
value to natural items, such as - on some versions of the position wilderness.
Nature Moralisms, do just that, assign intrinsic, f/zat
[An] alternative perspective ...
[to] the theme of wise use 4 5 ...
is provided by the tradition growing out of the humane movement,
recently radicalised by animal liberationists, and sometimes
generalised to embrace non-animal beings as well.
In contrast
to the economic ethos of Resource Conservation and the religious/
esthetic character of Wilderness Preservation, this perspective is
strikingly moral in style.
Its notion of human virtue is not
prudence or reverence, but justice.
In contrast to the caste
bound universe of the Resource Conservationist, the Natural
Moralist affirms the democratic principle that all natural entities
(or, more narrowly, all forms of life) have intrinsic value, and
that wild animals, plants, rivers, and whole ecosystems have a
right to exist, flourish and reproduce - or at least that human
beings have no right to exploit or unnecessarily harm or destroy
other members of the biotic community.
In contrast to the aristo
cratic universe of Wilderness Preservation, where some places (and
some forms of recreation) are holier than others and certain types
of natural entities ... are traditionally more worthy of being
saved than others ..., the world of the Nature Moralist is
characterised by an apparent egalitarianism ((b), p.50^ my
rearrangement).
Each of the sweep of environmental alternatives indicated can be seen as
an
of conventional Western ethics: intrinsic value is extended
uniformly to all animals or certain favoured features of all these, e.g.
their experience, happiness, avoidance of suffering, or is extended to all
living creatures or systems, or is extended to all natural items or even
to objects - it may or may
be distributed uniformly or equally;
Human use and human experience, it might be added.
44
�rather independently, rights may be ceded to all animals, or to some or
all living things, or to all things, or, alternatively and differently,
right-holders' rights with respect to some or other of these classes are
restricted;
and similarly other deontic notions, justice, obligation,
even perhaps duty, may extend to apply to larger classes of items than all
humans or persons.
The sweep, which is impressive, is intended to include both extended
utilitarianisms, e.g. Bentham's utilitarianism as revamped by Singer
according to which all sentient creatures are entitled to equal consider
ation of interest, and extended (legal) rights doctrines, e.g. the
assignment of rights or legal standing to all natural objects as suggested
by, for instance, Stone.it also includes Darwin's ethic and Leopold's
"land ethic". 4 7 In order to capture some of the intended examples of
Nature Moralists, and all the Moral Extension positions, Rodman's
characterisation requires some adjustment - which will be taken for
granted in what follows.
For example, Singer and other animal liberation-
ists do not assign intrinsic value to all forms of life, or even to all
animals;
but (as Rodman is well aware) to all sentient creatures;
that
is, further classifications have to be taken into account.
The egalitarian, or uniformity, assumptions that serve in character
ising Natural Moralism are mistaken.
Not all objects are of equal value;
some are more valuable then others, while some have little or no value
(and some have a negative value).
Impressive though the sweep of extensions is, all the positions
indicated should be rejected on one ground or another, and sometimes on
several grounds.
Against positions which do not extend the class of
objects of moral concern and candidates for value to include all objects,
variants of the counterexamples to the Western super-ethic can be
directed.
Consider, for instance, the positions (of usual animal liber-
ationists) which extend the moral boundaries just to include sentient
creatures (or e.g. preference-havers).
Adapt the Last Man and Last
People examples, the Wilderness example, etc., by removing all
(inessential) animals from the examples, e.g. the wilderness contains no
animals, in the Last People situation there are no other animals than the
46 p. singer,
*??;
E-ZEerafZc
/VeD
Random House, New York, 1975;
C. Stone, op. cit.
47 at least on a straightforward reading of Leopold's eventual position:
but not according to Rodman;
see his contrast of Leopold with Stone,
p.110.
Darwin's ethic, which anticipates Leopold's, is presented in
C. Darwin,
Second edition, J. Murray, London, 1883.
48 On next page.
45
�last people themselves. Then the counterexamples apply as before
against the liberation positions.
It is unnecessary to go quite so far afield to fault such positions,
at least in practice:
facts of experience:
as.Rodman might put it, they are countered by the
... I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon
to feel uneasy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion
that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of
anything but sentient animals (p.89).
But an advantage of the counterexamples is that the same examples, among
many others (e.g. situations devoid of sentient creatures, situations
where the message of experience conflicts with justice or fairness),
reveals the erroneousness of the well-sponsored thesis, a simple analogue
of empiricism, that all value 49 derives from experience (of experiential,
or sentient, objects). A corollary is that value is not to be assessed
either, in any simple way, in terms of the facts of experience.
Insofar as Nature Moralism relies upon simple extensions of
utilitarianisms, or of subjectivisms, to include a larger class of
subjects,
(a larger base class), such as all present sentient creatures,
or all preference-havers at any one
time,
*
etc., it is open not merely to
adaptations of the argument against chauvinism (animal chauvinism is not
that much more satisfactory than human chauvinism), but most of the
Nor, on Moral Extensions, need all objects that have rights have equal
rights.
Rights may not be very democratically distributed. Some things
have rights, e.g. as a result of agreements, of a sort others do not
hold or are not capable of holding. Even rights to exist, to flourish
and to reproduce (each case is different) are in much doubt where there
is scarcity or conflict and where some right holders are taken to be
worth much more than others.
Nor are such leading examplars of Natural
Moralism as Singer and Stone, though they are concerned to extend
principles of justice, committed to equality of rights assumptions.
Stone explicitly rejects equal distribution of rights; but the
principle that all natural objects are equal in having rights, which
really says no more than that they all have rights, is at best a very
weak egalitarian principle.
Singer offers (and presumably would offer)
no equality of rights principle, rejects an equality of treatment
principle, and proposes as a principle of equality a (near vacuous)
principle of equal consideration of interests.
Not, this time, knowledge. But amusingly "value empiricism" collapses
into empiricism proper given the Socratic identification: Value
(generalising Virtue) is knowledge.
The only natural stopping point under value empiricism is, of course,
with all creatures that have (or could have) the relevant experiences:
again not with humans.
46
�standard
objections to utilitarians,
subjectivisms,
etc.
Many
versions of Nature Moralism may than be defeated on rather conventional
grounds.
There emerges, further, a dilemma for extensions.
Either the crucial
notions of right and intrinsic value are extended to all sentient
creatures (experience-havers), in which case the objections just lodged
apply, or they are extended more sweepingly, e.g. to all natural objects.
But the latter involves attributing to such items attributes they do not
have, most obviously rights to such objects as stones;
it also violates
the conditions that have to be met for the holding of rights and for the
entitlement of rights.
Thus, for example, Stone considers underpinning
his extension of rights, beyond sentient creatures in the ordinary sense -
or of legal rights beyond recognised "legal persons" - by a postulate of
50
universal sentience or consciousness;
in short, by an unacceptable
metaphysics, or myth.
There are several further objections which work against many versions
of Natural Moralism to which Rodman draws attention:
(1)
Moral Extensions are 'inadequate to articulate the intention that
sustains the [environmental] movement'
wilderness preservation movements.
(p.88), specifically wilderness and
It takes but little argument to show
that utilitarian ethics, such as Singer's, so far from assisting the
environmental movement, can (if adopted) reinforce the case
wilderness and preservation of wild species.
But an extension like
Stone's extension of legal rights can help, and has helped, at least in
the courts where its meta-physical underpining is unlikely to be glimpsed.
The basic point is however that the rights talk does not connect with, and is
insensitive to, the experiential basis.
Mere extensions of moral notions
such as interest or right or justice are insufficient to treat and do just
ice to the multi-dimensional depth of environmental issues, such as the
damming of a river (p.115). Part of the reason is said to be that the usual
moral aparatus, which was evolved in the case of certain person-to-person
See Rodman's discussion, pp.92-3. But Rodman overstates his case in
claiming that 'some such postulate as universal consciousness is there
fore necessary if the notion of rights for trees is not to seem a
rootless fancy'. For, as explained below, extended rights can be
defined by a rather "natural extension" of the familiar notion of right,
without any such postulate;
and grounds of entitlement can be traced
back to value of the items.
Certainly extended rights sever what linkage there may have been between
rights and liabilities, but with the modern separations of rights from
responsibilities that linkage was already damaged or broken.
47
�relations, is inadequate for getting to grips with a new dimension of
moral experience, that concerned with environment, and inadequate to
reflect ecological sensibility.
Rodman tries to press, however, a much
stronger, and rather more dubious, theme, the SsZZ-onf thesis:
By adapting the moral/legal theory of 'rights',
[the movement] may
sell its soul, its roots in mythic and ritual experience, to get
easier judicial standing (p.88);
and more savagely,
the progressive extension
model
of ethics, while holding out the
promise of transcending the homocentric perspective of modern
culture, subtly fulfills and legitimates the basic project of
modernity - the total conquest of nature by man (p.97, also
p.119).
While neither of these large claims is strictly true - soul-selling is
simply avoided through adoption of the notion of extended-right, which
can yield a conservative extension of the original position;
and even
utilitarians may be committed to blocking projects which threaten free
animals - each has a substantial point.
Part of the point behind the
latter claim is worth developing separately:(2)
Moral Extensions typically cast natural objects, notably animals, in
the role of inferior humans,
'legal incompetents', imbeciles, human
vegetables, and the like.
They
are ... degraded by our failure to respect them for having
their own existence, their own character and potentialities,
their own forms of excellence, their own integrity,
a degradation usually reflected in our reduction of 'them to the status of
instruments for our own ends', and not removed 'by "giving" them rights, by
assigning them to the status of inferior human beings'
(p.94).
Many of us know where the treatment of natural objects as mere means
The mistaken treatment of them
for human ends tends to lead and has led.
as inferior humans, a treatment which fails to see and 'respect the
otherness of nonhuman forms of life', leads in the same direction.
For
given that animals, for example, are inferior, it is legitimate to treat
them also as inferior;
a greater value principle, which moral extensions
typically endorse, yields a similar result.
The needs of increasing
populations of superior humans will eventually outweigh, if they do not
do so already, the cases of inferior inhabitants of this finite earth for
the retention of their natural habitats.
48
For their rights and their
�In the larger perspective, the Moral
values will be less than "ours".
Extensions, with their built-in greater value assumptions, do legitimate
the conquest of nature by humans.
Thus too they fail seriously, on what
will soon enough be quite practical grounds, as satisfactory environmental
ethics.
(3)
The extensions, like the parent ethics which they extend, are
narrowly individualistic, and insufficiently holistic. This is particularly
conspicuous in the case of utilitarianisms, which in principle arrive at
all assessments by some sort of calculations, e.g. summations and perhaps
averaging, from an initially given unit conforming to requisite equality
conditions, e.g. equal consideration, equal units of suffering.
In
practice of course the method is, almost invariably, to pretend that the
calculations will yield results which agree with alternatively and
previously arrived at, usually intuitive, often prejudiced, evaluations;
that is, in practice the method is not applied except in a handwaving
back-up fashion.
The method is not applied in part because there are
serious, well enough known, problems in applying it.
The individualistic
bias carried over in other moral extensions, e.g. any experiential theory,
likewise limits their satisfactoriness. It is to understate the matter to
say merely that 'the moral atomism that focuses on individual animals and
their subjective experiences does not seem well adapted to coping with
ecological systems'
(p.89),
'to explore the notion of shared habitat and
the notion that an organism's relationship to its natural environment may
be an important part of the organism's character'
((b), p.52).
A moral atomism that focuses on individuals, discounting their
interrelations, is bound to result in ecological complexes that
matter
(such as ecosystems, wilderness, and species) getting seriously
short-changed.
To illustrate:-
Under atomism, the value of a complex, or
the rights of a complex, amount to no more than those of its individual
members;
but since these are, in isolation from the complex, no more
valuable than other things of their order, e.g. one gentian than another,
a bush rat from a Norwegian rat, there no special merit in a complex, or
rights attaching to it, in virtue of its rareity or uniqueness or special
features as a complex.
Thus, for instance, a utilitarianism under which
only individual animals count assigns, and can assign, no special value to
species, and can (as remarked) be used to argue against preservation of
species:
Since all animals are equal - or at least all animals of the
same genus are more or less equal - one can substitute for another.
Fora
rare species of rat to die out painlessly cannot matter while there are
plenty of other rats.
A rights theory is in similar difficulties so long
49
�as rights are assigned only to individuals, taken in isolation from their
environmental setting (i.e. only to the usual separable individuals of
philosophical theory).
These problems may be avoided, in part, by assign
ing rights to complexes
(given the notion of rights will take that much
further stretching;
which it will not if right holders are assumed to be
conscious or to be preference-havers), and by attributing independent
value to complexes.
But, since the value of a whole is sometimes more
than the sum of the separable values of its individual members, this move
involves the rejection of usual atomism, utilitarianisms in particular.
The objection against the narrow individualism of the extensions - a
defect they share with standard ethics which do not admit of ready
extension, such as contract theories - soon broadens into an objection
that these extensions are built on an inadequate metaphysics, a metaphysics
of rather isolated individuals who (or which) are seriously depauperate in
An ethics presupposes a metaphysics at
their relations with other objects.
least through its choice of base class:
thus for example, usual homocen-
tric formulations of utilitarianisms and contract theories suppose a base
class of narrowly self-interested humans.
The remedy is not (as Rodman
suggests in various places in his elaboration of Ecological Resistance)
to move to holism:
to do so would be to accept the other half of a false
dichotomy mainstream philosophical thought engenders (cf. Routley (g), this
volume).
It is rather to move to a metaphysics that is built on a concept
ion of objects (which may or may not be individuals) which are rich in
their interrelations and connections.
In summary, the moral extensions are the wrong direction in which to
seek a satisfactory environmental ethic.
But the failure of Nature
Moralism does not mean, as Rodman tends to assume, that all positions
that are moral in style are thereby ruled out. 51 For one thing, Nature
Moralism, as characterised (or generalised), is far from exhaustive of
the range of prima facie viable moral positions.
More satisfactory
positions will simply avoid the damaging assumptions of Nature Moralism
(and likewise those of inadequate ethical positions, such as contract
theories or naturalism, and those linking morality to legality;
For another, if the quest is for an
ruled out.
cf. p.103).
moral notions can hardly be
Even if it is assumed that the call for a 'new ethic' is 'to
guide the human/nature relationship (p.95) - a somewhat unfortunate way
of putting it - whereas what matters is the human/nature relationship
itself, and that in coping with that relation fixation on morality or
51
His thesis of the 'limitation of the moral/legal stage of unconscious
ness' is investigated in more detail in what follows.
50
�legality is a serious handicap, and may contribute to the problem of the
relationship rather than helping solve it (pp.103-4);
still part of the
problem is that of indicating entitlements of agents with respect to their
environment, what sort of exploitation, if any, is permissible, what the
limits on conventional morality are, and discovering 'a larger normative
order within which we and our species-specific moral and legal systems
(p.97).
have a niche'
Nor, in outlining Ecological Resistance, does
Rodman shrink from using - he could not avoid the effect of - axiological
terms such as 'good' and deontic terms such as 'should';
he does not
doubt, for example, that some of what is natural that is threatened is
valuable and that threats to it should be resisted; and he admits that
'prudence, justice, and reverence may be essential parts of a[n ecologic
ally] good life'.
Ecological Resistance, which is said to be the alternative 'most
faithful to the integrity of experience', exhibits indeed the negativity
of resistance.
The position is founded on action, resistance, and theory
only emerges retrospectively (if perhaps at all).
Its (insufficiently
qualified) central principle is 'that diversity is natural, good and
threatened by the forces of monoculture'.
The struggle between these
forces, diversity and monoculture - between (ecological) good and evil -
occurs in several different spheres of experience, i.e. at various levels,
which reflect one another. Resistance is not undertaken for self-interest
or utilitarian reasons, or for moral reasons, or for religious or mystical
reasons (such as preventing profanation), but
because the threat to the [natural object or system]
... is perceived
aZso as a threat to the self, or rather to the principle of diversity
and spontaneity that is the endangered side of the basic balance that
defines and sustains the very nature of things ((b), p.54).
The disjunction, 'or', separates however two rather different (though combin
able) reasons-cum-motives for resistance.
The second disjunct yields the
following reasons for resistance (which are linked by a metaphysical
assumption connecting diversity and spontaneity with the nature of things):
(i) The threat to the natural item is a threat to the principle of
diversity and spontaneity.
So, by the central principle, it is a threat
to what is good, etc.
(ii) The threat to the natural object 'is a threat to the very nature
of things':
(as to how consider the example of the wild river threatened
by a dam, p.115).
So - by an unstated, but nonetheless implied and
assumed, principle, that the very nature of things is good (and natural) it is a threat to the forces of good.
51
�The first disjunct yields
form:
a
further,
different, argument;
in simplest
(iii) The threat to the natural object is a threat to oneself.
What
is a threat to oneself is bad and to be resisted, so what is a threat to
the natural object is bad and has to be resisted (since what is bad should,
in general, be resisted).
Although the arguments are valid, the underlying principles are
faulty;
for instance, the diversity (and spontaneity) principle because
it is too simple (and so too does not harmonize with the nature of things);
and the second principle, the intrinsic merit of the very nature of the
things, because not everything that is the case or is natural is meritor
ious, e.g. genuinely natural disasters.
Rodman plans to avoid obstacles
to adopting nature as an absolute standard and, at the same time, to
bridge the gap the principle spans, by resort to a version of naturalism
which equates 'the "natural" with the "moral"'
(pp.96-7).
But for well-
known reasons which can be supported (e.g. those telling against objective
ethics of the sort such naturalism would yield), substantive evaluative
assumptions cannot be removed in this fashion;
though they can be
suppressed, they reappear as soon as connections between empirical
The
trouble, characteristic of reductionism, arises from the mistaken attempt
grounds and evaluative judgments based upon them are queried.
to collapse a grounding, or founding, relation to an identity, to close
the gap - which is not problematic but is widely thought to be problem
atic - between value and empirical fact by a reduction of value to fact,
of the thesis that evaluative features are grounded on natural features
to the thesis that evaluative features are nothing but certain natural
52
features (e.g. to be good is just to have certain natural features).
52
Rodman interprets naturalistically the statement of Jonas's that he
quotes approvingly (p.95):
Only an ethic which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely
in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the
scheme of things ... an ethics no longer founded on divine authority
[or upon human arete], must be founded on a principle discoverable
in the nature of things ... .
He interprets it in terms of 'an ontologically-grounded moral order in
the "the phenomenon of life" or "the nature of things".'
In this way
can be avoided the reduction of 'the quest for an ethics ... to prattle
about "values" taken in abstraction from the "facts" of experience'.
But Jonas's statement can be construed nonnaturalistically, by taking
the founding or grounding relation seriously, as connecting, but not
reducing, values to empirical facts. So construed the statement does
help in delineating the sort of environmental ethics sought.
52
�Such reductions commit the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies -
which can be avoided neither by thinking 'our way through or around them'
(p.97), nor by holistic assimilation of morality in a 'more encompassing
ethical life'
(p.103 and note 66).
But details of the fallacies need not
detain us, since we can consider immediately Rodman's important suggestion
53
for circumnavigating them (pp.103-4).
Under natural social conditions, such as are obtained in some
traditional societies and in some free animal societies (as ethological
studies reveal), but have been lost in modern societies, law and morality,
at least in their coercive aspects, would disappear, as they did in
William Morris's
/row
and somewhat as they would in a Kantian
community of fully autonomous beings.
In terms of modern physics,
morality and law are not invariants but vary under transformation of axes,
and in fact vanish or prove eliminable under a suitable transformations,
e.g. to a natural condition.
There is a similar natural condition for
morality and legality,
a condition in which the prohibitions now prescribed
54
by God,
Conscience and the State would have operated "naturally"
(i.e. from
inside the organism, as a matter of course), and patterns now stated
prescriptively could have been stated descriptively.
When the Way
is abandoned, then we get Humanity and Justice (Tac Te
#18)
(p.103).
Even if a change of social axes could place us back on the Way, or on the
way to the Way, morality is not really avoidable in our local frame where
we are far from the Way.
So ethical disputes over environmental matters
55
are also unavoidable; *
for those a satisfactory ethic is a desideratum,
and can help in bringing about a change of social axes.
Thus too, the
identity of the prescriptive with the descriptive, of "ought" with
(suitable)
"is", is a merely contingent (extensional) one and fails in
53 The suggestion helps explain not only Rodman's naturalism, but his
thesis of the limitation of morality and legality; it also introduces
the anarchistic social change view that suffuses much of the (very
uneven) later parts of (a): the view appears therein as the elabor
ation of what is 'unthinkable'.
54 Given prevailing socio-economic conditions it should be rather:
that
would (ideally) be prescribed. Let us hope, for environmental reasons,
that the principles that are lived by in natural conditions bear not
too great a resemblance to those now prescribed.
55 Nor is there, in the local frame, much alternative but to resort to
legal strategies, where they can be applied (where standing is granted),
to delay "the war against nature".
53
�alternative situations;
hence, as always, there is no deduction of
"ought" from "is", since deducibility would require coincidence in the
alternative situations.
Nor would morality - as distinct from legality,
which requires some codification - strictly disappear under natural
conditions, though its coercive aspects would:
on the whole, as they ought to be.
things would simply be,
But while deontology would have a much
diminished role (as it does on the preferred environmental ethic),
axiology (the theory of value) would still have its place - some objects
(e.g. diverse landscapes) would be more valuable than others (monocultural
landscapes), some not valuable, etc.
(As things stand, of course,
axiology does have an important place in working out the theory of
Ecological Resistance, especially in assessing its central principle of
diversity.)
The upshot is that without much elaboration (like that indicated
below) of an axiological kind, which connects value through a grounding
relation, as distinct from an identity, with the run of things (but not
aZZ things) that are natural, reason (ii) for ecological resistance
fails.
Does reason (i), which is premissed on the central principle that
diversity is good and natural and threatened by monoculture, fare any
better?
While it is a matter of fact that that diversity is threatened,
indeed is being very rapidly reduced by the forces of monoculture, diver
sity is not, as opponents of ecological values are wont to point out, an
entirely unqualified good.
Nor is diversity is always natural:
a
temperate rain forest can be "enriched" and rendered more diverse by
interplanting of exotics (a practice foresters have applied, e.g. in
New Zealand) but the result is not natural and sometimes at least bad.
Or, differently, ecological diversity can often be increased by increasing
edges between ecosystems, but the practice of increasing edges can easily
be unnatural and far from good, as, e.g. in rainforest logging with (say)
50% canopy retention.
So although a reduction of diversity is commonly
bad, since the reduction reduces the quality of an ecological whole, and
increase in diversity good, diversity can not be accepted as a solo
principle.
In fact, Rodman often couples diversity with other factors,
such as naturalness (inadmissible in determining, noncircularly,
what is
good and natural), richness, spontaneity and integrity, which help to
remove various of the counterexamples to a diversity principle. The
procedure points in the direction to be pursued: replacement of the oversimple principle of diversity by a principle combining all relevant
ecological factors.
After all ecological sensibility - ecological resist
ance is assumed to be the position of the person of ecological sensibility requires sensitivity to all such ecological factors.
54
Once it is determined
�through consideration of a mix of ecological factors, that, or whether,
a natural object is good or valuable the reasons for resistance can be
restated:
(iv) Where a natural object is valuable - as c/fe?? natural objects
are, a natural object does not have to be very ecologically distinctive
to be valuable - the threat to the natural object is a threat to what is
But, other things being equal, threats to what is valuable
valuable.
should be resisted.
So, similarly, threats to natural objects should
often be resisted - and always (on whatever level) resisted where the
objects are valuable and the costs of resisting are not overridingly high
(to begin to spell out the ceteris
paribus
clause).
It remains to tie in reason (iii), a key premiss of which can now
take the initial form that the threat to a valuable natural object is a
threat to oneself.
A threat to what is valuable, to what one as a valuer
values,
is a threat to the valuer, to oneself, for these are one's values.
To make
some of those connections good again requires an excursion into
axiology, one, this time, that connects what is valuable with a valuer's
values.
But Rodman, in trying to connect the threats to natural objects
and to oneself, is forced further afield, and resorts to the myth of
microcosm:
'Ecological Resistance involves a ritual affirmation of the
Myth of Microcosm'
universe' (OED).
((b), p.5.4), i.e'. the view of man 'as epitome of the
While such an affirmation - without the ritual - would
yield the requisite connection, it is a classic piece of anthropocentric-
ism, quite hostile to a nonchauvinistic position, and, fortunately,
inessential to genuine ecological resistance.
What Rodman reaches for
from the myth (which could be restated in terms of
without its
classic homocentric bias) is however extremely important:
it is an
account of the
which is not a separate subject
isolated from its (natural) environment (as a Humean individual is),56 but
is connected intensionally and causally interrelated with that environment.
Rodman introduces this metaphysics in rather old-fashioned terms:
Ecological Resistance ... assumes a version of the theory of internal
relations:
the human personality discovers its structure through
interaction with the nonhuman order.
I am what I am at least partly
in my relation to my natural environment, and changes in that environ
ment affect my own identity.
If I stand idly by and let it be
destroyed, a part of me is destroyed or seriously deranged ((b)
p. 54).
Not Man Apart, in the terms of Friends of the Earth.
55
�For among my interests are its interests, part of my welfare is its
57
welfare;
I am identified in part with it.
The metaphysics deepens,
A resister 'does not stand over against
then, the reasons for resistance.
"his environment" as manager, sight-seer, or do-gooder;
integral part of [it]'
he is an
((b), p.56).
But the environmental metaphysics, that underlies and helps support
the ethics, that is part of a fuller environmental theory, need not be,
and should not be if it is to be coherent, as (Hegelian and) holistic as
Rodman immediately goes on to suppose that it is:
... By making the principle of diversity central, Ecological
Resistance can incorporate the other three perspectives as moments
within the dialectic
of a larger whole. Economics, morality, and
an esthetic religiosity have niches in the ecology of our experience
of nature, and each has its limits (p.56 continued).
But a principle of diversity which opposes the forces of monoculture will
not yield
pluralism, unless illegitimately extrapolated to theories
where its merit is much less evident, especially when some of these
theories are not only mutually inconsistent but false.
Rodman risks the
distinctive features of Ecological Resistance for a dubious synthesis.
It is only true that the positions can be combined if the first three
positions are
limited indeed, and then a trivial combination with
each theory working where it works (which may be nowhere actual in the
case of the religious component) can be managed.
Moreover Ecological
Resistance properly developed, will lead to economic and ethical theories
which compete with the rather conventional, and environmentally defective
theories of, respectively, Resource Conservation and Natural Moralism.
Not only is Ecological Resistance severely handicapped by having
implausible holistic theses tacked in to it (not all of which have been
discussed);
further, Ecological Resistance is too negative.
A more
positive theory - which includes a theory of value and, ultimately, for a
fuller environmental position, a metaphysics - is required, not only for
orientation and to meet felt needs of environmentalists already noted,
but for more effective, coherent and systematic resistance.
It is but a short step to the 'fully ecological sensibility [which]
knows with Carl Sandburg that:'
There is an eagle in me ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky
Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want ... . And I got the eagle ... from the wilderness, (p.118)
The poem almost admits of neutral logical formalisation.
56
�trees, kill everything
f/xe Farf/z,
(ed. T.C. McLuhan,
Sphere Books, London, 1973, p.15).
The great care with which so many of the Indians utilized
every portion of the carcass of a hunted animal was an expression,
not of economic thrift, but of courtesy and respect
(D. Lee, in
Farf/z, p.15)-
What the respect position is based on is the fact that it is possible
to make use of something without treating it as something which is no more
than a means to one's ends.
That is, it is possible to make use of some
thing in limited, constrained ways - with constraints which may
not
derive entirely from considerations of the welfare of other humans, as in
the case of the Indians' use of animals - without treating it as available
for any kind of use.
To so use something without treating it as available
for unlimited or unconstrained use for human ends is characteristic of
use.
In contrast non-respectful use treats the use of the item
as constrained by no considerations arising from the item itself and the
user's relationship to it, but as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare and so forth of other humans.
The Western view, as the Indians realised, is the non-respect position,
that the world is available for unconstrained human use.
People who hold
respect positions, such as the Indians, see such a position as indicative
of a lack of moral sensitivity, and sometimes in even stronger terms.
The conventional wisdom of Western society tends to offer a false
dichotomy of use versus respectful nonuse - a false choice which comes
out especially clearly again in the treatment of animals.
Here the choice
presented in Western thought is typically one of edf/zer use without respect
or serious constraint, of using animals for example in the ways character
istic of large-scale mass-production farming and a market economic system
which are incompatible with respect, or on the other hand of not making
any use of animals at all, for example, never making use of animals for
food or for farming purposes.
What is left out in this choice is the
alternative the Indians and other non-Western people have recognised, the
alternative of limited and respectful use, which enables use to be made of
animals, but does not allow animals to be used in an unconstrained way or
merely as a means to human ends.
Such an alternative can have some applic
ation in a Western context (for some limited examples of respectful use
in the operations of a small farmer, see John Seymour,
CompZtsfe
Faber, London, 1976). A limited and respectful use
position would condemn the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals, and
also the treatment of animals as machines, as in factory farming.
84
It
�would also condemn unecessary and wasteful killing and especially killing
for amusement or "sport", which is incompatible with respect and assumes
that animals can be used merely as a means for
human ends. But
it would not necessarily oppose the use of animals in the case of approp
riate non-trivial need, e.g. for food, although here again it would
insist that the ways in which use can be made are limited, and not just
by considerations of effect on other humans.
The limited and respectful use position avoids some of the serious
problems of the no-use position of the animal liberationists, although it
shares many of the same beliefs concerning the illegitimacy of factory
farming and similar disrespectful methods of making use of and exploiting
animals.
The no-use position faces the problem that it proposes that
humans should treat animals in ways which are quite different from the
ways in which animals treat one another, for example, prohibiting needful
use for food.
Thus the no-use position seems obliged to say either that
the world would be a better place without carnivores, or else that
carnivorous animals themselves are inferior, immoral,
moral creatures - whichever, alternative
amoral or non-
is taken here the bulk of
animals emerge as inferior to humans, or at least vegetarian humans.
It
implies too that an impoverished natural order which lacked carnivores -
and given what we know of ecology this would be a very highly impoverished
one indeed, not to say an unworkable "natural" order - is preferable to a
rich natural one with a normal proportion of carnivorous and partly
carnivorous species.
carnivores,
Since it would imply the moral inferiority of
the no-use position appears to arrive at the negation of its
own starting point,
(as regards e.g., the equality consideration) of all
animals, human and non-human.
In thus seeing humans as capable of a moral
existence which most animals are not capable of, it sees man as apart from
a largely amoral, (or immoral) natural world, denies community with the
animal and natural world,and indirectly reinforces human chauvinism.
§6.
TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
OF THE EXTENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REVISION ENSUING ON
ABANDONMENT OF CHAUVINISTIC ETHICS
A radical change in a theory not uncommonly forces changes elsewhere
- conceptual revision which affects not only the theory itself but many
neighbouring areas.
The phenomenon is well-known in the case of major
physical theories, but it holds as well for ethical and philosophical
theories;
for example, a logical theory which rejects the Reference
Theory in a thoroughgoing way has important repercussions throughout much
of the rest of philosophy, and requires modification not only of logical
85
�systems and their semantics, but also, for instance, of the usual meta
theory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is
95
tailored to cater only for logics which do conform.
A
thorough-going environmental ethics likewise has a substantial
impact and forces many changes.
The escape from human chauvinism not
only involves sweeping changes in ethical principles and value theory but
it induces substantial'reverberations elsewhere - both inwards, for
example in metaphysics, in epistemology, and in the philosophy and method
ology of science, and outwards (in subjects that presuppose value theory)
in social theory, in politics, in economics and in law, and beyond.
For
human chauvinism is deeply embedded in Western culture, and affects not
only the ideology and the institutions but the arts.
Thus, for example,
much of literature, and especially of ballet and film, is given over to a
celebration of things human, of the species. Even the timely new emphasis,
for instance of the counterculture, on human relations (as opposed to self-
contained private individuals of social theories)
remains well within
the inherited chauvinistic framework.
As to the changes, let us begin again with ethics.
As we have begun
to see, an environmental ethic can retain, though in a much amended
theoretical framework (which affects meanings of terms), virtually all
the standard ethical terminology.
But even at a superficial syntactical
level, there will be conspicuous alterations:
firstly, ethical terminology
will be enriched with new environmental terms, drawn in particular from
ecology, somewhat as it was expanded in the late nineteenth century by
terminology from evolutionary theories;
and secondly, accompanying the
attitudinal shifts the new ethic involves, there will be a marked shift
in ethical terminology, away from the predominance of such terms as (and
examples associated with)
'obligation',
to such expressions as 'care',
'respect',
'consciousness'.
'duty',
'concern',
'promise',
'responsibility',
'contract',
'trust',
Because the theoretical and attitudinal
frame is changed, an environmental ethic forces - as we have already
found with such notions as
and
-
reexamination of, and modified analyses of, characteristic ethical notions.
It requires, furthermore, reassessment of traditional and conventional
analyses of such notions as natural right, ground of right, and permissib
ility, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions - much
as it requires the rejection of most of the more prominent meta-ethical
gr
These points are explained in detail in Routley (e); and also in
L. Goddard and R. Routley, T/ze
py
urui Context,
Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, 1973, chapters 3 and 4.
86
�positions.
Cursory examination of recent accounts of nutMruZ
wcrcZZtpj jMst-Zce and cctfc?? will help illustrate and confirm these
points.
Hart, for example, accepts (subject to defeating conditions which
are here irrelevant) the classical doctrine of natural rights according
to which, among other things,
any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is
under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons (H.L.A.
Hart,
'Are there any natural rights?', reprinted in PcZZticuZ
PbiZoscpbp,
(ed. A. Quinton), Blackwell, Oxford 1967).
But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on
accepting the basic chauvinist principle - a variant of (D) - environmental
ethics reject;
since if a person has a natural right he has a right.
So
too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective
principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straightforward matter now
that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are,
like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major
re-evaluation.
Another example of chauvinism at work in the very setting up of the
field of discussion and problems in ethics is provided by recent accounts
of .^ercZ'Ztp, where it is simply taken for granted that 'moral' distinguishe
96
among
actions, policies, motives and reasons,
and that what is
moral refers essentially to human well-being (contentment, happiness
or something of this general sort, tied with appropriate states or
conditions of humans).
Such criteria for what is moral are chauvinistic-
ally based, assuming that what does not bear on human states or conditions
cannot be a moral matter.
What happens in worlds without humans,
how animals fare or are treated, what is done or what happens to plants
or other natural objects - none of these are directly moral matters,
except insofar as they impinge on human welfare.
That is human
96 Thus for instance, B. Williams, ^eruZitz/.- Xx
tc Effies,
Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p.79. Williams does, however, remark in
his Preface (p.xiv) how 'shaky and problematic' the distinction - which
he subsequently takes for granted - is.
97 see, for example, P.R. Foot, Tbecries cf FtZrZcs, Oxford University
Press, London, 1967,and G.J. Warnock, Oc^tewpcrcrp McraZ PhZZcscpbp,
Macmillan, London, 1967, and also The Object cf AfcrcZZty, Methuen,
London, 1971.
87
�chauvinism at work, and is at the same time a reductio
such criteria.
ad absurdum of
A different nonchauvinistic account of what is moral is
required (a beginning can be made by adopting certain of the maligned
formal criteria). It is evident that any account which meets even weak
conditions of adequacy will serve to meet the objection that an environmental ethic is not concerned with what is moral but is really an aesthetic
theory.
For the objection as usually presented depends squarely on a
chauvinistic restriction on morality, all the rest of value theory being
classed, or dismissed, as "(mere) aesthetics".
The case of morality
illustrates the characteristic way in which theories - in this case
chauvinistic ethics - redefine crucial notions in their own terms to suit
their own ends, such as entrenchment and fortification of the theories
against objections.
Further corollaries of the rejection of chauvinism include the
inadequacy of recent fashionable attempts, mainly derivative from Hobhouse,
at characterising eguuZitp and justifying it in ways that argue from man's
humanity,98 and the inadequacy of much recent, largely chauvinistic, work
which takes it for granted that action and
99
rationality requirements on action are bound up with human nature.
in the philosophy of
The abandonment of chauvinism implies the rejection not only of much
ethical analysis, but of all current major ethical positions.
The bias of
prevailing ethical positions, and also of economic positions, which aim to
make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is
especially evident.
These positions typically employ a single criterion
p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically
each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps
including future humans, is supposed to have (at least) an ordinal p-
ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy);
then
some principle is supplied to determine a collective p-ranking of these
states in terms of individual p-rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the
Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism in
terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking,
The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class.
go
And
Among such unsatisfactory liberal egalitarian positions are those
presented in G. Vlastos, 'Justice and equality' in JooiuZ
(ed. R.B. Brandt), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, and
B.A.O. Williams, ' The idea of equality' in P^i^osoph^, Pacifies artJ
Jpcietz/, Second series (ed. P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman), Blackwell,
Oxford, 1963.
99 gee, e.g. T. Nagel, TTns PossiM7-7fi/ of
Oxford, 1970.
88
Clarendon Press,
�even if the base class is extended to include persons or some animals
(at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that
the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to
unjust principles.
To take a simple example, if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes'
behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will
rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (still
unfortunately the evaluation of most Australian farmers, though it lacks
any requisite empirical basis).
Likewise it would just be a happy
accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from
individual demand) for a state of the economy with sperm whales as a
mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands;
for
if but few in the base class happened to know that sperm whales exist or
cared a jot that they do, then even the most "rational
economic decision
making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. But whether the
sperm whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what
they see on television.
Summed human interests, or preferences of certain
private individuals, are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis
for deciding upon what is environmentally desirable.
Nor would such
accidental bases be adequate.
Moreover ways out of the problem do not bear much investigation.
It cannot be assumed, for instance, that the base class is on the whole
good, and hence will not enjoin reprehensible behaviour, because such an
assumption seems false, would at best be contingently true (so that the
theory would fail for different circumstances to which it should apply),
and would involve a deep problem in the theory, since it would then seem
to admit the determination of goodness - that of the base class, on the
whole - independently of what the theory was set up to determine, among
other things, goodness. Nor can it be assumed, without serious circularity
that the optimisation is constrained by requirements of justice or fairness
(see Routley (b) and §5 above).
The ethical and economic theories just singled out (which are based
on optimisation over select features of the base class) are not alone in
their species chauvinism;
much the same applies to mosf going meta-
ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some
rationale for their basic principles.
That is, the argument against
utilitarian-type ethical and economic theories generalises.
For instance,
on social contract positions, obligations are a matter of mutual agreement
89
�between individuals of a given (but again problematic) base class;
on a
social justice picture, rights and obligations spring from the application
of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the base class, usually
a rather special class of persons;while on a Kantian position, which
has some vogue, obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the
base class, persons.In each case, if members of the base class happen
to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class, then that is unfortun
ate for them:
that is (rough) justice.
Looking outwards from the ethics, the abandonment of chauvinism has
likewise a wide set of consequences, both theoretical and practical, in
One
economics, politics and law, and generally in the social sciences
major practical economic impact of environmental ethics is in the extent
to which free enterprise can operate unimpeded or unchanged.
of business and enterpreneurial activity - to
But
consider one option - will
involve, in turn, either legal constraints, or reallocation of activity
by such devices as environmental pricing, which directs activity away from
environmentally undesirable pursuits.
For example, if it is wrong to
destroy a rare ecosystem in order to make a few more dollars, then
restrictions should be imposed on business activity by one method or
another. To some limited extent this is already happening in the field of
pollution, but primarily because of the likely effects, direct or not too
far removed, that pollution comes to have on other humans, not for a wider
set of reasons, and often not for the right reasons.
With a wider environ
mental code, the public and legal intrusion into areas typically regarded
as "private" and open to the free enterprise operations (of "open go")
would be much more extensive.
The same applies in the case of private
100 Thus for example,
[Rawls'] original position seems to presuppose not just a neutral
theory of the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception
according to which the best that can be wished for someone is the
unimpeded pursuit of his own path, provided it does not interfere
with the rights of others.
This view is persuasively developed in
the later portions of the book, but without a sense of its controver
sial character (T. Nagel, 'Rawls on justice', PkiZcscphicuZ
82 (1973), p.228).
Nagel also effectively argues that Rawls' original position is not
neutrally determined but involves substantial moral assumptions (e.g.
pp.232, 233);
they are mostly, as it happens, of a chauvinistic cast.
10^ While the first of Kant's maxims is not so restricted in actual form
ulation, others are (see H.J. Paton, TPe
Hutchinson, London,
1947. And, firstly, such maxims are s^pp<9se^ to be equivalent to ones
formulated in terms of persons; secondly, they are supposed to be
derived from features of, or connected with, people.
90
�property;
for example, given that it is not permissible to erode hill
sides then there should, in this setting, be (legal) restrictions on
farmers' and foresters' activities.
Although the impact on the practice of economics of a thoroughgoing
environmental ethic would be drastic - market negotiations, firms'
activities,-international trade, all would be affected - the impact on
the underlying theories of preference and choice is comparatively
less,
but still far from negligible. For much of economics is squarely founded
on chauvinism.
The theoretical bias follows directly from the utilitarian
bases of the theory, which is fairly explicit in welfare theory and rather
heavily disguised in neoclassical theory.
But although choice and value
theory are, as characteristically presented in economics and elsewhere,
damagingly chauvinistic, they do not have to be.
For the theories can be
reformulated in a non-chauvinistic way, as was indicated (in §5) above
for utilitarianism - upon which economic theory is modelled.
On such a
revamped foundation an environmental economics to match the chosen
environmental ethic can be built (for some preliminaries on this approach,
see Routley (d), appendices 1 and 6).
Several of the objections to base class theories such as utilitar
ianism apply not merely against orthodox economic theory, but also to
voting theory, to representative democratic systems of determination of
political action.
If, for, example, the base class consists of private
individuals motivated by their own self-contained interest then such
procedures can readily lead to most undesirable results, especially if
these individuals
compromise
representative individuals.
their autonomy through the election of
For the more powerful of these representative
individuals can be - and typically are, as their behaviour if not their
protestations show - not favourably disposed to (the welfare of) things
outside the base class or even to many members of the base class.
Nearer the theoretical surface, especially in such branches of
economics as "resource management", the chauvinism is more conspicuous.
The following narrowly utilitarian assumption is quite typical:
The goal of resource managers should be to communicate and act in
ways that maximize human satisfaction (H.J. Campbell, 'Economic and
social significance of upstream aquatic resources' in Forest
Fses
Oregon State University, Corcallis,
1971, p-14, also p.17).
When
management - where such is
management becomes
needed at all - the goals will be changed from such chauvinistic ones.
91
�The method of interference in
"free economic enterprise", of
controls and regulations, of legal and political constraints, is only one
way in which leading principles of an environmental ethics can be put
into effect.
A quite different, and ultimately far more appealing,
approach is by way of structural change, by changing the socio-economic
structure in such a way that it comes to reflect on environmental ethics
(by altering the frame of reference, or axes, to use the physical picture
of §4, so.that major problems vanish).
Requisite structural change is
102 .
far-reaching, both practically and theoretically'
in every reach of
social science.
For example, while on the
position,
capitalist markets are subject to further regulation, either directly
imposed or by way of suitable pricing policies, in the sfrzzcfLzraZ-
position, capitalist markets are eliminated;
while under state
regulation private property is subject to further controls,given approp
riate structural change private property disappears.
Looking inwards, an environmental ethic has an impact on the
practice of many sciences other than the social sciences - what they do
experimentally with natural objects (e.g. the treatment of animals in
laboratory testing);
how their research programmes are organised and
directed (consider, e.g., projects involving irradiation or broadscale
herbicide treatments of rainforests);
the way classifications are made
and which are made (consider, e.g. the extent to which human perception
enters into classifications in botany);
recommended on the basis of such sciences.
and, of course, what is
For as it stands human
chauvinism is deeply embedded in the practice of science, directly in
research and experimentation and in shaping classifications, theses and
theories.
Indeed the effect of a different ethic may extend even to the
theory of such sciences, in particular through the bearing the ethic has
103
on metaphysics which in turn influences the foundations or such sciences.
Such a new ethic would quite properly upset (as §1 should indicate) the
extent to which humans are seen at the centre of things and things as
accountable through them and scientific theories as 'human constructions
wrestled from a hostile nature'
(after Popper).
It would help overthrow
the pernicious chauvinistic idea that, apart from certain elementary facts,
AZZes
value.
isf AfeyzscZzoMMor^., all necessity, all intensionality,
all
It should result too in the shattering of still widespread
As (g) V. and R. Routley, 'Social theory, self management and
environmental problems', this volume, begins to explain.
Cf. R. Harre,
P/zi^osop?zies of
1972;
and also Routley (e).
92
Oxford University Press,
�assumptions as to the nature of animals and plants, for instance that
their apparently goal-directed and intensional behaviour can be explained
(away) mechanistically, and the deeply-rooted idea that some sort of
Cartesian metaphysical picture of natural, as distinct from spiritual or
rational, objects can be maintained (cf. again §1).
In metaphysics there are at least two further important classes of
effects.
Firstly, the orthodox views of man's relation to nature, the
dominant and modified dominant and lesser traditions, have to be abandoned
and new positions worked out.
In this sense, a new environmental ethic
implies a similarly new metaphysic redefining Man's place in nature and
human/nature relationships.^^4 such a new philosophy of nature will
recognise various natural objects other than humans as of independent
value, so it will not be naturalistic.
Nor will it view natural objects
as simply available for the use, wise or otherwise, of humans.
Several
principles derived from the orthodox metaphysical positions will have to
be abandoned and replacements worked out (as in the case of (D) in ethics).
Thus superseded, for example, will be the principles of total use of
natural areas for human use and of maximum long-term productivity of the
earth's resources (principles criticised in their application in forestry
in Routley (d)).
At a deeper level, such a philosophy of nature will
involve a turning away from the leading ideological principles of both the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment and of much that went with them (e.g.
with the Rennaissance, the rise of commerce, bureaucracy, professionalism,
formal education, and subsequently, with the Enlightenment, the rise of
the modern state, capitalism and scientific enlightenment).
For it means
the dismissal of the chauvinistic principles of the Renaissance, with 'Man
as the kernel of the Universe', a creature 'half-earthly and half—divine,
his body and soul form[ing] a microcosm enabling him to understand and
control Nature . ..'.^O-^
It means too removal of the humanism of the
Enlightenment, the reduction of what formerly was assigned to the religious,
such as ethical and political principles, to the human, a reduction which
404
Passmore has observed - inconsistently with what is claimed in his
(a) - in 'Attitudes to Nature', Poz/aZ. Irzstitz^te
P/ziZ-csopTzz/ lectures,
volume 8, Macmillan, London, 1975. As against Passmore (a) p.3, such
new ethics and metaphysics need involve no abandonment of 'the
analytical, critical approach which is the glory of the West': on the
contrary, they may well mean a more thoroughly critical and analytical
approach than hitherto.
104 goth quotations are from ?7ze
<9/ t/z<3 Pgrzaissa^cg (ed. D. Hay)
Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp.7-10, where too main movements,
practical and ideological, of the Renaissance are usefully
indicated.
93
�was based on the false dichotomy, which has still not lost its hold:
reli.gious or humanistic.
Secondly, the removal of humans from a dominant position in the
natural order renders immediately suspect a range of familiar philosophical
positions of a verificationistic or idealistic kind such as phenomenalism
in epistemology (how can what exists depend on what is perceived by
members of such a transitory and perhaps not so important species or on
whether there exist <2722/ perceivers?), intuitionism in mathematics, con
ventionalism in logical theory, the Copenhagen interpretation in micro
physics, and subjectivisms not only in ethics but in every other
philosophical sphere.
True, most of these positions are defeated on the
basis of other considerations anyway;
but it is an immediate and further
point against them that they are damagingly chauvinistic.
Thus a corollary of the thoroughgoing rejection of human chauvinism,
of very considerable philosophical importance, is the rejection of all
'the
usual forms of idealism, i.e. all positions which accord primacy to
the human subject and make the existence of a world of things or the
nature of things dependent upon such subjects.
A paradigmatic example is
phenomenalism; other examples are Kantian idealisms, Hegelianisms and
later German idealisms, Christian philosophies based on the primacy of
human (and superhuman) consciousness, existentialisms;
more surprising
examples are empiricisms - inasmuch as all knowledge and truth is supposed
to be ultimately derived from human experience - and their holistic
images, dialectical materialisms and Marxisms.
A satisfactory environ
mental philosophy will be significantly different from all these
positions.
94
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HUMAN CHAUVINISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
*
Richard and Vai Routley
Class chauvinism has been and remains a cardinal weakness of most
moral codes - including, so it will be argued, Western ethics.
A most
serious failure of Western ethics is its human chauvinism or anthropocentricism - a chauvinism which emerges in a refined, and apparently more
reasonable, form as person chauvinism in much modern ethical theory.
What is chauvinism?
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is
differential, discriminatory and inferior treatment (by
sufficiently many members of the class) for items outside the class, for
which there is not
justification. PLzwan chauvinism is class
chauvinism where the class is humans, zzzuZe chauvinism where the class is
human males,
chauvinism where the class is animals, etc.
It would be bud, to say the least, if Western ethics, in its various
strands, were to turn out to rest on human, or person, chauvinism.
For
Western ethics would then have no better foundation than, and be open to
the same sorts of objections as, moral codes based on other sorts of
chauvinisms, e.g. on familial, national, sexual, racial or socio-economic
class chauvinism - in particular it would be open to the objection that
*
This paper (which considerably elaborates R. Routley 'Is There a need
for d ew, an environmental, ethic?',
of f/ze XVfb VorZd
P3 1 (1973), pp.205-10), was drafted in 1973 and
read in 19
he University of Indiana, Bloomington, at Notre Dame
University, an
t the Conference on The Good Society held at the
University of
Canada. Since the main virtue of the paper has
been that it h
ed much interesting discussion, the original
form has been retained,
the authors are no longer especially
happy with the form, an
theses remain insufficiently developed or
e the previous and continuing
defended.
But in order
have been made, even though the
criticism, no substanti
paper has been raided and segments o it presented in improved form
'Against the inevitability
elsewhere, especially (a) R. and V. Rou
of human chauvinism', in MoruZ P/zfZosopbz/
e University Press,
(edited by K. Goodpaster and K. Sayre), Notre
1978, and (b) R. and V. Routley, 'An expensiv
, Choice
utilitarianism', paper presented at the Colloquium on
some
u?zd VuZz^g, RSSS, Australian National University, 1977.
sizeable additions have been made, with a view to incre
intelligibility and enlarging the scope of the original draft,
ing some of the many objections.
1
v'
it discriminated against nonhumans in a prejudiced and unwarranted way,
and would thereby stand condemned.
For it is hard to see how an ethic
based on simple species loyalty could have any greater claim to absolute
ness or deserve any more respect than moral codes based on simple loyalty
to national, sexual, or racial classes.
Such an ethic could no more
command allegiance - once the facts are brought into clear view - than
other normally-deplored examples of localised class chauvinism, such as
the Mafia or protection agencies or rackets or enclaves of slavery.
Unfortunately prevailing Western ethics appear to be of just this sort.
§1.
THE WESTERN CASE FOR ITS HUMAN (OR PERSON) CHAUVINISM:
THE FIRST LINES OF DEFENCE
It is important, then, for defenders of the Western ideology to be
able to show - i/ it can be shown - that an ethic which discriminates
strongly in favour of humans, as Western ethics apparently does, is not
chauvinistic.
Otherwise the ethic stands condemned.
Of course not every
distinction in treatment qualifies as chauvinistic - the distinction in
treatment may not be substantial or systematic, and there may be an
adequate and explicable basis for the distinction, so that some discrimin
ation is warranted.
In order to escape the charge of human chauvinism,
it has to be shown how and why the drastic and general discrimination in
favour of humans sanctioned and enjoined by modern (as by historical)
Western ethical systems is warranted, and that it has an adequate basis.
The extent of this chauvinism, especially with respect to animals, is at
last - after centuries of a priori prejudice and gross distortion of the
characteristics of wild animals and wilderness - beginning to be spelt
'x
out. 1
'X
It is at least clear from the outset that an adequate justification
cannot be provided which simply selects all and only these members of the
species human (i.e. Zzcmo sup^e^s) as zoologically defined.
nothing about the characteristic of
There is
itself (as distinct perhaps
from its accompanying properties) which could provide a justification for
overwhelmingly favourable treatment for humans (and unfavourable treatment
for nonhumans) as opposed to other possible, and possibly some actual,
nonhuman creatures.
Once again, an adequate ethic and justification can
not possibly be based on blind and unthinking species loyalty.
The same
1 See, e.g., S. and R. Godlovitch and J. Harris (eds), 4^iwcZs^
and*
Morals.
4%
<?y
Gollancz,
London, 1971; P. Singer,
4 net.)
/or
cy
Cape, London, 1976; S.R.L. Clark, 7'Zie
-Staffs <?y 4^iwaZs, Clarendon, Oxford, 1977.
2
Meeds argument:
objection applies against the simple
the commonly
assumed domination of human needs over all else (e.g. over all environ
mental considerations) has, if it is to have any merit, to be based on
2
more than speciesism.
We shall have to look then for some other not
merely taxonomic characteristic to provide the sought justification.
It
will emerge however, that any such characteristic is held or may be held
by nonhumans, and is not held, or potentially not held, by all items of
the species human.
Of course there are many characteristics which can, as a contingent
matter, be used to distinguish human beings as a general class from other
higher animals - although in fact with increasing knowledge of animals it
is no longer clear that some of these characteristics distinguish as
clearly as was assumed a priori in the past.
For example, humans have a
language, and a culture of a certain sort and even various logics.
And,
as we are accustomed to have people point out, other terrestrial animals
do not conduct philosophical discussions on environmental ethics.
However
not only is participation in these activities potentially available to
nonhuman creatures, and these characteristics possibly possessed by some,
but these activities are not generally engaged in even by humans
(particularly the power elite), many humans lack the requisite competence,
and even among those who do qualify, such activities are carried out to a
very varying extent.
We run the risk, then, in applying such demanding
criteria, of ruling out, of classing as deserving of "sub-human" or "sub
person" treatment, a considerable class of human beings - items most
humans would consider as worthy of better treatment than that normally
accorded by humans to nonhuman animals.
What is more important however is that such criteria as human
language, culture, human civilization, human intentionality, or whatever,
appear to provide no satisfactory
for the substantially
unfavourable treatment allotted those falling outside the privileged
class.
should there be such strong discrimination in favour of
language or a higher level of
creatures having a (certain sort of)
intelligence and against creatures or items which do not, in favour of
things with a certain sort of culture or a certain logic and against
those without?
Especially when some of these criteria are clearly, and
As McCloskey remarked (in a letter dated 5.7.77 containing many helpful
comments) 'talking about needs does little but obscure the problem, as
needs, to be normatively relevant, involve reference to goods;
and
that merely transfers the problem'.
On next page.
3
unjustifiably,loaded in favour of human interests, achievements and
abilities (cf. the cultural loading of various intelligence tests).
By
contrast the very many respects in which some uvimuT-s or sorts of animals
are corsftierabZi/ s^pericr to /zMwars (many are noted in V.B. Droscher, T^e
Mayic o/
*
t^e Senses.
/VeM Diseorerfes tn ^nfmat Perception, Allen, London,
1969) are rarely considered;
yet some of these features would, if taken
in the same serious way as some respects in which humans excell, justify
a reverse chauvinism (which could be reflected as, /or example, in the
Hindu treatment of cows).
The only sort of justification for the discrimination that might
appear convincing - that those who have the given characteristic (e.g.
those that are more intelligent, or more rational, or richer) are more
valuable or worth special treatment - is vitiated by the fact that were
it accepted by Western ethics it would warrant similar discrimination
hcfMccv humans (or persons).
For how do we show that the allegedly
warranted discrimination is sufficiently different from making substantial
(class) distinctions between humans in terms of their level of intelli
gence, linguistic or logical ability, or level or kind of cultural
achievement - so that those with "lower" levels of these valued abilities
are treated in a consistently inferior way and regarded as available for
the use of the others?
In short, these characteristics do not provide
adequate justification for the substantially inferior treatment accorded
those not having them, and so the charge of chauvinism is not escaped by
producing them.
A similar set of points applies against a number of other criteria
traditionally or recently proposed to distinguish the privileged class.
4
Often these are propounded in terms of personhood and criteria for being
a pgrscyz (the class marked out for privileged treatment being the class
of persons) rather than criteria for being /zvmuTZ - in order to escape
difficulties raised by young, senile, decrepit, stupid, irrational,
For undoubtedly many mammals, birds and insects can communicate, some
times in ways analogous to language, even if the honorific term
'language' is withheld (see - to select an unfavourable source - the
discussion in E.O. Wilson,
TZze ZVetJ SpvtTzesis, Belknap,
Cambridge Mass., 1975, chapter 8 ff.).
It is becoming increasingly
evident, however, that the ascription of some linguistic ability, and
of elementary languages, to nonhuman creatures should not be withheld;
see, e.g. the details assembled in E. Linden, 4pes^ Mev
Lavpvupe,
Penguin, New York, 1976.
(But contrast Wilson, op. cit., pp.555-59,
and to set this in proper perspective, consider Wilson's discussion of
ethics and aesthetics a few pages later, pp.562-65.)
Many of the criteria that have been proposed are assessed, and found
wanting, in Routley (a).
4
damaged and defective humans, extraterrestrial creatures, and super
animals;
to avoid the merely contingent connections between being human
and having requisite person-determining characteristics (such as ration
ality or knowledge) supposed to warrant discriminatory treatment;
and to
defeat, though it is a pyrrhic victory, the charge of human chauvinism
(or
equivalents of the charge, such as anthropocentricism or
speciesism).
But much the same problems then arise in terms of criteria for
a person, and the chauvinism problem reappears as the problem of furnish
ing criteria which are suitably clearcut, and do separate persons from
assumed nonpersons, and which would provide an adequate justification for
substantially privileged treatment for persons and inferior treatment for
nonpersons.
Unless such a justification is forthcoming the charge of
person c^unrin^sm is not escaped.
Most of the criteria proposed for
personhood fall down in just these sorts of ways, e.g. being autonomous,
the having of projects, the producing of junk, the assessing of some of
one's performances as successful or not, the awareness of oneself as an
Not only does it appear that (the more worthy of)
such criteria apply (or could apply) to many nonhuman animals - thus
agent or initiator.
animals are generally more autonomous (in main senses of the term) than
humans, many animals have projects (e.g. home and nest building), and they
are well aware of themselves, as opposed to rivals, as initiators of
5
projects - and that they do not apply uniformly to humans or indeed to
persons in any ordinary sense;
but again it is extremely difficult to
see what there is in these characteristics which would warrant or justify
the vast difference in treatment between the privileged and nonprivileged
classes, or justify regarding the non-privileged class as something
available for the
of the privileged class.
Similar objections can be lodged against the proposal that knowledge
or the possession of knowledge, provides f/zg (or a ur^c-Lai!-) distinguishing
It can hardly provide the appropriate filter, since it not only
gives no sharp cut-off point, 6 but does not even always rank humans or
feature.
persons above nonhumans or nonpersons.
Moreover, taken seriously it
should lead to substantial moral differentiation between persons, a
person's moral rating also fluctuating during his lifetime.
In any case,
For example, the shiftless intelligent person, or the primitive person,
who has no projects and engages in no moral reflection, and thus offends
protestant ethics, is not thereby deregisterable as a person, any more
than an intelligent animal with projects can join the union.
.6 on next page.
5
why rank knowledge so highly:
for (paca Socrates) knowledge is not the
foundation of virtue, but is frequently turned to evil ends, and even
where it is meritorious it is not the sole (or even a crucial) criterion
of worth.
Similar difficulties apply too to the historic criterion of
along with the added problem that it is very difficult to say
what it is in any clear or generally acceptable way, or to prevent it from
degenerating into a simple "pro" word.
If a hallmark of rationality is
commitment to the consequences of what one believes and seriously says,
then many humans fail the test.
If, on the other hand rationality is, for
example, the ability to discover and pursue courses and actions likely to
achieve desired goals (direct action toward goals), ability to solve
problems concerned, etc., then plainly many animals have it, and possibly
to a greater extent than humans in some cases (and of certain humans in
If it were the ability, e.g. to do
(say propositional calculus) or to assess reasoning verbally, then the (biassed)
almost all cases).
criterion would be far too strong and rule out many humans.
Again, why
should one make such a marked discrimination on this basis?
What is so
meritorious about this characteristic, that it warrants such a marked
distinction?
Nothing (at least in the ordinary academic's view, or
logicians would receive more favoured treatment).
Other criteria, which yield an analytic connection between being a
person and enjoying freedom or having rationality, in part beg the
question.
For in
persons - are free.
respect is it that persons - or worse, just
Also the justificatory problem, as to how the
claimed freedom or rationality warrants such differential treatment,
remains.
Characterisations of persons vary enormously, from so strong
that they rule out suburban humans who are not "self-made" enterpreneurs,
to so weak that they admit very /nanp animals.
An (unintentional) example
of the latter is the following:
persons, that is, ... beings who are not only sentient but also
capable of intensional autonomous action, beings that must be
ascribed not only states of consciousness but also states of
belief, thought and intention (A. Townsend,
/iMstraZasfar
'Radical vegetarians',
PAfZosopTip, 57 (1979), p.89).
6 In addition, the relation "a has at least as much knowledge as b" is
only a partial ordering.
For example, a dog's and a child's knowledge
may be incomparable, because they know about different matters, how to
do quite different sorts of things, etc.
(The idea that knowledge is
the key to moral discrimination, that it is what makes humans rank the
way Western ethics ranks them, may be found in C.B. Daniels, TZze
6>y FZ^fcaZ Y'/ieorfgs, Philosophy in Canada Monograph, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 1975.)
6
Most rats and rabbits satisfy the conditions:
they are sentient,
conscious animals that have intentions (e.g. to get through some barrier
such as a floor or a fence), beliefs and thoughts
preferred food beyond the barrier).
(e.g. that there is
For his further argument Townsend
shifts - without notice, but in a way that is quite typical of this
scene - to
stronger requirements upon being a person (such that one
who does not meet them is incapacitated as a person) which rule out many
humans, e.g. 'The person must recognise canons of evidence and inference
warranting changes in his beliefs, and be capable of changing his beliefs
7
accordingly' (op. cit., p.90).
In meeting hypothetical objections, Townsend slips in a further require
ment of rationality, but the characterisation of person given does not
include any such requirement. Subsequently, however, Townsend commits
himself, without argument, to the thesis that 'a fairly high degree of
rationality is prerequisite' to attributing 'intensionality' (as dis
tinct from 'intentionality').
This is not going to help much.
For,
firstly, rationality is very much a notion which admits of degrees,
without the relatively sharp cut-off stages required for pgrscvz as a
notion of orthodox moral relevance, or possessed by the notion of
to which Townsend sneaks back in his chauvinistic conclusion (p.93).
Secondly, TzozJ high a degree is prerequisite for being a person? If
only enough to satisfy the conditions for being a person, then the
animals that are persons have it.
If more, then either the initial
characterisation of a person fails or the thesis breaks down.
The much stronger requirements upon being a person that Townsend sub
sequently appeals to are said to derive from S.I. Benn.
But, if any
thing they strengthen one of the stronger of several KOHegtcZvaZenf
characterisations of (%afMruZ) person - none of them equivalent to
- that Benn has at various times offered. While Benn's weaker
characterisations appear to admit at least many "higher" animals, e.g.
that of a
natural person as a chooser, conscious of himself as able to make
a difference to the way the world goes, by deciding to do this
rather than that, having projects, therefore, of his own, whose life
experience may consequently be understood, not simply as a chronicle
of events, but as an enterprise, on which he puts his own construct
ion ((a) 'The protection and limitation of privacy, Part I',
LazJ <7a^r?za:Z, 52 (1978), p.605);
the stronger characterisations which invoke (rather vaguely specified,
and (Ziy/greuf) minimum conditions of rationality in belief and action said to imply respcHsfbiZitp on bhe part of the person for what s/he
does, though they do
- exclude many of the creatures admitted by
weaker characterisations. For such stronger characterisations see
'Individuality, autonomy and community' in CowwL/yrZfp (ed. E. Kamenka)
Edward Arnold (forthcoming) and (c) 'Freedom, autonomy and the concept
of a person',
c/ thg
PocZefp, 76 (1976),
pp.109-30.
7
The foregoing points, taken together, support our contention that it
is not possible to provide criteria which would
distinguishing,
in the sharp way standard Western ethics do, between humans and certain
nonhuman creatures, and particularly those creatures which have preferg
ences or preferred states.
For such criteria appear to depend upon the
mistaken assumption that moral respect for other creatures is due only
when they can be shown to measure up to some rather
and traded tests for membership of a privileged class (essentially an
elitist view), instead of upon, say, respect for the preferences of other
creatures.
Accordingly
sk<2rp nzoraZ
commonly accepted in
ethics by philosophers and others alike, hgfzjggzz uZZ Tztzwuzzs
Zacks a satfs/cctcr^ cokcrcrzt basfs.
anZmaZ
aZZ ofker
The distinction,
which historically rested on the assumption that humans possessed a soul
(or higher reason) but that other animals, brutes, did not, appears to
have been uncritically retained even after the religious beliefs or
philosophical theories underpinning it have been abandoned.
Given that the distinction underlying human chauvinism fails, is
there anywhere satisfactory demarcations of moral relevance can be made
9
among things? Yes, several divisions of wcrcZ
can be made;
but
of these coincides with a division into human and others.
Consider, first, the question of consideration
others, and the
matter of which offers are to be taken into account in cases where
others' interests and preferences are affected by some action.
Insofar
as moral consideration for others (among sentient items) is based on
analogical
(empathetic, and essentially inductive) principles, such as
taking account of their worthwhile preferences, objectives, interests etc.,
There are of course further arguments for the contention, for example
from the anatomical and physiological affinities of human and other
animals, from their common evolutionary history, and so on. These
arguments are of varying force;
for example, evolutionary arguments
can be arrested, temporarily, by the claim that there was a "quantum
jump" in human evolutionary development which did not occur with other
creatures with a previously shared evolutionary history (cf. Wilson,
op. cit.).
Although the divisions may be conceptually sharp enough, they are any
thing but sharp when applied in the field to the variety of creatures
and circumstances that occur.
For example, preference-havers is, so
far at least, sharp enough, but it is far from clear which creatures
qualify, e.g. which, if any, Crustacea? For the present most of these
potential decision cases are cases for cheerful indecision; but,
alternatively, the divisions may be viewed - perhaps better - not as
sharp boundaries, but as gradation states, as where two colours in a
rainbow meet.
8
it is difficult to see how such consideration can fail to apply to all
(including nonhuman) preference-having creatures;
and one does not need
to apply criteria such as linguistic ability, navigational ability,
intelligence, piano-playing, hunting skill, etc., to obtain a basis for
such consideration (indeed one cannot).
of preferences (and
The
of preferences revealed through choices) is however a quite sufficient
basis for
sort of consideration and concern.
It is at this point,
we suggest, that the requisite, important and non-arbitrary distinction
is to be drawn which marks out the class of creatures towards which
obligations may be held;
that is, the usually recognised principles of
consideration towards others (of the privileged class) properly extend or
should be generalised to consideration for other creatures having prefer
ences, and t/ze corresponding penerut defecsihZe odtipution principle is
not to pnt others ("ot/zer pre/erence-Zzurers? into a dispre/erred state for
no pood reason.
Insofar as moral behaviour is based on consideration for others and
not harming others, preference-having provides an adequate basis, and
does appear to provide a sufficient justification for substantially
different treatment for preference-having over non-preference-having
items - because items without preference cannot (literally) be put into a
dispreferred state.
Thus preference-having appears to tie in with an
important basis for moral obligation, and appears to provide a superior
criterion, for a certain serf of moral consideration, to other criteria
sometimes proposed such as sentience - or, differently, intelligence especially since in the absence of preferences such notions as Jzurminp
something (in a way that does affect it) and damaging its interests
become difficult of application (not to say nonsignificant, except in
extended senses).
The unsatisfactoriness of the sentience criterion for
what one can hold obligations towards can be grasped from the case of the
sentient machine or purely sentient creature which does not have preferen
ces, does not care what state it is in or whether it is destroyed,etc.
The sentience criterion is often converted by utilitarians into a suffer
ing criterion, by taking pain as a paradigm of sentience:
but plainly
the two criteria diverge since some sentient creatures may never feel
pain or suffer.
Suffering is even less satisfactory than sentience;
for
suffering is neither necessary nor sufficient for being in a dispreferred
state (consider masochists who suffer but are not in a dispreferred state,
and well-treated workers who are in a dispreferred state but do not
suffer).
Preference-having provides a lower bound;
it is a sufficient but
-not necessary condition for being an object of this sort of moral
9
consideration and concern.
That it is not necessary is revealed,
independently of environmental examples, by the following sorts of cases:
the treatment of "human vegetables", successful stoics, and science
fiction cases in which people are brain-washed into performing certain
goals and having no dispreferred states apart from the programmed goals.
In all three cases the question of dispreferences does not arise, but
relevant moral issues can.^^
The necessary condition, that corresponds
to preference-having as a sufficient condition, appears to be capability
at some time (e.g. previously, when developed) for preference-having.
It has been taken for granted that many animals (from species higher
on the evolutionary scale) have preferences, make choices, and the like.
This is the merest commonsense, which can be readily confirmed in a
scientific way.
For example, some of the preference-rankings of a black
tail wallaby as to types of foliage to eat are readily established by
observation, and it is fairly straightforward verifying that bushrats
prefer cheese to soap, this preference being revealed by regular choices.
It has however been claimed by some recent philosophers, for reasons
apparently different from those offered by traditional philosophers such
as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes,H that animals do not have intentions,
or at least do not have them in a full sense.
It is unclear whether these
intentions, which are taken to include thoughts and beliefs and, perhaps,
desires, include preferences;
but it is hard to see how preferences,
which are intentional, are excluded if desires are included in intentions.
The recent arguments to show that animals do not really have intentions,
which do not bear much investigation even in such central cases as
12
belief,
appear extremely feeble when applied to preference. For the
arguments start from the claim that we cannot say zj/zuf it is that animals
As N. Griffin, who supplied the examples, remarked a similar thing
happens also in less extreme cases of the type brought in to prominence,
e.g., by the women's movement: that it is possible, by means of
indoctrination, to limit the range of someone's dispreferences;
treatment of such persons may still remain immoral even when it does
not place them outside the (artificially widened) range of their
preferred states.
The traditional reasons look slight also in the case of preferences
and choices.
It would have been claimed - the theory forces the claim
- that animals' choices could not be rational.
Interestingly, choices
of many animals conform to behavioural criteria for rationality pro
posed in economics.
See J. Bishop, 'More thought on thought and talk',
(forthcoming)
and R. Routley, 'Alleged problems in attributing beliefs to animals',
paper prepared for the FeZig/ conference, University of Queensland,
1979.
10
believe (of course very often we can, and unproblematically) and fall back
on the claim that animals lack concepts of a fit sort.
In the case of
preferences, however, there is often no problem in saying what it is
animals prefer, or in confirming the claim.
Nor is it that we cannot
attribute propositional-style preferences to animals; if black-tail
wallabies prefer, as they do, new foliage to old then they prefer the
foliage's being new over the foliage's being old.
As for the concept
claim, in the sense in which concept is delineated in psychology, animals
have concepts.
And if a philosopher's notion of "concept" gets in the
way of the claim that free dogs prefer bones to carrots (or other
vegetables) then it is not the claim that requires revision, but the
philosopher's notion.
The preference-having criteria appear to distinguish non-arbitrarily
and sharply enough between higher animals and other items, and to rule out
of the relevant class elementary animals, trees, rocks and also some human
items, e.g. human kidneys.
The criteria plainly exclude inanimate objects,
and they separate animate objects.
For while living creatures such as
plants and elementary animals can be said in an extended sense to have
and also optimal living conditions, e.g., for healthy develop
ment, and in
sense to have preferred states or environments, they do
not have preferences, and cannot strictly be harmed or have their welfare
affected, in that they can be put into states they disprefer.
Nor do
empathy and analogical considerations extend beyond preference-having
creatures:
for only these can care about how they are treated.
At the same time the criteria indicate another important division.
For in a wider sense, animate objects which do not (significantly) have
preferences or make choices, are sometimes said to have 'preferred states'
or 'preferred environments'
(as, e.g., in 'the plant prefers a sunny
frost-free location with a well drained soil').
us say that the
or
To avoid confusion let
of animate objects and also such
biological items as ecosystems can be affected in one way or another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.
For instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it can be reduced to zero by
sandmining, and it can be seriously threatened by pumping waste detergent
In this broad sense too, living things, things that participate in the
growth process, have interests. However under a narrower and more
common determinate of the slippery term 'interests', only preference
havers have interests (again sentient creatures do not provide the
boundary).
Because the term 'interests' so readily admits of high
redefinition, and the infiltration of chauvinism, its use is better
limited (or even avoided), in favour of other more stable terms.
11
into the nearby ocean.
There is a general obligation principle
corresponding likewise to this more comprehensive class of welfare
bearers, namely, z-zat fa jaaparjise tTze zJaHhefzzp a_f ?zatzzraZ abjaafs or
sz/sfews zjft/zaz^t paad reasor.
Moral coroerr does not of course end with what is in some way
animate, much as the class of valuable objects is not tied to what relates
suitably to central preference-havers.
In suitable settings, a
(virtually) dead landscape, a rare stone, a cave, can be items of moral
or aesthetic concern;
indeed any object of value can in principle be of
such concern, and arzp abjact car., in principle at least, be ar object a/
value or disvalue, and so of morat corcerr.
corcerrfry almost any sort of object.
There can then be obligations
Naturally only a fraction of the
things that exist have especial value, and only a few of the things that
exist will be things concerning which some of us have obligations.
Furthermore these sorts of obligations do not in general reduce to the
conditions or arrangements (e.g. contractual or joint welfare arrangements)
of preference-havers or some select subclass thereof (what will sub
sequently be called, as the argument is developed, the base c^ass).
Just as there are relevant divisions beyond the class of preference
havers, so there are within the class.
Thus the suggestion that the class
hazards which moral obligations (and a corresponding serf of moral concern
which takes account of creatures' states) may be held is bounded by the
class of preference-havers, does not of course imply that %a dfsfizzcfiazzs
can be made zjffbfrz the class of preference-havers with respect to the kind
of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example, cazifracfzzaT- obligations -
which by no means exhaust obligations - can only be held directly (as
distinct from by way of a representative) with respect to a much narrower
class of creatures, from which many humans are excluded.
The class is
also distinct from the class of persons, at least as 'person' is usually
characterised.
What emerges is an ann^Zar pfcfzzra of types of objects of moral
relevance, some matched by types of moral obligation (described toward the
end of Routley (a)), with nested zones representing respectively different
sorts of objects - such as, objects of moral concern, welfare-having
objects, preference-havers (and choice-makers), right-holders, obligation
holders and responsibility-bearers, those contractually-committed-and the
different sorts of obligations that can significantly apply to such
objects.
Not all the types of objects indicated are distinct, nor is the
listing intended to be exhaustive but rather illustrative.
For strictly
the labels given should be expanded, as the distinctions are categorial
ones, so that what matters is not whether an object is, for instance,
12
contractually committed in some fashion but whether it is the sort of
thing that can be, whether it can significantly enter into or be committed
by arrangements of a contractual kind.
is to
Similarly
function as a categorial marker, that marks out the sorts of things that
can (significantly) have preferences:
the assumption that preference
havers coincide with choice-makers is based on this categorial reading.
Although the annular picture is (as will become clear in §5) important
for the environmental alternative to be elaborated, and in meeting object
ions to it, the countercharge has been laid that it reintroduces chauvin
ism through its inegalitarian distinctions.
This is a mistake:
not
every sort of ethical distinction, certainly not a justified distinction,
involves chauvinism.
Chauvinism is exhibited where, for example, objects
of a favoured class are treated in a preferential way to superior items
of an exluded class, e.g. defective humans as against apes, degenerate
French against normal Pygmies.
The annular picture neither involves nor
encourages such differences in treatment:
it is neutral and unchauvin-
istic, for the reason that it relies only on categorial distinctions
which tie analytically with ethical notions (see the semantical analyses
of §5).
It is certainly in no way species chauvinist or human chauvinist.
For none of the zones of the annular picture comprises the class of
humans (or its minor variant the class of persons); for this class is
not of moral relevance. The reason is that the human/nonhuman distinction
is not an ethically significant one, and can, and should, be demoted from
its dominant, and damaging, position in ethical theory. But dropping the
notion of
out of ethics, is only part of the ethical change that is
called for:
taking due account of nonhumans is also required.
In particular - to return to the theme - what is quite unacceptable,
. .
14
and based on a set of distinctions which are arbitrary and unjustifiable,
is the
differential treatment enjoined nonpersons as distinct
from persons under Western ethics, and the view that only persons or
humans have any (nonderivative) right to moral consideration and concern
as preference-havers and that there are obligations towards other creatures
14 According to Q. Gibson such a criticism of chauvinism is based firmly
on Western ethical equality and egalitarian principles. This is simply
not so:
there is no reliance on such principles. The general argument
takes the form;
feature f cannot be what justifies the differential
treatment of humans and nonhumans, because either f is not morally
relevant or not all humans have f or some nonhumans have f. Neither
equality nor substitutions based upon equality are invoked at any
stage. Moreover Western equality principles - at least as convention
ally formulated - are in serious doubt, especially with the rejection
of human chauvinism (see further §6).
13
only insofar as these are or reduce to obligations to persons or humans.
§2.
THE EXTENT OF CHAUVINISM, AND FURTHER LINES OF DEFENCE
Western ethics are, then, human chauvinist in that they characterist
ically take humans (or, to make a slight improvement, persons) to be the
only items worthy of proper moral consideration, and sanction or even
enjoin substantially inferior treatment for the class of non-human
preference-having creatures, without - so it certainly appears - adequate
justification.
The prevailing nineteenth century Western attitude to wild
creatures is evident from Judge Blackstone (quoted approvingly in
W. Cobbett,
Penguin, London, 1967, pp.431):
With regard likewise to wild animals, aZZ
bub by tbe
o/ ZTzg Creator a right to pursue and take away
any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the
waters, and any beast or reptile of the field:
and this
natural right still continues in every individual, unless
where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country.
And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while
living his qualified property, or if dead, are absolutely
his own.
Prevailing Western attitudes have not shifted markedly since that time;
for example, foresters, widely regarded as socially responsible, think
nothing of dislodging from their homes and environment, or even destroying,
communities of animals which do not directly interfere with human welfare.
But there is another very important broader respect in which
Western ethics are human (or person) chauvinistic, namely in the treat
ment accorded to and attitude taken towards the broader class of natural
items such as trees and forests, herbs, grasslands and swamps, soils and
waterways and ecosystems.
Unlike higher animals such items cannot liter
ally be put into dispreferred states (and in fbbs obvious sense, as
opposed to the wider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare, they have no
interests), but they can be damaged or destroyed or have their uaZ^e
eroded or impaired.
The Western, chauvinistic, assumption is that this
can only happen where human interests are affected.
The basic assumption
is that value attaches essentially only to humans or to what serves or
bears on human interests, or derivatively, to items which derive from
human skill, ingenuity or labour.
Since natural items have no other value,
there is no restriction on the way they are treated insofar as this does
not interfere with others;
as far
as -ZsoZufgb natural things are con
cerned anything is permissible.
14
It is, at base, because of these chauvinistic features of Western ethics
that there is a need for a new ethic and value theory (and so derivatively for
a new economics, and new politics, etc.) setting out not just people's
relations to preference-havers generally but also (along with many other
things) people's relations to the natural environment - in Leopold's
words 'an ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals
and plants which grow upon it'
(A. Leopold,
SuTzd"
zlZ-muzzur? zjvt/z
ot/zer essays on Conservation, New York, 1966, p.238).
It is not of course
that old and prevailing ethics do not deal with man's relation to nature:
they do, and on the prevailing view man is free to deal with nature as he
pleases, i.e. his relations with nature - insofar at least as they do not
affect others, as pollution and vandalism do - are not subject to moral
censure.
Thus assertions such as 'Crusoe ought not to be mutilating
those trees' are significant and morally determinate but inasmuch at least
as Crusoe's actions do not interfere with others, they are false or do not
hold - and trees are not, in a good sense, moral objects.
It is to this,
to the values and evaluations of the prevailing ethics, that Leopold,
Fraser Darling and many others, both earlier and later, take exception.
Leopold regards as subject to moral criticism, as wrong, behaviour that on
prevailing views is morally permissible.
But it is not, then, as Leopold
seems to think, that such behaviour is beyond the scope of the prevailing
ethics and that merely an extension of traditional morality is required
to cover such cases, to fill a moral void.
If Leopold is right in his
criticism of prevailing conduct, what is required is a change in the
ethics, in attitudes, values and evaluations;
for example, what is
permissible on the prevailing ethics will be no longer permissible on the
new.
For as matters stand, as Leopold himself explains, humans generally
do not feel morally ashamed if they interfere with a wilderness, if they
maltreat the land, extract from it whatever will yield, and then move on;
and such conduct is not taken to interfere with and does not rouse the
moral indignation of others, and is accordingly permissible on prevailing
ethics.
As Leopold says:
A farmer who clears the woods off a 75% slope, turns his cows
into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into
the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected
member of society (op. cit., p.245).
Only recently has such behaviour begun to be seriously questioned and
become the subject of criticism, e.g. by environmentalists.
Under what
will be accounted an erzvvroHwgutaZ. et/zvc, however, such traditionally
15
permissible conduct would be accounted morally wrong, and the farmer
subject to proper moral criticism.
That ethics and morality are not, and never have been, restricted to
human concerns, or exclusively to relations between persons, is important
in rebutting objections to the very idea of an environmental ethic, based
on the premiss that morality just is restricted (definitionally) to human
relationships (and connected values) and is not significant beyond that.
The problem of moral relations with respect to preference-havers other
than persons and to inanimate items cannot be resolved or escaped simply
by declaring morality to apply solely,or as a matter of meaning or defin
ition only to humans (or to persons).
For first, such a solution would
run counter to the common view that humans are subject to seme moral con
straints, even if comparatively minor ones, towards other creatures;
the
having of such constraints cannot be ruled out definitionally, and corres
pondingly the judgments formulating these constraints or prohibitions
cannot be ruled out as nonsignificant, yet they are surely moral.
The
only way in the end, that the claim gets support is by a narrow, and no
longer acceptable, account of what is mcraZ in terms of concern with
humans alone (cf. §6).
Likewise, the question of the moral interrelations
of humans with intelligent nonhuman extraterrestrial beings, even if at
present hypothetical, is certainly a meaningful one, and some interesting
and clearly moral issues of this sort are frequently raised in science
fiction.
Only if the extent of morality is, somewhat misleadingly, reconstrued
in terms of the class of constraints on the behaviour of those it applies
to - that is, in terms of limitations, as distinct from moral freedom does the claim that Western morality is restricted to humans (or persons)
begin to gain plausibility.
For it is true that beyond the favoured base
class, humans or persons, few constraints are supposed to operate (and ad
hoc ones at that) unless the welfare of members of the base class is
adversely affected.
Under an environmental ethic, such as that Leopold
advocates, this would change:
previously unconstrained behaviour would
sense the scope of morality would
be morally circumscribed, and in
be extended.
It is not evident, however, that a
ethic, an
ethic
in the case at hand, is required to accommodate even radical new judgments
seriously constraining traditionally approved conduct, i.e. imposing
limitations on behaviour previously considered morally permissible.
For
one reason it is none too clear what is going to count as a new ethic,
much as it is often unclear whether a new development in physics counts as
a new physics or just as a modification or extension of the old.
16
For,
notoriously, ethics are not clearly articulated or at all well worked
out, so that the application of identity criteria for ethics may remain
obscure.
They are nonetheless (pace Quineans) perfectly good objects for
investigation.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to cluster a family of
ethical systems which do not differ on core or fundamental principles
together as the one ethic:
e.g. the Christian ethic, which is an umbrella
notion covering a cluster of differing and even competing systems.
There are two other possibilities, apart from a new environmental
ethic, which might cater for the new principles and evaluations;
that of
an extension or modification of the prevailing ethic, and that of the
development of principles that are already encompassed or latent within
the prevailing ethic.
The possibility that environmental evaluations can
be incorporated within (and ecological problems solved within) the not
inflexible framework of prevailing Western ethics, may appear open because
there is not a single ethical system uniquely assumed in Western civiliz
ation:
on many issues, and especially on controversial issues such as
infanticide, women's rights and drugs, there are competing sets of
principles.
Talk of a new ethic and prevailing ethics tends to suggest a
sort of monolithic structure, a uniformity, that prevailing ethics, and
even a single ethic, need not have. The Western ethic is not so monolithic
In particular, three important traditions in Western ethical views
15
concerning man's relation to nature have recently been mapped out:
a
dominant tradition, the despotic position, with man as despot (or tyrant),
and two lesser traditions, the stewardship position, with man as custod
ian, and the cooperative position with man as perfector.
the only traditions;
Nor are these
primitivism is another, and both romanticism and
mysticism have influenced Western views.
The dominant Western view is simply inconsistent with an environmental
ethic;
for according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free
to deal with it as he pleases
(since - at least on the mainstream Stoic16
Augustine view - it exists only for his sake ), whereas on an
See especially (a) J. Passmore, Afurz's
Duckworth, London, 1974;
also R. Nash,
Affzzd, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973.
(All further references
to Passmore's work are, unless otherwise indicated, to Passmore (a).)
The
dominant position has also been sketched in many other recent
texts, e.g. I. McHarg,
Doubleday, New York, 1969,
while the lesser traditions have been appealed to in meeting criticisms
of the Western ethic as involving the dominant view.
The masculine particles are appropriate;
17
so is the resulting tone.
environmental ethic man is not so free to do as s/he pleases.
But it is
not quite so obvious that an environmental ethic cannot be coupled with
one of the lesser traditions.
Part of the problem is that the lesser
traditions are by no means adequately characterised anywhere, especially
when the religious backdrop is removed, e.g.
(as further considered in
§4) who is man steward for and responsible to?
However both traditions
are inconsistent with a deeper environmental ethic because they imply
policies of complete interference, whereas on an environmental ethic some
worthwhile parts of the earth's surface should be preserved from sub
stantial human interference, whether of the "improving" sort or not.
Both traditions would in fact prefer to see the earth's land surfaces
reshaped along the lines of the tame and comfortable but ecologically
impoverished European small farm and village langscape.
According to the
cooperative position man's proper role is to develop, cultivate and
perfect nature - all nature eventually - by bringing out its potential
ities, the test of perfection being basically
/ur
while on the stewardship view man's role, like that of a farm
manager, is to make nature productive by his efforts though not by means
that will deliberately degrade its resources.
Thus these positions
figure among those of the shallow ecological movement (as depicted by
A. Naess,
'The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement',
16 (1973), 95-100):
longer term.
they are typically exploitative, even if only in the
Although these lesser positions both depart from the dominant
position in a way which enables the incorporation of some evaluations of
an environmental ethic, e.g. some of those concerning the irresponsible
farmer, and allow for some of the modern extensions of the Western ethic
that have been made, e.g. concerning the treatment of animals and
criticisms of vandalism, they are not well-developed, fit poorly into the
prevailing framework, and do
^<9 /ar
For in the present
situation of expanding populations confined to finite natural areas, they
will lead to, and enjoin the perfecting, farming and utilizing of all
natural areas.
Indeed these lesser traditions lead to, what a thorough
going environmental ethic would reject, a principle of total use, implying
that every natural area should be cultivated or otherwise used
for
17 if 'use' is extended, somewhat illicitly, to include use for
preservation, this total use principle is rendered innocuous at least
as regards it actual effects.
Note that the total use principle, in the usual sense, is tied to the
resource view of nature (cf. (d) R. and V. Routley, T/ze
/or f/ze
Forests, Third Edition, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1975).
Such a principle, like the requirement of
economic growth, emerges directly from - it is an integral part of neoclassical economic theory.
18
"humanized".
As the important Western traditions mentioned exclude an
environ
mental ethic, it would appear, at first glance anyway, that such an ethic
- not primitive, mystical or romantic - would be new alright - or at
least new from a Western perspective.
For, from a wider perspective,
which takes due account of traditional societies (such as those of some
American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, and Pygmies), there is, it will
turn out, nothing so very new about what is included in (as distinct from
the theoretical setting of) the "new" ethics.
Even from the narrow
Western perspective, the matter is not so straightforward:
for the
dominant ethic has been substantially qualified, in particular by the
rider that one is not always entitled to do as one pleases where this
19
physically interferes with others. " It may be that some such non-inter
ference proviso was implicit all along (despite evidence to the contrary);
and that it was simply assumed that doing what one pleased with natural
20
items would not affect others (a?2CMfnfcr/cre?Ycc cssz^npffcyz).
Be this as
it may, the wcdfyfeti
pcsfffoz? appears, at least for many thinkers,
to have supplanted the dominant position;
and the modified position can
undoubtedly go much further towards an environmental ethic.
For example
the farmer's polluting of a community stream may be ruled immoral on the
grounds that it physically interferes with others who use or would use the
stream.
Likewise business enterprises which destroy the natural environ
ment for no satisfactory (taxable) returns or which cause pollution
deleterious to the health of future humans can be criticised on the sort
of welfare basis (e.g. that of P.W. Barkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic
Humanization, and humanitarian measures, may be a cloak for human
chauvinism - in which case, far from being virtuous, they may be
positively undesirable.
Also, as Leopold has observed, the class of others has been progress
ively widened, e.g. from the family group, to the tribe, to the nation
or race, even to all humans including often enough future humans - but
rarely further in the West until recently.
20 The assumption is not the same as its relative, Benn's principle of
rzo^-i^fcrycrcuce, 'that no one may legitimately frustrate or prevent
(or interfere with) a person's doing what he chooses to do, unless
there is some reason for preventing him' (Benn (c), op. cit.;
inset
from (a), p.605). The principle is said to derive from 'the notion of
a person' (e.g. (a), p.605), but it only so derives given commission
of the fallacy of conversion of an A-proposition. Moreover even
reduced to a 'formal principle ... locating the onus of justification'
(cf.(a)), the principle is dubious, especially cyiven principles of
respect for objects other than persons, with which persons may be
interfering.
It is, however, a formal principle that will help to
keep entreprenuerial humans happy.
19
Pggg:2/,
Grczjf??
T^g S
c7Mf7c??
*
f-ggcwgs f/zg PrchZgw^
York, 1972) that blends with the modified position;
be criticised on welfare grounds;
and so on.
New
vandalism can usually
The modified position may
even serve to restrict the sort of family size one is entitled to have,
since in a finite situation excessive population levels will interfere
with future people.
Nonetheless neither the modified dominant position
nor its Western variants, obtained by combining it with the lesser trad
itions, is adequate as an environmental ethic.
chauvinism.
None moves outside human
They are all encompassed under the Dowz'nic?? t??gsis - the
view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are available
for human benefit or to serve human interests, and hence that humans are
entitled to manipulate the world and its systems as they want, in their
own interests - which is but the ecological restatement of the strong
thesis of human chauvinism, according to which items outside the privil
eged human class have no value except one as instrumental value (both
theses are criticised in Routley (a)).
To escape from chauvinism, and from
its thesis, a new ethic 7s wanted, as we now try to show.
§3.
GENERAL ENVIRONMENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST WESTERN ETHICS
The main argument is directed primarily against the modified
dominant position, but will incidentally show the inadequacy of the lesser
Western traditions.
The strategy is to locate core features of Western
ethics, and to reveal through examples their thoroughgoing chauvinism
and class bias, and in this way to provide decisive grounds for rejecting
For the general argument some more technical points have to be made
them.
first.
(An) gf^7g is ambiguous, as between a specific ethical system, a
spgcffiu ethic, and a more generic notion, a SMpgr-gf^fg, under which
specific ethics are grouped.
(As usual, a wgfu-ethic is a theory about
ethics, super-ethics, their features and fundamental notions.)
An
sz/sfgm s
is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e.
a structured set of propositions) or a theory which includes (like
individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory)
a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of
what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights and
responsibilities, what is valued, and so forth.
(On newer perceptions an
ethical system will include rather less in the way of prescriptions, of
duties, obligations and the like, and more as to what are matters of care
and of concern and for respect.)
Since an ethical system is propositional
in character, such notions as consistency, coherence, independence of
20
assumptions, and the like, apply to it without further ado.
It is
evident, from a consideration of competing or incompatible values and
principles, that t/zgre are Z^z/iz-z-ZteZz/ wary gf/zZcuZ sz/stezns.
Moreover
appropriately general criteria for rationality will not reduce this
class to a singleton. . Accordingly, there is logical space for aZferratire
ratiaraZ etTzies.
A general or lawlike proposition of a system (characterised along
similar lines to a scientific law) is a pr-ZzzcZpZe;
and certainly if
systems Si and S2 contain different principles, they they are different
systems.
It will follow then that an environmental ethic differs from
the important traditional ethics outlined if it differs on some principles.
Moreover if environmental ethics differ from each Western ethical system
on some core principle or other embedded in that Western system, then
these systems differ from the Western super-ethic (assuming, what seems
to be so, that that ethic can be sufficiently characterised) - in which
case if an environmental ethic is needed then a new ethic is wanted.
It
would suffice then to locate a common core principle and to provide
environmental counterexamples to it.
It is illuminating (and necessary, so it will emerge) to attempt to
do a little more than this minimum, with a view to bringing out the basic
assumptions of the Western super-ethic.
Two major classes of evaluative
statements, commonly distinguished, are axiological statements, concerning
what is good, worthwhile, valuable, best, etc., and deontological state
ments, which concern what is obligatory, permissible, wrong, etc.
Now
there appear to be core principles of Western ethics on both axiological
and deontic fronts, principles, for example, as to what is valuable and
as to what is permissible.
Naturally these principles are interconnected,
because anything is permitted with respect to what has no value except
insofar as it interferes with what does have value.
A strong historical case can be made out for what is commonly
assumed, that there are, what amount to, core principles of Western
ethical systems, principles that will accordingly belong to the superethic.
example.
The fairness principle inscribed in the Golden Rule provides one
Directly relevant here, as a good stab at a core deontic
principle, is the commonly formulated liberal principle of the modified
dominant position. A recent formulation of this principle runs as
21
follows (Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., p.58):
21
On next page.
21
The liberal philosophy of the Western world holds that (D) one
should be able to do what he wishes, providing (1) that he
does not harm others {and (2) that he is not likely to harm
himself irreparably}.
The principle, which is built into or derivable from most traditional
ethical theories, may be alternatively formulated in terms of permissib
ility, as the principle that a pgrscu's action is
<ioos not intor/ere zjit/z others,
profide<i if
(i.e. other people, including perhaps the
A related economic principle is that free enterprise can operate
agent).
within similar limits.
It is because of these permissibility formulations
that the principle - which incorporates fundamental features of (human or
person) chauvinism - is sometimes hailed as a freedom principle;
for it
gives permission to perform a wide range of actions (including actions
which degrade the environment and natural things) providing they do not
harm others.
others.
In fact it tends to cunningly shift the onus of proof to
It is worth remarking that 'harming others' in the restriction
is narrower than a restriction to the (usual) interests of others;
it is
not enough that it is in my interests, because I detest you, that you stop
breathing;
you are free to breath, for the time being anyway, because it
does not harm me.
There remains a problem however as to exactly what
counts as harm or interference.
Mo'reover the width of the principle is
so far obscure, because 'other' may be filled out in significantly
different ways:
it makes a difference to the extent - and privilege - of
The principle is attributed by Barkley and Seckier to Mill, though
something like it was fairly common currency in nineteenth century
European thought. It appears, furthermore, that Mill would have
rejected the principle on account of clause (2): thus, for example:
Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of
individual spontaneity to external control, ouZi/ in respect of
those actions of each, which concern the interest of
people (J.S. Mill,
f-Zbgrfy
Everyman's Library, Dent, London, 1910, p.74,
emphasis added).
The deletion of clause (2) from (D) does not affect the general
argument: hence the braces.
(We owe this reference and the points in
the next footnote to N. Griffin.)
A similarly modified form of (D) is found in much recent Western
literature, even radical literature which purports to make due allow
ance for environmental concerns. A good example of the latter is
I. Illich, TcoZs /or
Calder & Boyers, London, 1973,
where Mill's (D) appears, in various forms, at several places (e.g.
p.xii, p.41). What this indicates is that Illich's "convivial society"
will not - if its principles are taken seriously - move beyond
chauvinism in its treatment of animals and the natural environment;
it
will at best yield some form of resource conservation.
22
the chauvinism whether 'other' expands to 'other human' - which is too
restrictive - or to 'other person' or to 'other sentient being';
and it
makes a difference to the adequacy of the principle, and inversely to its
economic applicability, to which class of other persons it is intended to
apply, whether to future as well as to present others, whether to remote
future others or only to nondiscountable future others, and whether to
possible others.
The latter would make the principle untestable and com
and it is generally assumed that it
pletely unworkable in practice;
applies at most to present and (some) future others, to those to whom it
22
would make a (fairly immediate) difference (thus excluding past others ).
For the purposes of the general argument however, the problems in specify
ing the class of others is not material, so long as the class includes no
23
more than persons that at some time exist.
Fortunately the main argument is not very sensitive to the precise
formulation of principle (D).
Not only can clause (2) be deleted, and
'other' left rather unspecific, but additions can be made;
then even if
the main argument does not succeed, minor oarianfs a/ fba main argument
zjiZ^ snccooti.
An important case concerns the treatment of animals.
Unless (D) is construed widely (extending 'other'), or hedged by further
qualifying clauses,the basic principle fails to take proper account of
concern for animals, especially that one should not inflict "unnecessary"
cruelty or "impermissible" harm.
animals then comes to matter;
these issues can be avoided.
What counts as permissible harm to
and familiar conflict issues arise.
But
For the core principle (0), of basic
chauvinism, can be modified to include (historically recent) moral concern
for higher animals by adding, after 'harm others', something like 'or harm
animals unnecessarily'.
Then however the new principle succumbs to the
Although the interests and preferences of past others are excluded in
conventional utilitarianism, as in (welfare) economic theory and vot
ing theory, these are often respected in ethical and legal settings,
e.g. in wills, last wishes, etc. Similarly (as N. Griffin also point
ed out), in the treatment of "human vegetables", past preferences of
the person when capable of making decisions are often taken to be
morally relevant, or even decisive, to the question as to whether to
keep the body alive.
If merely possible persons are included then the valuational rankings
of environmental ethics, indeed of virtually any ethics, can be
reflected in a "utilitarian" fashion. The argument of (c) R. and V.
Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory', /Vaas (accepted
for publication in 1974;
still forthcoming?), can be used to show this.
Or unless it can be made out, what seems entirely implausible, that
what is wrong with torturing animals is not what it does to them but
the way it affects other people (the Aquinas-Kant thesis).
23
attitudes, and more comprehensively the associated ideologies, are of
critical importance;
for it is to these and Western influence that the
world's main - serious and very extensive - environmental problems can be
ascribed.
Hypothetical situations are introduced in designing counterexamples
to core principles (D) and (A).
The basis of the method lies in the
semantical analyses of permissibility, obligation and value statements
which stretch out over ideal situations (which may be incomplete or even
inconsistent), so that what is permissible holds in some permitted
situation, what is obligatory in every such situation, and what is wrong
is excluded in every such situation.
'
But the main point to grasp for
the counterexamples that follow, is that ethical principles if correct are
universal and are assessed over a class of situations.
Thus hypothetical
cases are logically perfectly legitimate and cannot be ruled out on one
pretext or another, e.g. as rare, as desert island cases, as hypothetical,
The counterexamples to (D) and (A) presented depend largely on
etc.
designing situations different from the actual where there are either too
few or too many humans or persons. But alternative special situations
where interference with others is minimized or is immaterial are readily
devised.
(i) The
example.
The last man (or woman or person)
surviving the collapse of the world system sets to work eliminating, as
far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you
like, as at the best abattoirs).
What he does is quite permissible
according to principle (D) but on environmental grounds what he does is
wrong.
Moreover one does not have to be committed to esoteric values to
regard Mr. Last Man as behaving badly and destroying things of value (the
reason being perhaps that radical thinking and values have shifted in an
environmental direction in advance of corresponding shifts in the
Characteristically Westerners have attempted to recast these value
systems, sometimes misleadingly, in a religious guise - probably because
it was thought that there was no non-religious way of presenting them so
as to make them intelligible or have them comprehended.
Thus they get
represented as basically chauvinistic in view of the relations of Man
and God.
On these semantical analyses, which avoid all the usual problems of
modal theories of axiological and deontic terms, see R. Routley,
R.K. Meyer, and others,
T/zefr
RSSS,
Australian National University, 1979, chapters 7 and 8. A sketch is
given in §5 below.
The situations or worlds with respect to which the interpretation is
made permit of different construals;
e.g. instead of permitted situ
ations, the situations can be construed evaluatively as ideal
situations.
26
formulation of fundamental evaluative principles).
The usual vandalism charge does not apply against Mr. Last Man
since he does no damage to others.
Moreover, Mr. Last Man's activities
may be toned down to avoid any vandalism charge, yet succumb to the
(extended) chauvinist charge, e.g. he may simply destroy seme environ
mentally valuable things unnecessarily (without due reason or some need).
(ii) The Zusf pecpZe example.
to the last people example.
The last man example can be extended
We can assume that they know they are the
last people, e.g. because they are aware that radiation effects have
blocked any chance of reproduction.
One considers the last people in
order to rule out the possibility that what these people do harms or
somehow physically interferes with later people.
Otherwise one could as
well consider science fiction cases where people arrive at a new planet
and destroy its ecosystems, whether with good intentions such as perfect
ing the planet for their ends and making it more fruitful or, forgetting
the lesser traditions, just for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Let us assume that the last people are very numerous.
They humanely
exterminate every wild animal and they eliminate the fish of the seas,
they put all arable land under intensive cultivation, and all remaining
natural forests disappear in favour of pastures or plantations,and so on.
They may give various familiar reasons for this, e.g. they believe it is
the way to salvation or to perfection, or they are simply satisfying
reasonable needs, or even that it is needed to keep the last people
employed or occupied so that they do not worry too much about their
impending extinction.
behaved badly;
of value;
On an environmental ethic the last people have
they have done what is impermissible and destroyed much
for they have simplified and largely destroyed all the natural
ecosystems, and with their demise the world will soon be an ugly and
largely wrecked place.
But this conduct may conform with the core
principles (D) and (A), and as well with the principles enjoined by the
lesser traditions under more obvious construals of these principles.
Indeed the main point of elaborating this extension of the last man
example is because principles (D) and (A) may, as they stand, appear to
conflict with stewardship, cooperation and perfection positions, as the
last man example reveals.
The apparent conflict between these positions
and principle (D) may be definitively removed, it seems, by conjoining a
further proviso to the principle, to the effect (3) that he does not
wilfully destroy natural resources.
But as the last people who are not
vandals do not destroy resources wilfully, but perhaps "for the best of
28
reasons", the variant is still environmentally inadequate.
2 8 On next page.
27
(iii) The grreat e^frgpre^gz/r example.
The last man example can be
adjusted so as to not fall foul of clause (3).
industrialist;
The last man is an
he runs a giant complex of automated factories and farms
which he proceeds to extend.
He produces automobiles among other things,
from renewable and recyclable resources of course, only he dumps and
recycles these shortly after manufacture and sale to a dummy buyer instead
of putting them on the road for a short time as we do.
Of course he has
the best of reasons for his activity, e.g. he is increasing gross world
product, or he is improving output to fulfil some plan, and he will be
increasing his own and general welfare since he much prefers increased
output and productivity.
The entrepreneur's behaviour is on the Western
ethic quite permissible;
indeed his conduct is commonly thought to be
quite fine and even meets Pareto optimality requirements given prevailing
notions of being "better off".
It may be objected, however, that there is no reason or warrant for
the great entrepreneur's production and it is simply wasteful.
But we
can easily amend the example by adding consumers who want to use the out
put.
Just as we can extend the last man example to a class of last
people, so we can extend (iii) to the
sociefz/ example (iv):
the society looks depressingly like ours except for its reproductive
incapacity.
(v) The
example. The blue whale (reduced to a
29
mixed good on the economic picture )
is on the verge of extinction
because of its qualities as a private good, as a profitable source of oil
and meat.
whalers;
The catching and marketing of blue whales does not harm the
it does not harm or physically interfere with others in any
good sense, though it may upset them and they may be prepared to compen
sate the whalers if they desist;
destruction.
nor need whale hunting be wilful
(Slightly different examples which eliminate the hunting
aspect of the blue whale example are provided by cases where a species
is eliminated or threatened through destruction of its habitat by man's
2 8 There are however elements in the lesser traditions - especially if
'cooperation' and 'perfection' are reconstrued in less chauvinistic
and homocentric terms - which point the way to a more satisfactory
ethic.
29
The example is adapted from Barkley and Seckier, op. cit., who nicely
expose the orthodox economic picture.
To make the example more difficult for utilitarians in the tradition
of Bentham, it can be further supposed that the killing of the whalesis
near instantaneous and painless, the whale products are very valuable
to humans and indeed irreplaceable, and that the whales led a good
life while they lived.
(Would the killing of remote groups of humans
under similar conditions be then so much worse?).
28
activity or the activities of animals he has introduced, e.g. many
plains-dwelling Australian marsupials and the Arabian oryx.)
The
behaviour of the whalers in eliminating this magnificent species of whale
is accordingly quite permissible - at least according to basic chauvinism.
But on an environmental ethic it is not.
However the free-market
mechanism did not cease allocating whales to commercial uses, as a
satisfactory environmental economics would:
instead the market system
ground inexorably (for the tragedy-of-the-privatised-commons type
reasons well-explained in Barkley and Seckier, op. cit.) along the
private demand curve until the blue whale population was no longer viable.
It has been objected that the operation of the free market is
restrained by ethical principles - or rather legally enforced copies
thereof;
for example, it would be profitable to exploit child labour,
but moral prohibitions, legally enforced, exclude such exploitation of
children.
But the case is quite different;
children, unlike young
animals such as vealers, are already shielded under the modified dominant
position.
If anything, the "objection" is a further illustration of
chauvinism at work. 30
Although the vanishing species example given does not apply decisively
against extended utilitarianisms, such as that of Bentham, which widen the
base class to all sentient creatures, the case is easily varied so that it
does:
class of tropical plant species
simply select one of the
currently threatened with extinction.
(vi) The fuufory farw example.
On the farm animals of various sorts
are kept under artificial, confined conditions and simply used for the
market goods they deliver, e.g. eggs in the case of battery hens, milk in
the case of rotor cows, veal in the case of calves.
The animals are
subject to whatever conditions (e.g. forced feeding, iron deficient diets,
constant lighting) will deliver maximal quantities of desired goods for
the human commodity market.
The animals do not necessarily suffer pain
(and insofar as they do in behaviourally conspicuous ways the problem can
For the most part the operation of the free market is only constrained
by chauvinistic principles: otherwise enterpreneurs tend to undertake
whatever apparently profitable business activity they can get away with,
including substantial exploitation of animals and widespread environ
mental destruction, and their lack of concern is illustrated by such
facts as that they are generally prepared to pay taxes (e.g.
to
compensate other humans) rather than to forgo their activities in
cases such as river and lake pollution and forest removal.
In fact,
of course, fairly unfettered operation of the market tends to
encourage more restricted chauvinisms, e.g. the exploitation of cheap
foreign or female labour in the secondary labour market.
29
be met by antibiotics), but they are imprisoned under dispreferred
conditions.
The threatment of the animals on the "farm" is perfectly
permissible according to the core principle (or at least minor adjustments
to exclude unnecessary suffering will ensure conformity), but on an
environmental ethic it is not.
The treatment of the animals on the farm
also seems to conform to the principles of the lesser traditions, insofar
as these principles are spelled out in a way that can be applied to the
example, that is so long as cooperation and perfection are construed in
intended chauvinistic fashion.
(vii) The MiZderness example.
The wilderness, though isolated and
rarely visited or thought about by environmentalists, is known to contain
nothing of use to humans, such as seed or drug supplies, that is not
adequately replicated elsewhere.
It does contain however some "low
quality" forest that could supply pulpwood on a commercial basis were the
local government to provide subsidies on the usual basis.
The logging
would destroy the wilderness in a largely irreversible way (e.g. it grows
on high sand dune country or on lateritic soils)
and kill many animals
which live in the forest.
The prevailing ethic sees nothing wrong
with the destruction of such a wilderness, nor do the lesser traditions:
a deeper environmental ethic does.
Again the example requires variation, e.g. to a wilderness devoid of
sentient individuals, if it is to counter clearly such extensions of
Western ethics as those of animal liberationists.
For this sort of reason
we do not want to overstate or overrate the role of
as distinct from variations upon such examples.
examples -
Firstly, people deeply
committed to human chauvinism - as many, perhaps most, people are - will
find some of the examples unconvincing because they depend on non-
chauvinistic assumptions.
Secondly, there are rejoinders to some of the
examples based on the prevailing ethic.
In this case what we claim is
that there are variations on, and elaborations of the examples which meet
such considerations.
In connection with this we do not want to deny that
there are other strands supplementing the prevailing ethic which are
critical of some activities of the sort described in the examples, e.g.
anti-vandalism principles and strictures against conspicuous consumption
But, as remarked, these principles
as reflected, e.g. in sumptuary laws.
have not been adequately incorporated in the prevailing ethic in such a
way as to meet variations on the examples or to serve environmental
purposes;
and if the attempt were made to fully incorporate such princi
ples once again a new ethic would be the upshot.
before the change from an ethic which sanctioned
30
(Compare the situation
slavery.)
In summary,what the examples show is that core axiological and
deontic assumptions of the Western super-ethic are environmentally
inadequate;
and accordingly Western ethics should be superseded by a
more environmentally adequate ethic.
The class of permissible actions
that rebound on the environment is more narrowly circumscribed on such an
environmental ethic than it is in the Western superethic, and the class
of noninstrumentally valuable objects is correspondingly wider than it is
on the Western super-ethic.
But is not an environmentalist ethic going too far in implying that
these people - those of the examples and respected entrepreneurs and
industrialists and bureaucrats, farmers and fishermen and foresters - are
behaving, when engaging in environmentally degrading activities of the
sort described, in a morally impermissible way?
No, what these people do
is to a greater or lesser extent evil, since destructive of what is
valuable, and hence in serious cases morally impermissible.
For example,
insofar as the killing or forced displacement of primitive peoples who
stand in the way of an industrial development is morally indefensible and
impermissible, so also is the destruction of the forest where the people
may live, or the slaughter of remaining blue whales, or the gross
exploitation of experimental or factory-farm animals for private profit
or as part of the latest 5 year plan.
Those who organise or engage in
such activities are (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their
mode of engagement) morally culpable.
Models of permissible respected
life styles and of the good life (for others to emulate) depend upon
what the underlying ethic accounts good and evil, permissible or not,
and changes with change of ethic.
A new ethic is needed not merely to accommodate the evaluations,
and so forth;
prescriptions and models indicated, in a way decidedly different from
Western ethics, but in order to cope with a much wider range of more
practical, and often more controversial, cases where Western ethics yield
(without epicycling, i.e. extensive resort to theory-saving strategems)
unacceptable or inadequately grounded results.
An alternative ethic is
also needed by a growing number of valuers because they have values,
interests and new concerns of ecological sorts which do not fit in with,
but conflict with, central features of prevailing Western ethics.
There
is occurring, it seems, a far-reaching cultural, and ethical change, a
change in consciousness, and in particular a change in attitudes to what
is natural and the natural environment (a change which may eventually be
as fundamental as, and partly overturn, the humanist changes of the
Enlightenment).
A new ethic is accordingly needed to reflect and formul
ate, and enable the defence and application of, a new, increasingly fel,t,
31
but not so far well-articulated system of values, in much the same way
that a system of probability was needed and formulated to articulate and
systematise likelihood and probability principles, and relevant logic
systems required to capture pre-analytic views of entailment.
The
explication of environmental ethics is a similar theoretical concern;
again, as commonly, theory lags behind the facts of change and the felt
data.
Furthermore, just as entailment systems are not uniquely determined,
or desired or accepted by every thinker, so enoironwontuZ gt/zios will not
be nnip^otp detorwZng<i, or adopted by every valuer.
On the contrary, as
is plain enough, their adaption and furtherance will be vigorously
resisted by many vested interests, as - to take just one instance - the
furtherance of programmes for the determination of environmental sources
of cancer is vigorously opposed by industrial chemical companies.
The matter of persuading other valuers to accept values and
principles of a new ethic is of course a further and somewhat separate
issue from the question of need for such an ethic.
The procedures for
trying to effect changes in values are but variations on the usual pro
cedures, and like them are not fully effective:
excluding coercion and
education, they include, for example, argumentation, and propaganda, in
each case of many sorts. 31
As usual, too, where there is a broad common
32
basis, especially in felt evaluations and emotional presentation,
effecting a change, or a conversion, will generally be an easier task.
In the case of transformation to environmental values, what is often
important are distinctive features regarding the factual bases of many of
the evaluations.
correcting
In particular, there is the matter of removing or
/Tztsoonooptions on a broad range of matters of
Some of these sorts are considered in more detail in (c) J. Passmore,
'Ecological problems and persuasion' in FpnoZZtp arid Freedom.
*
JntornutZonoZ and Comparattvo c/nr-Zoprz/donoo (ed. G. Dorsey), Oceana
Publications, New York, 1977, pp.431-42.
The apposite term 'emotional presentation' is adapted from Meinong;
see especially
FwotZonaZ Prosentatton (trans. M.L. Schubert-Kalsi),
Northwestern University Press, 1972. The notion of emotional present
ation can play an important role in the explanation of how emotions
enter into (environmental) evaluations, the objects evaluated (canyons,
mountains, giant trees) often being emotionally presented. A little
more precisely, the connections are these: A value ranking (e.g. c is
better, more valuable, than d) of a valuer is explained emotionally
through - it does not reduce to - certain preference rankings of the
valuer;
and the preference rankings have in turn dual factual and
emotional bases, in the same sort of way that an item may be preferred
or chosen in virtue of its factual features and the valuer's emotional
responses to those. The main details of such a semantical analysis of
value, which is discussed in §5, are given in Routley (c).
32
environmental concern;
for example, about animals, their various
behaviour, abilities, etc;
about the alleged gulf between humans and
other animals and the uniqueness of humans and each human;
about the
profitability, or desirability, or necessity, of environmentally destruct
ive enterprises;
about the inevitability of current Western social
arrangements and about the history of the way these particular arrange
ments developed. There is, moreover, the matter of sheer information,
for example as to how free animals live together and what they do;
about
how factory and experimental animals are treated, and in the latter case
for what:
about the sources and effects of various forms of pollution
and the reasons for it;
about how natural creatures such as whales or
environments such as forests are commonly dealt with, for what products,
by what interests, for what ends.
Naturally (given a fact/value division)
none of this information is entirely conclusive support for a change in
ethic;
for many of the evaluations the data helps support can be included
in other ethics (including sometimes modifications of prevailing ethics),
while remaining evaluations can, at worst, be simply rejected (as e.g.,
those utilitarians who extend consideration just to sentient creatures are
obliged to reject versions of the last man argument where no sentient
creatures are affected).
Although a new ethic is needed, for the reasons indicated, and
although such an ethic can,furthermore, be a considerable asset in
practical environmental argument (e.g., as to the point of trying to
retain a piece of not-especially-unique near-wilderness),
for many
practical ecological purposes, there is no need to apply it or to fall
back on it.
For example, virtually the whole environmental issue of
destructive forestry in Australia can be argued without invoking any
unconventional ethical principles or values at all, i.e. entirely within
the prevailing chauvinistic framework.
wap??/ environmental disputes.
The same sort of point applies to
But, it by no means applies to all.
A
corollary is an inadequacy in the presentation of environmental problems
and suggested solutions in standard (human) ecology texts
Tssz^gs
A. Erlich's
(such as P. and
FuoZ-Ctyz/,
Freeman, San Francisco, 1970, to select one example), which are set
erzf-freZz/ within the chauvinistic framework.^4
Also, differently, in the way that theories are in enabling one to see
how to move and argue in a discussion.
Quite properly given prevailing sentiments, according to some erring
conservationists, who account themselves "realists".
33
Since it is sometimes charged - despite all that has been said - that
an environmental ethic does not differ in practice from that of more
conventional "chauvinistic" ethics, there is point in spelling out in
yet other ways how it can differ in practice:
Firstly, many conventional
positions, in particular social contract and sympathy theories, cannot
take proper account of moral obligation to future humans (who are not in
the immediate future).
Since the usual attempt to argue, in terms of
value and benefit to humans, that natural areas
and
ecosystems
generally should not be destroyed or degraded depends critically on
introducing possible future humans who will suffer or be worse off as a
result of its destruction or degradation, it is plain that an environ
mental ethic will differ radically from such conventional positions. That
is, the usual argument depends on the reduction of value of a natural
item to the interests of present and /Izf^re humans, in which reduction
future humans must play a critical role if conclusions not blatantly
opposed to conservation are to be reached.
Hence there will usually be
a very great gulf between the practical value judgements of conservation
ethics and those of conventional positions which discount the (nonimmediate) future.
Secondly, as we have already seen through examples, there are
practical differences between an environmental ethic and conventional
instrumental views which dr take account of the interests of past,
present and future humans, differences which emerge sharply at the
It is, however, unnecessary to
hypothetical (possible world) level.
turn to possible world examples to see that normally there would be very
great differences in the practical valuations and behaviour of those who
believe that natural items can have value and create obligations not
reducible (in any way) to human interests and those who do not, as the
following further examples show.
We need only consider the operation of irtersioraZ- corcepfs
Example 1.
Mif/zizz
uctz^^Z- zjerZ-d, for example, the concept of duwupe to a natural
item, and the associated notion of campezzsaffrr for that damage.
C. Stone, for instance, in S/za^Zd Trees #are Sfardirp?
Tdp^fs /dr /Vaf^raZ. dhj^efs
Thus
Tabards L^pcZ
(Avon Books, New York, 1975) notes the
practical legal differences between taking the damage to a polluted river
as affecting its intrinsic value, and taking it as just affecting human
river users.
In the one case one will see adequate compensation as
restoring the original state of the river (rectifying the wrong to the
river) and in the other as compensating those present (or future) humans
who will suffer from its pollution.
As Stone points out, the sum
34
adequate to compensate the latter may well be much less than that
required to restore the river to its unpolluted state, thus making it
economic, and in terms of the human chauvinist theory, fair and reason
able, to compensate those damaged and continue pollution of the river.
In the first case, of course, adequate compensation or restoration for
the harm done would have to consist in restoring the river to its
unpolluted condition and will not just be paid to the people affected.
Compare here Stone's example of compensation for injury to a Greek slave;
in the instrumentalist case this will involve compensating the slave's
owner for the loss of his slave's working time;
in the other, where the
slave is regarded as not merely an instrument for his owner, it will
compensate the sZaue not the ozjyzer, for this compensation will also take
account of the pain and suffering of the slave, even where this has not
affected his working ability.
There is a difference not only in the
amount of compensation, but to zj/zow it is directed.
In the case of a
natural item damage may be compensated by payment to a trust set up to
protect and restore it.
The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary
and excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its
Example 2.
nonhuman inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that
there is no other human around to know the difference.
For one to whom
the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conventional utility,
however, there will be no such constraint.
He may avoid unnecessary noise
if he thinks it will disturb other humans, but if he is certain none are
about to hear him he will feel at liberty to make as much and as loud a
noise as he chooses, and this will affect his behaviour.
Examples like
this cannot be dealt with by the introduction of future humans, since
they will be unable to hear the noise in question.
To claim that the
making of noise in such circumstances is a matter of no importance, and
therefore there is no important difference in behaviour, is of course to
assess the matter through human chauvinist eyes.
question-begging.
From the intrinsic viewpoint it
So such a claim is
make a
difference, and be reflected in practical behavioural difference.
Example 3.
Consider an aboriginal tribe which holds a particular place
to be sacred, and where this sanctity and intrinsic valuableness and
beauty is celebrated by a number of beautiful cave paintings.
A typically
"progressive" instrumentalist Western view would hold the cave (and
perhaps place) to be worth preservation because of its value to the
aboriginal people, and because of the artistic merit of the human arti
facts, the cave paintings the cave contained.
35
To the "enlightened"
Westerner, if the tribe should cease to exist, and the paintings be
destroyed, it would be permissible to destroy the place if this should
be in what is judged to be the best interests of human kind, e.g. to get
at the uranium underneath.
To the aboriginal the human artifacts, the
cave paintings would be irrelevant, a celebration of the value of the
place, but certainly not a surrogate for it, and the obligation to the
place would not die because the tribe disappeared or declined.
Similarly
no ordinary sum of money would be able to compensate for the loss of
such a place, in the way that it might for something conceived of as a
utility or convenience, as having value only because of the benefits it
confers on the "users" of it.
There is an enormous /gZt or
difference between feeling that
a place should be valued or respected for itself, for its perceived
beauty and character, and feeling that it should not be defaced because
it is valued by one's fellow humans, and provides pleasurable sensations
or money or convenience for them.
Compare too the differences between
feeling that a yellow robin, say, is a fellow creature in many ways akin
to oneself, and feeling that it is a nice little yellow and grey, basically
clockwork, aesthetic object.
These differences in emotional presentation
are accompanied by or expressed by an enormous range of behavioural
differences, of which the examples given represent only a very small
The sort of behaviour uurrarzteti by each viewpoint and thought
by it, the concept of what one is free to do, for example, will
normally be very different. It is certainly no coincidence that cultures
sample.
holding to the intrinsic view have normally been far less destructive of
nature than the dominant Western human chauvinist culture.
In summary, the claim that there is no reaZ practical difference,
that the intrinsic value viewpoint is empty verbalisation, does not stand
up to examination.
The capacity - no doubt exaggerated, but nonetheless far from
negligible - of Western industrial societies to solve their ecological
problems (at least to their own pathetically low standards) within a
chauvinistic framework, does considerably complicate, and obstruct, an
alternative more practical argument to the need for a new ethic, t/ze
arpMwezzt yrcm
problems,
that in no other way ...
[than] prepared[ness] to accept a
"new ethic", as distinct even from adding one or two new moral
principles to an accepted common ... can modern industrial
35
societies solve their ecological problems.
On next page.
36
Not only does the argument encounter various objections - most obviously
that many of the problems can be solved, if not within Western ethics, in
immediate extensions of them - but the case suggested would hardly be a
satisfactory basis for the type of ethic sought.
It is not so much that
it would be a chauvinistic way of arriving at a supposedly nonchauvinistic
ethic, for bad procedures can lead to good results;
rather it is that
important ecological problems, shaping environmental ethics, such as
preservation of substantial tracts of wilderness and just treatment of
animals, tend to be written off in industrial societies as not serious
problems.
But even if the argument suggested has too narrow a problem
base, and so may yield too limited a change in attitudes as compared with
the main theoretical argument, the argument merits fuller formulation and
further investigation.
The argument to need for ethical revision is as
follows:
(1)
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems (of modern
industrial societies) implies (the adoption of) an alternative
(2)
environmental ethic.
A satisfactory solution to environmental problems is needed.
Therefore, an alternative environmental ethic is needed.
The argument is valid, given, what seems correct, that pimplies q implies
that p is needed implies that q is needed.
The second premiss is or can
be made analytic, on the sense of 'satisfactory'
'satisfactory' imply 'needed');
(e.g. by having
so the case is complete if the first
premiss can be established (in the same sense of 'satisfactory'), and the
conclusion is then plausible to at least the extent the premiss is.
Al37
though the first premiss, or something like it, is widely endorsed,
cogent
3 5 Passmore (c) op. cit., p.438.
According to Passmore (p.431),
By common consent, there are four major
pollution, the exhaustion of resources,
species, and overpopulation ...
To solve such problems involves finding
types of human conduct or of preventing
having its present consequences.
ecological problems:
the destruction of
a way either of altering
that human conduct from
In what follows the assumption that 'there are four major ecological
problems' gets rejected.
36 Here and elsewhere, 'environmental'
less interchangeably.
and 'ecological' are used more or
37 Even Passmore, though previously (e.g. in (a)) highly critical of
proposals for new ethics, gives qualified endorsement to an assumption
of this sort ((c), p.441).
... I do not doubt, all the same, that our attitudes to nature
stand badly in need of revision and that, as they stand, they form
a major obstacle to the solution of ecological problems.
37
arguments for it are few and it is no simple matter rendering the
premiss plausible.
Moreover rendering it plausible involves a substant
ial detour through social theory;
for the case for the premiss proceeds
along these sorts of lines:
(3)
Unless there are (certain) major changes in socio-economic structure,
environmental problems will not be satisfactorily solved.
(4)
The major changes in socio-economic structure involve
an alternative
ethic.
A much stronger thesis than (3) has been argued for using systems analysis,
namely that without very extensive socio-economic changes, modern
industrial society will collapse;
but several of the assumptions made
in the analysis are doubtful or disputed.
independently of that stronger thesis;
But (3) has been argued
for example, it will follow from
the thesis (of Falk, Commoner and others)
'that the modern industrial
ethic as we have known it is not sustainable on ecological grounds'. 39
In a sense,
(3) is obvious;
for it is present socio-economic arrangements
that have produced many of the present serious environmental problems;
without major changes in those arrangements most of the problems will
persist or, more likely, intensify.
What is not immediately evident is
that the major changes called for, in satisfying (3), suffice for (4).
However reflection on the specific 'types of changes required - for example
at a superficial level, human population limitation, reduction of poll
ution, more sensible resource usage, selective economic growth - reveals
that significant changes in value, and also in what is considered
permissible, are bound to be involved in the changes.
plausible, and
therewith the intended conclusion.
So (4) is decidedly
But the argument
leaves the detailed character of the needed alternative ethic rather
obscure;
and it may well be that the ethic so yielded is somewhat
chauvinistic in character.
The more practical argument cannot entirely
supplant the main theoretical argument.
In sum, there are good and pressing reasons to investigate the
alternatives to chauvinistic ethics, especially human chauvinism, because
such chauvinistic ethics are discriminatory, because the case for them
38
39
See, in particular, D. Meadows and others, T/ze Limits fa GrgzjfZz,
Potomac Associates, Washington, D.C., 1972.
R.A. Falk, 'Anarchism and world order', FVozncs IX, 1978, p.66.
Falk
refers for the case to B.Commoner, TTze CZrsizzy Circle, Knopf, New York,
1971;
R.A. Falk,
PZuzzef, Random House, New York. 1971;
E. Goldsmith and others
/or SMrrfzJuZ, Houghton and Miflin,
Boston, 1972, and Meadows of uZ-., op. cit.
38
does not stand up to examination, and because they have been involved in
the destruction of much of value and now threaten the viability of much
that is valuable.
§4 . ENVIRONMENTAL ALTERNATIVES :
NARROWING THE CHOICE AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC
The basic-and basically mistaken-doctrine of the Western super-ethic
is, as we have seen, that people, humans of whatever shape or form, are
the fundamental carriers or objects of value and that all other items are
valuable only in an instrumental or derivative way.
It is important, in
deed mandatory in a genuine environmental ethic, to reject this view and
allow natural items to have a value in their own right, iz? t/ze same /as/ziazz
as CzzaZzza^Ze? peapZe, both for the reasons outlined above, of the theoret
ical unsatisfactoriness and arbitrariness of the traditional view, and for
more practical reasons, namely, to help ensure the ecological sustain
ability of modern society, and in optimising human welfare.
It has often
been pointed out that 'a totally humanised world would diminish us as
40
human beings',
that the traditional view of humans, or classes of humans,
as dominant, and of natural items as without value except where they serve
human or class interests-a view that often carries contempt for nature leads not only to the destruction of much that is of value but (paradoxic
ally) to counterproductive results even with respect to human welfare.
Thus McHarg (in attractively coloured rhetoric):-
Show me a man-oriented society inwhich it is believed that reality
exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos is a struct
ure erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man exclusively is
divine and given dominion over all things, indeed that God is made in
the image of man, and I will predict the nature of its cities and
their landscape.
I need not look far for we have seen them-the hot
dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, dysgenic city and
mined landscapes.
centric man;
This is the image of the anthropomorphic, anthropo
he seeks not unity with nature but conquest (op. cit.).
The rejection of this view and its replacement by a view in which
natural items can be regarded as of value and as worthy of our respect for
themselves and not merely for what we can get out of them or what use we
40 See e.g. the discussion at pp.116-17 of (a) J. Rodman, 'The Liberation
of nature', IzzgMfrz/, 20 (1977) 83-145. All subsequent references to
Rodman's work without further indication are to this article.
Note well that the rejection of human chauvinism does z?ot imply that no
chauvinistic arguments - or rather, arguments that are usually stated
in chauvinistic form - carry weight. On the contrary, some chauvinistic
arguments (e.g. those supporting wilderness retention and species
preservation) carry considerable weight; and, since the prevailing
industrial ethics remain chauvinistic, environmentalists would be rash
not to use them.
39
can make of them, is becoming increasingly widespread in parts of the
environmental movement.
It is this primarily that makes for an important
ideological split in the conservation movement, between what Naess (op.
cit.) called
and Teep ecology, between those who see conservation
as just a matter of wiser, better-controlled topper-term exploitation of
the environment - something which is compatible with denying value to
42
...
everything except man ' and those who see it at least in part as involving
a recognition of value for natural items independent of man, and hence as
involving (at least to some extent) a Ttf^erept uttitp(7e to Mature.
The
first view, the long-term or erttpbteped e^ptoitatior view, which is
closely tied to prevailing more enlightened economic assumptions, tends to
make heavy use of the watershed term 'resource';
the problem of conserv
ation is seen as one of 'zjfse pse of resources', a resource being something
of use to humans or persons.
On this view, which does not get beyond the
confines of human chauvinism, and so is no direction for a satisfactory
environmental ethic to take, items which have no perceivable use to man,
i.e. non-resources, can be destroyed without loss;
and the environmental
problem is viewed as largely one of making people aware of the extent to
which natural items and processes have frstr^meptut value, i.e. of how
far we are dependent on them and they are of pse to us.
There is no
recognition either that some items might be valuable precisely because
they are independent of man.
Resource Conservation, or the shallow position, is the first of the
42
four ideal types that Rodman
discerns in his investigation of the
contemporary environmental movement.
The deeper ecological position gets
split under Rodman's division into three ideological positions - though
Rodman prefers to put the matter in symbolic or experiential terms, in
terms of forms of consciousness - namely Wilderness Preservation, Nature
Moralism, and Ecological Resistance.
Though the positions discerned are
neither characterised in an exclusive fashion, nor exhaustive of ecological
positions, and though we shall have to look beyond all the positions for a
satisfactory environmental ethic, nonetheless they afford an excellent
perspective on the main types of alternative positions that have been
adopted by those within environmental movements.
It is not uncommon to encounter attempts to write the shallow position
into the very meaning or definition of copseraotiop, e.g. 'conservation
is the use of resources to the greatest advantage of man', 4 Sprrep of
/Ipstrotfap Forestry and tVood-Fused Ipd^strfes.
Part PT. Prodpcttop
Forestry Peretopmept PZup.
Draft (31 October, 1974), p.ll - a
blatantly chauvinistic account.
On next page.
40
According to (Wilderness) Preservation, which focusses on
wilderness, wilderness is to be preserved for the wilderness experience,
wilderness offers a natural cathedral,
a sacred place where human beings can transcend the limitations
of everyday experience and become renewed through contact with
the power of creation ((b), p.49).
The values discerned in wilderness and natural landscape are primarily
aesthetic and quasi-religious, or mystical,
'the experience of the holy
is esthetically mediated'; what is valuable remains human experiences.
Thus the Wilderness Preservation position does not move outside the
sphere of human chauvinism, and can no more than Resource Conservation
offer a frame for an environmental ethic.
conclusion:
Rodman reaches a similar
Resource Conservation and Wilderness Preservation appear
variations on the theme of wise use, the former oriented to the
[efficient] production of commodities for human consumption, the
latter to providing human amenities ((b), p.50).
For this reason, the Wilderness Preservation position fails even on the
score of justifying the preservation of wilderness - on the very task it
was designed to accomplish - in a range of circumstances.
Like other
See especially (b) J. Rodman, 'Theory and practice in the environmental
movement: notes towards an ecology of experience', in
Search /or
i?? a
^orZ-d^ International Cultural Foundation,
New York, 1978, pp.45-56. Some of the types are portrayed in greater
detail in other Rodman papers.
The remainder of this largely new section on environmental ethical
alternatives is heavily indebted, in ways the references mostly make
plain, to Rodman's work. His work covers a vast range of interlinked
topics; only those of immediate relevance have been touched upon.
But there is very much in the remainder that repays careful reading,
and TnMc/z to think about and to question or reject, reaching perhaps
its lowest point in the paradoxical themes:
Just as our statements about other people tend also to be
concealed statements about ourselves, so statements about non
human nature tend to be concealed statements about the human
condition, and movements to liberate nonhuman nature tend also
to be movements to liberate the repressed potentials of human
nature (p.105).
In part because these themes and the related myth of microcosm are
taken seriously, and not for the evident falsehoods they are, in part
because the ethical adequacy of the human/nonhuman distinction is
never seriously questioned (e.g. it is taken for granted, what is not
the case, that rights apply to humans and are problematic beyond them),
and in part because of the characteristically chauvinistic emphasis on
human experience and the endeavour to bring everything within that
experiential purvue, and the associated weight assigned to human
symbolic, mythic and ritual activities, one is left with the feeling,
at the end of all the investigations one can profitably follow Rodman
through, that one has not got beyond the confines of human chauvinism.
41
instrumentalist accounts of wilderness value, it breaks down entirely
With examples like the Last Man, assuming that Mr. Last Man is never
turned on by natural spendour.
More alarmingly, under readily conceivable
developments, it would allow the elimination of wilderness entirely.
For
consider the Wilderness Experience Machine, a low-impact low-tech
philosophical machine, recently patented by I.M. Diabolic, which can
duplicate entirely, even for groups of people, wilderness experiences,
but in a downtown room.
As far as the psychological experience goes, this
machine can provide a complete substitute for any actual wilderness, and
were the value of wilderness to reside in the experience it afforded,
could entirely replace it and eliminate the alleged need for it.
Most environmentalists would be (rightly) dissatisfied with, not to
say appalled by, the idea that Wilderness Experience Machines could sub
stitute for wildernesses, since they provided the same experiences.
what else they wanted, the answer would of course be:
Asked
Wildernesses, not
merely wilderness experiences.
Wildernesses are valuable in their own
right, over and above the experiences they can afford. 4 3 Really, that is,
they consider wildernesses intrinsically valuable, but have been pushed
by the prevailing ethical ethics into stating, and misrepresenting, their
position in experiential terms.
There is some independent evidence that
the Wilderness Preservation position is frequently a disguised intrinsic
value position, in the attitude taken to examples like the Last Man case,
that purely hypothetical experiencers (who may vanish into counterfactuals)
are good enough, and that in some real-life cases it is enough that
wilderness is there to be contemplated, whether or not anyone actually
takes advantage of its presence to gain experiences, or indeed whether or
not it is in fact contemplated.
Such examples remove the disguise and
reveal the position as at bottom an intrinsic value position.
In that
event it is however better to avoid the disguise; for the case for wilder
ness preservation which starts from the position that some wilderness
tracts have intrinsic as well as merely instrumental value is substantially
stronger than any position which assigns them merely instrumental value.
Wilderness lovers and nature conservationists have in fact worked out
- or concocted - a set of arguments to show why wildernesses and nature
conservation are of benefit to humans, to argue for their instrumental
The concept of
too can vary with the operative ideology,
e.g. on certain views, such as Wilderness Preservation, wilderness
comprises areas that are
(or provide the opportunity for use), e.g.
used for experiential enrichment. By contrast, on a genuine Environ
mental Resistance view, wilderness is a wild area, use of which is not
implied:
it may never be used, and it may not matter that it affords
no opportunity for (human) use.
(Under popular high redefinition of
'wilderness', there are of course no wildernesses remaining on the
earth, and wilderness vanishes as soon as humanly experienced.)
42
value.
For example, there are various arguments from the scientific
value, or usefulness, of wilderness, e.g. for the study of natural eco
systems, for the investigation of plant history and evolution, as a
repository of genetic diversity, etc.
These arguments, which (like
parallel arguments for species preservation) are not to be
especially as regards persuasive force, can be put in nonchauvinistic
form;
for science and knowledge are not linked essentially with, for
example, the feature of being human.
Often however - e.g. where the
wilderness defended has, so far as it is known, little that is very
special to offer - such arguments appear to be merely a conventional front
for the real (or deeper) reasons - and in seme instances, correspondingly
weak and unpersuasive (as Fraser Darling has remarked, and Passmore has
tried to show in (a)) - the real reasons being based on the perception of
nonuseful properties of value.
This is particularly marked in the case
of arguments for preserving the most complex and beautiful of the world's
plant communities, tropical rainforest.
Such arguments as that various
uninvestigated rainforest trees may at some time be found to contain
useful drugs, by no means exhaust the true value of the rainforest.
For it
is in the intrinsic, i.e. noninstrumental, value of the rainforest that
the main reason for not unduly interfering with it, e.g. not interfering
in ways that threaten its stability or viability, lies.
In particular,
destruction of a wilderness, such as a rainforest, would significantly
diminish intrinsic value, and so should (in general) be resisted.
Environmentalists who are aware of these sorts of problems and
dangers with resource use approaches to wilderness preservation sometimes
attempt to formulate their alternative view in terms of one of the lesser
traditions, most popularly in terms of the
image, in
which man is seen as the steward of the earth - an analogy which, as
Passmore points out (in (a)), is problematic outside a religious context.
For who is man steward to?
If not to God, then how is the analogy to be
unpacked, and what conditions must "stewardship" conform to?
If "good
stewardship" is management in the interests of humans, or humanity, then
the position does not go beyond Resource Conservation;
if it is manage4
4
ment to serve intrinsic values, or God,
then good stewardship is but a
cover for the recognition of intrinsic values, which are better introduced
directly.
Thus admitting values which are not instrumental, which do not
answer back in some way to states or conditions of humans is a feature of
all satisfactory deeper ecological alternatives.
In order to allow for
such intrinsic values and/or associated attitudes of respect, e.g. for
On some interpretations;
chauvinism.
on others theism may serve to reinforce human
43
nature and various
natural things, it is however unnecessary to adopt a
religious backdrop such as the "Good Stewardship" image suggests, or even
a semi-religious framework such as a mystical or superstitious one with
taboos and sacred places as symbolic and ritual elements.
A theory of
intrinsic value which assigns intrinsic value to wilderness and species
of free animals, for good reasons, can be entirely naturalistic (in a
main sense of that much-abused term).
The third, somewhat amorphous, cluster of positions Rodman describes,
noninstrumental,
value to natural items, such as - on some versions of the position wilderness.
Nature Moralisms, do just that, assign intrinsic, f/zat
[An] alternative perspective ...
[to] the theme of wise use 4 5 ...
is provided by the tradition growing out of the humane movement,
recently radicalised by animal liberationists, and sometimes
generalised to embrace non-animal beings as well.
In contrast
to the economic ethos of Resource Conservation and the religious/
esthetic character of Wilderness Preservation, this perspective is
strikingly moral in style.
Its notion of human virtue is not
prudence or reverence, but justice.
In contrast to the caste
bound universe of the Resource Conservationist, the Natural
Moralist affirms the democratic principle that all natural entities
(or, more narrowly, all forms of life) have intrinsic value, and
that wild animals, plants, rivers, and whole ecosystems have a
right to exist, flourish and reproduce - or at least that human
beings have no right to exploit or unnecessarily harm or destroy
other members of the biotic community.
In contrast to the aristo
cratic universe of Wilderness Preservation, where some places (and
some forms of recreation) are holier than others and certain types
of natural entities ... are traditionally more worthy of being
saved than others ..., the world of the Nature Moralist is
characterised by an apparent egalitarianism ((b), p.50^ my
rearrangement).
Each of the sweep of environmental alternatives indicated can be seen as
an
of conventional Western ethics: intrinsic value is extended
uniformly to all animals or certain favoured features of all these, e.g.
their experience, happiness, avoidance of suffering, or is extended to all
living creatures or systems, or is extended to all natural items or even
to objects - it may or may
be distributed uniformly or equally;
Human use and human experience, it might be added.
44
rather independently, rights may be ceded to all animals, or to some or
all living things, or to all things, or, alternatively and differently,
right-holders' rights with respect to some or other of these classes are
restricted;
and similarly other deontic notions, justice, obligation,
even perhaps duty, may extend to apply to larger classes of items than all
humans or persons.
The sweep, which is impressive, is intended to include both extended
utilitarianisms, e.g. Bentham's utilitarianism as revamped by Singer
according to which all sentient creatures are entitled to equal consider
ation of interest, and extended (legal) rights doctrines, e.g. the
assignment of rights or legal standing to all natural objects as suggested
by, for instance, Stone.it also includes Darwin's ethic and Leopold's
"land ethic". 4 7 In order to capture some of the intended examples of
Nature Moralists, and all the Moral Extension positions, Rodman's
characterisation requires some adjustment - which will be taken for
granted in what follows.
For example, Singer and other animal liberation-
ists do not assign intrinsic value to all forms of life, or even to all
animals;
but (as Rodman is well aware) to all sentient creatures;
that
is, further classifications have to be taken into account.
The egalitarian, or uniformity, assumptions that serve in character
ising Natural Moralism are mistaken.
Not all objects are of equal value;
some are more valuable then others, while some have little or no value
(and some have a negative value).
Impressive though the sweep of extensions is, all the positions
indicated should be rejected on one ground or another, and sometimes on
several grounds.
Against positions which do not extend the class of
objects of moral concern and candidates for value to include all objects,
variants of the counterexamples to the Western super-ethic can be
directed.
Consider, for instance, the positions (of usual animal liber-
ationists) which extend the moral boundaries just to include sentient
creatures (or e.g. preference-havers).
Adapt the Last Man and Last
People examples, the Wilderness example, etc., by removing all
(inessential) animals from the examples, e.g. the wilderness contains no
animals, in the Last People situation there are no other animals than the
46 p. singer,
*??;
E-ZEerafZc
/VeD
Random House, New York, 1975;
C. Stone, op. cit.
47 at least on a straightforward reading of Leopold's eventual position:
but not according to Rodman;
see his contrast of Leopold with Stone,
p.110.
Darwin's ethic, which anticipates Leopold's, is presented in
C. Darwin,
Second edition, J. Murray, London, 1883.
48 On next page.
45
last people themselves. Then the counterexamples apply as before
against the liberation positions.
It is unnecessary to go quite so far afield to fault such positions,
at least in practice:
facts of experience:
as.Rodman might put it, they are countered by the
... I need only to stand in the midst of a clear-cut forest, a
strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle, or a dammed canyon
to feel uneasy with assumptions that could yield the conclusion
that no human action can make any difference to the welfare of
anything but sentient animals (p.89).
But an advantage of the counterexamples is that the same examples, among
many others (e.g. situations devoid of sentient creatures, situations
where the message of experience conflicts with justice or fairness),
reveals the erroneousness of the well-sponsored thesis, a simple analogue
of empiricism, that all value 49 derives from experience (of experiential,
or sentient, objects). A corollary is that value is not to be assessed
either, in any simple way, in terms of the facts of experience.
Insofar as Nature Moralism relies upon simple extensions of
utilitarianisms, or of subjectivisms, to include a larger class of
subjects,
(a larger base class), such as all present sentient creatures,
or all preference-havers at any one
time,
*
etc., it is open not merely to
adaptations of the argument against chauvinism (animal chauvinism is not
that much more satisfactory than human chauvinism), but most of the
Nor, on Moral Extensions, need all objects that have rights have equal
rights.
Rights may not be very democratically distributed. Some things
have rights, e.g. as a result of agreements, of a sort others do not
hold or are not capable of holding. Even rights to exist, to flourish
and to reproduce (each case is different) are in much doubt where there
is scarcity or conflict and where some right holders are taken to be
worth much more than others.
Nor are such leading examplars of Natural
Moralism as Singer and Stone, though they are concerned to extend
principles of justice, committed to equality of rights assumptions.
Stone explicitly rejects equal distribution of rights; but the
principle that all natural objects are equal in having rights, which
really says no more than that they all have rights, is at best a very
weak egalitarian principle.
Singer offers (and presumably would offer)
no equality of rights principle, rejects an equality of treatment
principle, and proposes as a principle of equality a (near vacuous)
principle of equal consideration of interests.
Not, this time, knowledge. But amusingly "value empiricism" collapses
into empiricism proper given the Socratic identification: Value
(generalising Virtue) is knowledge.
The only natural stopping point under value empiricism is, of course,
with all creatures that have (or could have) the relevant experiences:
again not with humans.
46
standard
objections to utilitarians,
subjectivisms,
etc.
Many
versions of Nature Moralism may than be defeated on rather conventional
grounds.
There emerges, further, a dilemma for extensions.
Either the crucial
notions of right and intrinsic value are extended to all sentient
creatures (experience-havers), in which case the objections just lodged
apply, or they are extended more sweepingly, e.g. to all natural objects.
But the latter involves attributing to such items attributes they do not
have, most obviously rights to such objects as stones;
it also violates
the conditions that have to be met for the holding of rights and for the
entitlement of rights.
Thus, for example, Stone considers underpinning
his extension of rights, beyond sentient creatures in the ordinary sense -
or of legal rights beyond recognised "legal persons" - by a postulate of
50
universal sentience or consciousness;
in short, by an unacceptable
metaphysics, or myth.
There are several further objections which work against many versions
of Natural Moralism to which Rodman draws attention:
(1)
Moral Extensions are 'inadequate to articulate the intention that
sustains the [environmental] movement'
wilderness preservation movements.
(p.88), specifically wilderness and
It takes but little argument to show
that utilitarian ethics, such as Singer's, so far from assisting the
environmental movement, can (if adopted) reinforce the case
wilderness and preservation of wild species.
But an extension like
Stone's extension of legal rights can help, and has helped, at least in
the courts where its meta-physical underpining is unlikely to be glimpsed.
The basic point is however that the rights talk does not connect with, and is
insensitive to, the experiential basis.
Mere extensions of moral notions
such as interest or right or justice are insufficient to treat and do just
ice to the multi-dimensional depth of environmental issues, such as the
damming of a river (p.115). Part of the reason is said to be that the usual
moral aparatus, which was evolved in the case of certain person-to-person
See Rodman's discussion, pp.92-3. But Rodman overstates his case in
claiming that 'some such postulate as universal consciousness is there
fore necessary if the notion of rights for trees is not to seem a
rootless fancy'. For, as explained below, extended rights can be
defined by a rather "natural extension" of the familiar notion of right,
without any such postulate;
and grounds of entitlement can be traced
back to value of the items.
Certainly extended rights sever what linkage there may have been between
rights and liabilities, but with the modern separations of rights from
responsibilities that linkage was already damaged or broken.
47
relations, is inadequate for getting to grips with a new dimension of
moral experience, that concerned with environment, and inadequate to
reflect ecological sensibility.
Rodman tries to press, however, a much
stronger, and rather more dubious, theme, the SsZZ-onf thesis:
By adapting the moral/legal theory of 'rights',
[the movement] may
sell its soul, its roots in mythic and ritual experience, to get
easier judicial standing (p.88);
and more savagely,
the progressive extension
model
of ethics, while holding out the
promise of transcending the homocentric perspective of modern
culture, subtly fulfills and legitimates the basic project of
modernity - the total conquest of nature by man (p.97, also
p.119).
While neither of these large claims is strictly true - soul-selling is
simply avoided through adoption of the notion of extended-right, which
can yield a conservative extension of the original position;
and even
utilitarians may be committed to blocking projects which threaten free
animals - each has a substantial point.
Part of the point behind the
latter claim is worth developing separately:(2)
Moral Extensions typically cast natural objects, notably animals, in
the role of inferior humans,
'legal incompetents', imbeciles, human
vegetables, and the like.
They
are ... degraded by our failure to respect them for having
their own existence, their own character and potentialities,
their own forms of excellence, their own integrity,
a degradation usually reflected in our reduction of 'them to the status of
instruments for our own ends', and not removed 'by "giving" them rights, by
assigning them to the status of inferior human beings'
(p.94).
Many of us know where the treatment of natural objects as mere means
The mistaken treatment of them
for human ends tends to lead and has led.
as inferior humans, a treatment which fails to see and 'respect the
otherness of nonhuman forms of life', leads in the same direction.
For
given that animals, for example, are inferior, it is legitimate to treat
them also as inferior;
a greater value principle, which moral extensions
typically endorse, yields a similar result.
The needs of increasing
populations of superior humans will eventually outweigh, if they do not
do so already, the cases of inferior inhabitants of this finite earth for
the retention of their natural habitats.
48
For their rights and their
In the larger perspective, the Moral
values will be less than "ours".
Extensions, with their built-in greater value assumptions, do legitimate
the conquest of nature by humans.
Thus too they fail seriously, on what
will soon enough be quite practical grounds, as satisfactory environmental
ethics.
(3)
The extensions, like the parent ethics which they extend, are
narrowly individualistic, and insufficiently holistic. This is particularly
conspicuous in the case of utilitarianisms, which in principle arrive at
all assessments by some sort of calculations, e.g. summations and perhaps
averaging, from an initially given unit conforming to requisite equality
conditions, e.g. equal consideration, equal units of suffering.
In
practice of course the method is, almost invariably, to pretend that the
calculations will yield results which agree with alternatively and
previously arrived at, usually intuitive, often prejudiced, evaluations;
that is, in practice the method is not applied except in a handwaving
back-up fashion.
The method is not applied in part because there are
serious, well enough known, problems in applying it.
The individualistic
bias carried over in other moral extensions, e.g. any experiential theory,
likewise limits their satisfactoriness. It is to understate the matter to
say merely that 'the moral atomism that focuses on individual animals and
their subjective experiences does not seem well adapted to coping with
ecological systems'
(p.89),
'to explore the notion of shared habitat and
the notion that an organism's relationship to its natural environment may
be an important part of the organism's character'
((b), p.52).
A moral atomism that focuses on individuals, discounting their
interrelations, is bound to result in ecological complexes that
matter
(such as ecosystems, wilderness, and species) getting seriously
short-changed.
To illustrate:-
Under atomism, the value of a complex, or
the rights of a complex, amount to no more than those of its individual
members;
but since these are, in isolation from the complex, no more
valuable than other things of their order, e.g. one gentian than another,
a bush rat from a Norwegian rat, there no special merit in a complex, or
rights attaching to it, in virtue of its rareity or uniqueness or special
features as a complex.
Thus, for instance, a utilitarianism under which
only individual animals count assigns, and can assign, no special value to
species, and can (as remarked) be used to argue against preservation of
species:
Since all animals are equal - or at least all animals of the
same genus are more or less equal - one can substitute for another.
Fora
rare species of rat to die out painlessly cannot matter while there are
plenty of other rats.
A rights theory is in similar difficulties so long
49
as rights are assigned only to individuals, taken in isolation from their
environmental setting (i.e. only to the usual separable individuals of
philosophical theory).
These problems may be avoided, in part, by assign
ing rights to complexes
(given the notion of rights will take that much
further stretching;
which it will not if right holders are assumed to be
conscious or to be preference-havers), and by attributing independent
value to complexes.
But, since the value of a whole is sometimes more
than the sum of the separable values of its individual members, this move
involves the rejection of usual atomism, utilitarianisms in particular.
The objection against the narrow individualism of the extensions - a
defect they share with standard ethics which do not admit of ready
extension, such as contract theories - soon broadens into an objection
that these extensions are built on an inadequate metaphysics, a metaphysics
of rather isolated individuals who (or which) are seriously depauperate in
An ethics presupposes a metaphysics at
their relations with other objects.
least through its choice of base class:
thus for example, usual homocen-
tric formulations of utilitarianisms and contract theories suppose a base
class of narrowly self-interested humans.
The remedy is not (as Rodman
suggests in various places in his elaboration of Ecological Resistance)
to move to holism:
to do so would be to accept the other half of a false
dichotomy mainstream philosophical thought engenders (cf. Routley (g), this
volume).
It is rather to move to a metaphysics that is built on a concept
ion of objects (which may or may not be individuals) which are rich in
their interrelations and connections.
In summary, the moral extensions are the wrong direction in which to
seek a satisfactory environmental ethic.
But the failure of Nature
Moralism does not mean, as Rodman tends to assume, that all positions
that are moral in style are thereby ruled out. 51 For one thing, Nature
Moralism, as characterised (or generalised), is far from exhaustive of
the range of prima facie viable moral positions.
More satisfactory
positions will simply avoid the damaging assumptions of Nature Moralism
(and likewise those of inadequate ethical positions, such as contract
theories or naturalism, and those linking morality to legality;
For another, if the quest is for an
ruled out.
cf. p.103).
moral notions can hardly be
Even if it is assumed that the call for a 'new ethic' is 'to
guide the human/nature relationship (p.95) - a somewhat unfortunate way
of putting it - whereas what matters is the human/nature relationship
itself, and that in coping with that relation fixation on morality or
51
His thesis of the 'limitation of the moral/legal stage of unconscious
ness' is investigated in more detail in what follows.
50
legality is a serious handicap, and may contribute to the problem of the
relationship rather than helping solve it (pp.103-4);
still part of the
problem is that of indicating entitlements of agents with respect to their
environment, what sort of exploitation, if any, is permissible, what the
limits on conventional morality are, and discovering 'a larger normative
order within which we and our species-specific moral and legal systems
(p.97).
have a niche'
Nor, in outlining Ecological Resistance, does
Rodman shrink from using - he could not avoid the effect of - axiological
terms such as 'good' and deontic terms such as 'should';
he does not
doubt, for example, that some of what is natural that is threatened is
valuable and that threats to it should be resisted; and he admits that
'prudence, justice, and reverence may be essential parts of a[n ecologic
ally] good life'.
Ecological Resistance, which is said to be the alternative 'most
faithful to the integrity of experience', exhibits indeed the negativity
of resistance.
The position is founded on action, resistance, and theory
only emerges retrospectively (if perhaps at all).
Its (insufficiently
qualified) central principle is 'that diversity is natural, good and
threatened by the forces of monoculture'.
The struggle between these
forces, diversity and monoculture - between (ecological) good and evil -
occurs in several different spheres of experience, i.e. at various levels,
which reflect one another. Resistance is not undertaken for self-interest
or utilitarian reasons, or for moral reasons, or for religious or mystical
reasons (such as preventing profanation), but
because the threat to the [natural object or system]
... is perceived
aZso as a threat to the self, or rather to the principle of diversity
and spontaneity that is the endangered side of the basic balance that
defines and sustains the very nature of things ((b), p.54).
The disjunction, 'or', separates however two rather different (though combin
able) reasons-cum-motives for resistance.
The second disjunct yields the
following reasons for resistance (which are linked by a metaphysical
assumption connecting diversity and spontaneity with the nature of things):
(i) The threat to the natural item is a threat to the principle of
diversity and spontaneity.
So, by the central principle, it is a threat
to what is good, etc.
(ii) The threat to the natural object 'is a threat to the very nature
of things':
(as to how consider the example of the wild river threatened
by a dam, p.115).
So - by an unstated, but nonetheless implied and
assumed, principle, that the very nature of things is good (and natural) it is a threat to the forces of good.
51
The first disjunct yields
form:
a
further,
different, argument;
in simplest
(iii) The threat to the natural object is a threat to oneself.
What
is a threat to oneself is bad and to be resisted, so what is a threat to
the natural object is bad and has to be resisted (since what is bad should,
in general, be resisted).
Although the arguments are valid, the underlying principles are
faulty;
for instance, the diversity (and spontaneity) principle because
it is too simple (and so too does not harmonize with the nature of things);
and the second principle, the intrinsic merit of the very nature of the
things, because not everything that is the case or is natural is meritor
ious, e.g. genuinely natural disasters.
Rodman plans to avoid obstacles
to adopting nature as an absolute standard and, at the same time, to
bridge the gap the principle spans, by resort to a version of naturalism
which equates 'the "natural" with the "moral"'
(pp.96-7).
But for well-
known reasons which can be supported (e.g. those telling against objective
ethics of the sort such naturalism would yield), substantive evaluative
assumptions cannot be removed in this fashion;
though they can be
suppressed, they reappear as soon as connections between empirical
The
trouble, characteristic of reductionism, arises from the mistaken attempt
grounds and evaluative judgments based upon them are queried.
to collapse a grounding, or founding, relation to an identity, to close
the gap - which is not problematic but is widely thought to be problem
atic - between value and empirical fact by a reduction of value to fact,
of the thesis that evaluative features are grounded on natural features
to the thesis that evaluative features are nothing but certain natural
52
features (e.g. to be good is just to have certain natural features).
52
Rodman interprets naturalistically the statement of Jonas's that he
quotes approvingly (p.95):
Only an ethic which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely
in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the
scheme of things ... an ethics no longer founded on divine authority
[or upon human arete], must be founded on a principle discoverable
in the nature of things ... .
He interprets it in terms of 'an ontologically-grounded moral order in
the "the phenomenon of life" or "the nature of things".'
In this way
can be avoided the reduction of 'the quest for an ethics ... to prattle
about "values" taken in abstraction from the "facts" of experience'.
But Jonas's statement can be construed nonnaturalistically, by taking
the founding or grounding relation seriously, as connecting, but not
reducing, values to empirical facts. So construed the statement does
help in delineating the sort of environmental ethics sought.
52
Such reductions commit the naturalistic and prescriptive fallacies -
which can be avoided neither by thinking 'our way through or around them'
(p.97), nor by holistic assimilation of morality in a 'more encompassing
ethical life'
(p.103 and note 66).
But details of the fallacies need not
detain us, since we can consider immediately Rodman's important suggestion
53
for circumnavigating them (pp.103-4).
Under natural social conditions, such as are obtained in some
traditional societies and in some free animal societies (as ethological
studies reveal), but have been lost in modern societies, law and morality,
at least in their coercive aspects, would disappear, as they did in
William Morris's
/row
and somewhat as they would in a Kantian
community of fully autonomous beings.
In terms of modern physics,
morality and law are not invariants but vary under transformation of axes,
and in fact vanish or prove eliminable under a suitable transformations,
e.g. to a natural condition.
There is a similar natural condition for
morality and legality,
a condition in which the prohibitions now prescribed
54
by God,
Conscience and the State would have operated "naturally"
(i.e. from
inside the organism, as a matter of course), and patterns now stated
prescriptively could have been stated descriptively.
When the Way
is abandoned, then we get Humanity and Justice (Tac Te
#18)
(p.103).
Even if a change of social axes could place us back on the Way, or on the
way to the Way, morality is not really avoidable in our local frame where
we are far from the Way.
So ethical disputes over environmental matters
55
are also unavoidable; *
for those a satisfactory ethic is a desideratum,
and can help in bringing about a change of social axes.
Thus too, the
identity of the prescriptive with the descriptive, of "ought" with
(suitable)
"is", is a merely contingent (extensional) one and fails in
53 The suggestion helps explain not only Rodman's naturalism, but his
thesis of the limitation of morality and legality; it also introduces
the anarchistic social change view that suffuses much of the (very
uneven) later parts of (a): the view appears therein as the elabor
ation of what is 'unthinkable'.
54 Given prevailing socio-economic conditions it should be rather:
that
would (ideally) be prescribed. Let us hope, for environmental reasons,
that the principles that are lived by in natural conditions bear not
too great a resemblance to those now prescribed.
55 Nor is there, in the local frame, much alternative but to resort to
legal strategies, where they can be applied (where standing is granted),
to delay "the war against nature".
53
alternative situations;
hence, as always, there is no deduction of
"ought" from "is", since deducibility would require coincidence in the
alternative situations.
Nor would morality - as distinct from legality,
which requires some codification - strictly disappear under natural
conditions, though its coercive aspects would:
on the whole, as they ought to be.
things would simply be,
But while deontology would have a much
diminished role (as it does on the preferred environmental ethic),
axiology (the theory of value) would still have its place - some objects
(e.g. diverse landscapes) would be more valuable than others (monocultural
landscapes), some not valuable, etc.
(As things stand, of course,
axiology does have an important place in working out the theory of
Ecological Resistance, especially in assessing its central principle of
diversity.)
The upshot is that without much elaboration (like that indicated
below) of an axiological kind, which connects value through a grounding
relation, as distinct from an identity, with the run of things (but not
aZZ things) that are natural, reason (ii) for ecological resistance
fails.
Does reason (i), which is premissed on the central principle that
diversity is good and natural and threatened by monoculture, fare any
better?
While it is a matter of fact that that diversity is threatened,
indeed is being very rapidly reduced by the forces of monoculture, diver
sity is not, as opponents of ecological values are wont to point out, an
entirely unqualified good.
Nor is diversity is always natural:
a
temperate rain forest can be "enriched" and rendered more diverse by
interplanting of exotics (a practice foresters have applied, e.g. in
New Zealand) but the result is not natural and sometimes at least bad.
Or, differently, ecological diversity can often be increased by increasing
edges between ecosystems, but the practice of increasing edges can easily
be unnatural and far from good, as, e.g. in rainforest logging with (say)
50% canopy retention.
So although a reduction of diversity is commonly
bad, since the reduction reduces the quality of an ecological whole, and
increase in diversity good, diversity can not be accepted as a solo
principle.
In fact, Rodman often couples diversity with other factors,
such as naturalness (inadmissible in determining, noncircularly,
what is
good and natural), richness, spontaneity and integrity, which help to
remove various of the counterexamples to a diversity principle. The
procedure points in the direction to be pursued: replacement of the oversimple principle of diversity by a principle combining all relevant
ecological factors.
After all ecological sensibility - ecological resist
ance is assumed to be the position of the person of ecological sensibility requires sensitivity to all such ecological factors.
54
Once it is determined
through consideration of a mix of ecological factors, that, or whether,
a natural object is good or valuable the reasons for resistance can be
restated:
(iv) Where a natural object is valuable - as c/fe?? natural objects
are, a natural object does not have to be very ecologically distinctive
to be valuable - the threat to the natural object is a threat to what is
But, other things being equal, threats to what is valuable
valuable.
should be resisted.
So, similarly, threats to natural objects should
often be resisted - and always (on whatever level) resisted where the
objects are valuable and the costs of resisting are not overridingly high
(to begin to spell out the ceteris
paribus
clause).
It remains to tie in reason (iii), a key premiss of which can now
take the initial form that the threat to a valuable natural object is a
threat to oneself.
A threat to what is valuable, to what one as a valuer
values,
is a threat to the valuer, to oneself, for these are one's values.
To make
some of those connections good again requires an excursion into
axiology, one, this time, that connects what is valuable with a valuer's
values.
But Rodman, in trying to connect the threats to natural objects
and to oneself, is forced further afield, and resorts to the myth of
microcosm:
'Ecological Resistance involves a ritual affirmation of the
Myth of Microcosm'
universe' (OED).
((b), p.5.4), i.e'. the view of man 'as epitome of the
While such an affirmation - without the ritual - would
yield the requisite connection, it is a classic piece of anthropocentric-
ism, quite hostile to a nonchauvinistic position, and, fortunately,
inessential to genuine ecological resistance.
What Rodman reaches for
from the myth (which could be restated in terms of
without its
classic homocentric bias) is however extremely important:
it is an
account of the
which is not a separate subject
isolated from its (natural) environment (as a Humean individual is),56 but
is connected intensionally and causally interrelated with that environment.
Rodman introduces this metaphysics in rather old-fashioned terms:
Ecological Resistance ... assumes a version of the theory of internal
relations:
the human personality discovers its structure through
interaction with the nonhuman order.
I am what I am at least partly
in my relation to my natural environment, and changes in that environ
ment affect my own identity.
If I stand idly by and let it be
destroyed, a part of me is destroyed or seriously deranged ((b)
p. 54).
Not Man Apart, in the terms of Friends of the Earth.
55
For among my interests are its interests, part of my welfare is its
57
welfare;
I am identified in part with it.
The metaphysics deepens,
A resister 'does not stand over against
then, the reasons for resistance.
"his environment" as manager, sight-seer, or do-gooder;
integral part of [it]'
he is an
((b), p.56).
But the environmental metaphysics, that underlies and helps support
the ethics, that is part of a fuller environmental theory, need not be,
and should not be if it is to be coherent, as (Hegelian and) holistic as
Rodman immediately goes on to suppose that it is:
... By making the principle of diversity central, Ecological
Resistance can incorporate the other three perspectives as moments
within the dialectic
of a larger whole. Economics, morality, and
an esthetic religiosity have niches in the ecology of our experience
of nature, and each has its limits (p.56 continued).
But a principle of diversity which opposes the forces of monoculture will
not yield
pluralism, unless illegitimately extrapolated to theories
where its merit is much less evident, especially when some of these
theories are not only mutually inconsistent but false.
Rodman risks the
distinctive features of Ecological Resistance for a dubious synthesis.
It is only true that the positions can be combined if the first three
positions are
limited indeed, and then a trivial combination with
each theory working where it works (which may be nowhere actual in the
case of the religious component) can be managed.
Moreover Ecological
Resistance properly developed, will lead to economic and ethical theories
which compete with the rather conventional, and environmentally defective
theories of, respectively, Resource Conservation and Natural Moralism.
Not only is Ecological Resistance severely handicapped by having
implausible holistic theses tacked in to it (not all of which have been
discussed);
further, Ecological Resistance is too negative.
A more
positive theory - which includes a theory of value and, ultimately, for a
fuller environmental position, a metaphysics - is required, not only for
orientation and to meet felt needs of environmentalists already noted,
but for more effective, coherent and systematic resistance.
It is but a short step to the 'fully ecological sensibility [which]
knows with Carl Sandburg that:'
There is an eagle in me ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky
Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what
I want ... . And I got the eagle ... from the wilderness, (p.118)
The poem almost admits of neutral logical formalisation.
56
trees, kill everything
f/xe Farf/z,
(ed. T.C. McLuhan,
Sphere Books, London, 1973, p.15).
The great care with which so many of the Indians utilized
every portion of the carcass of a hunted animal was an expression,
not of economic thrift, but of courtesy and respect
(D. Lee, in
Farf/z, p.15)-
What the respect position is based on is the fact that it is possible
to make use of something without treating it as something which is no more
than a means to one's ends.
That is, it is possible to make use of some
thing in limited, constrained ways - with constraints which may
not
derive entirely from considerations of the welfare of other humans, as in
the case of the Indians' use of animals - without treating it as available
for any kind of use.
To so use something without treating it as available
for unlimited or unconstrained use for human ends is characteristic of
use.
In contrast non-respectful use treats the use of the item
as constrained by no considerations arising from the item itself and the
user's relationship to it, but as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare and so forth of other humans.
The Western view, as the Indians realised, is the non-respect position,
that the world is available for unconstrained human use.
People who hold
respect positions, such as the Indians, see such a position as indicative
of a lack of moral sensitivity, and sometimes in even stronger terms.
The conventional wisdom of Western society tends to offer a false
dichotomy of use versus respectful nonuse - a false choice which comes
out especially clearly again in the treatment of animals.
Here the choice
presented in Western thought is typically one of edf/zer use without respect
or serious constraint, of using animals for example in the ways character
istic of large-scale mass-production farming and a market economic system
which are incompatible with respect, or on the other hand of not making
any use of animals at all, for example, never making use of animals for
food or for farming purposes.
What is left out in this choice is the
alternative the Indians and other non-Western people have recognised, the
alternative of limited and respectful use, which enables use to be made of
animals, but does not allow animals to be used in an unconstrained way or
merely as a means to human ends.
Such an alternative can have some applic
ation in a Western context (for some limited examples of respectful use
in the operations of a small farmer, see John Seymour,
CompZtsfe
Faber, London, 1976). A limited and respectful use
position would condemn the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals, and
also the treatment of animals as machines, as in factory farming.
84
It
would also condemn unecessary and wasteful killing and especially killing
for amusement or "sport", which is incompatible with respect and assumes
that animals can be used merely as a means for
human ends. But
it would not necessarily oppose the use of animals in the case of approp
riate non-trivial need, e.g. for food, although here again it would
insist that the ways in which use can be made are limited, and not just
by considerations of effect on other humans.
The limited and respectful use position avoids some of the serious
problems of the no-use position of the animal liberationists, although it
shares many of the same beliefs concerning the illegitimacy of factory
farming and similar disrespectful methods of making use of and exploiting
animals.
The no-use position faces the problem that it proposes that
humans should treat animals in ways which are quite different from the
ways in which animals treat one another, for example, prohibiting needful
use for food.
Thus the no-use position seems obliged to say either that
the world would be a better place without carnivores, or else that
carnivorous animals themselves are inferior, immoral,
moral creatures - whichever, alternative
amoral or non-
is taken here the bulk of
animals emerge as inferior to humans, or at least vegetarian humans.
It
implies too that an impoverished natural order which lacked carnivores -
and given what we know of ecology this would be a very highly impoverished
one indeed, not to say an unworkable "natural" order - is preferable to a
rich natural one with a normal proportion of carnivorous and partly
carnivorous species.
carnivores,
Since it would imply the moral inferiority of
the no-use position appears to arrive at the negation of its
own starting point,
(as regards e.g., the equality consideration) of all
animals, human and non-human.
In thus seeing humans as capable of a moral
existence which most animals are not capable of, it sees man as apart from
a largely amoral, (or immoral) natural world, denies community with the
animal and natural world,and indirectly reinforces human chauvinism.
§6.
TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
OF THE EXTENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REVISION ENSUING ON
ABANDONMENT OF CHAUVINISTIC ETHICS
A radical change in a theory not uncommonly forces changes elsewhere
- conceptual revision which affects not only the theory itself but many
neighbouring areas.
The phenomenon is well-known in the case of major
physical theories, but it holds as well for ethical and philosophical
theories;
for example, a logical theory which rejects the Reference
Theory in a thoroughgoing way has important repercussions throughout much
of the rest of philosophy, and requires modification not only of logical
85
systems and their semantics, but also, for instance, of the usual meta
theory which also accepts the Reference Theory and indeed which is
95
tailored to cater only for logics which do conform.
A
thorough-going environmental ethics likewise has a substantial
impact and forces many changes.
The escape from human chauvinism not
only involves sweeping changes in ethical principles and value theory but
it induces substantial'reverberations elsewhere - both inwards, for
example in metaphysics, in epistemology, and in the philosophy and method
ology of science, and outwards (in subjects that presuppose value theory)
in social theory, in politics, in economics and in law, and beyond.
For
human chauvinism is deeply embedded in Western culture, and affects not
only the ideology and the institutions but the arts.
Thus, for example,
much of literature, and especially of ballet and film, is given over to a
celebration of things human, of the species. Even the timely new emphasis,
for instance of the counterculture, on human relations (as opposed to self-
contained private individuals of social theories)
remains well within
the inherited chauvinistic framework.
As to the changes, let us begin again with ethics.
As we have begun
to see, an environmental ethic can retain, though in a much amended
theoretical framework (which affects meanings of terms), virtually all
the standard ethical terminology.
But even at a superficial syntactical
level, there will be conspicuous alterations:
firstly, ethical terminology
will be enriched with new environmental terms, drawn in particular from
ecology, somewhat as it was expanded in the late nineteenth century by
terminology from evolutionary theories;
and secondly, accompanying the
attitudinal shifts the new ethic involves, there will be a marked shift
in ethical terminology, away from the predominance of such terms as (and
examples associated with)
'obligation',
to such expressions as 'care',
'respect',
'consciousness'.
'duty',
'concern',
'promise',
'responsibility',
'contract',
'trust',
Because the theoretical and attitudinal
frame is changed, an environmental ethic forces - as we have already
found with such notions as
and
-
reexamination of, and modified analyses of, characteristic ethical notions.
It requires, furthermore, reassessment of traditional and conventional
analyses of such notions as natural right, ground of right, and permissib
ility, especially where these are based on chauvinist assumptions - much
as it requires the rejection of most of the more prominent meta-ethical
gr
These points are explained in detail in Routley (e); and also in
L. Goddard and R. Routley, T/ze
py
urui Context,
Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, 1973, chapters 3 and 4.
86
positions.
Cursory examination of recent accounts of nutMruZ
wcrcZZtpj jMst-Zce and cctfc?? will help illustrate and confirm these
points.
Hart, for example, accepts (subject to defeating conditions which
are here irrelevant) the classical doctrine of natural rights according
to which, among other things,
any adult human ... capable of choice is at liberty to do (i.e. is
under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one
coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons (H.L.A.
Hart,
'Are there any natural rights?', reprinted in PcZZticuZ
PbiZoscpbp,
(ed. A. Quinton), Blackwell, Oxford 1967).
But this sufficient condition for a human natural right depends on
accepting the basic chauvinist principle - a variant of (D) - environmental
ethics reject;
since if a person has a natural right he has a right.
So
too the definition of a natural right adopted by classical theorists and
accepted with minor qualifications by Hart presupposes the same defective
principle. Accordingly an environmental ethic would have to amend the
classical notion of a natural right, a far from straightforward matter now
that human rights with respect to animals and the natural environment are,
like those with respect to slaves not all that long ago, undergoing major
re-evaluation.
Another example of chauvinism at work in the very setting up of the
field of discussion and problems in ethics is provided by recent accounts
of .^ercZ'Ztp, where it is simply taken for granted that 'moral' distinguishe
96
among
actions, policies, motives and reasons,
and that what is
moral refers essentially to human well-being (contentment, happiness
or something of this general sort, tied with appropriate states or
conditions of humans).
Such criteria for what is moral are chauvinistic-
ally based, assuming that what does not bear on human states or conditions
cannot be a moral matter.
What happens in worlds without humans,
how animals fare or are treated, what is done or what happens to plants
or other natural objects - none of these are directly moral matters,
except insofar as they impinge on human welfare.
That is human
96 Thus for instance, B. Williams, ^eruZitz/.- Xx
tc Effies,
Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p.79. Williams does, however, remark in
his Preface (p.xiv) how 'shaky and problematic' the distinction - which
he subsequently takes for granted - is.
97 see, for example, P.R. Foot, Tbecries cf FtZrZcs, Oxford University
Press, London, 1967,and G.J. Warnock, Oc^tewpcrcrp McraZ PhZZcscpbp,
Macmillan, London, 1967, and also The Object cf AfcrcZZty, Methuen,
London, 1971.
87
chauvinism at work, and is at the same time a reductio
such criteria.
ad absurdum of
A different nonchauvinistic account of what is moral is
required (a beginning can be made by adopting certain of the maligned
formal criteria). It is evident that any account which meets even weak
conditions of adequacy will serve to meet the objection that an environmental ethic is not concerned with what is moral but is really an aesthetic
theory.
For the objection as usually presented depends squarely on a
chauvinistic restriction on morality, all the rest of value theory being
classed, or dismissed, as "(mere) aesthetics".
The case of morality
illustrates the characteristic way in which theories - in this case
chauvinistic ethics - redefine crucial notions in their own terms to suit
their own ends, such as entrenchment and fortification of the theories
against objections.
Further corollaries of the rejection of chauvinism include the
inadequacy of recent fashionable attempts, mainly derivative from Hobhouse,
at characterising eguuZitp and justifying it in ways that argue from man's
humanity,98 and the inadequacy of much recent, largely chauvinistic, work
which takes it for granted that action and
99
rationality requirements on action are bound up with human nature.
in the philosophy of
The abandonment of chauvinism implies the rejection not only of much
ethical analysis, but of all current major ethical positions.
The bias of
prevailing ethical positions, and also of economic positions, which aim to
make principles of conduct or reasonable economic behaviour calculable is
especially evident.
These positions typically employ a single criterion
p, such as preference or happiness, as a summum bonum;
characteristically
each individual of some base class, almost always humans, but perhaps
including future humans, is supposed to have (at least) an ordinal p-
ranking of the states in question (e.g. of affairs, of the economy);
then
some principle is supplied to determine a collective p-ranking of these
states in terms of individual p-rankings, and what is best or ought to be
done is determined either directly, as in act-utilitarianism under the
Greatest Happiness principle, or indirectly, as in rule-utilitarianism in
terms of some optimization principle applied to the collective ranking,
The species bias is transparent from the selection of the base class.
go
And
Among such unsatisfactory liberal egalitarian positions are those
presented in G. Vlastos, 'Justice and equality' in JooiuZ
(ed. R.B. Brandt), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962, and
B.A.O. Williams, ' The idea of equality' in P^i^osoph^, Pacifies artJ
Jpcietz/, Second series (ed. P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman), Blackwell,
Oxford, 1963.
99 gee, e.g. T. Nagel, TTns PossiM7-7fi/ of
Oxford, 1970.
88
Clarendon Press,
even if the base class is extended to include persons or some animals
(at the cost, like that of including remotely future humans, of losing
testability), the positions are open to familiar criticism, namely that
the whole of the base class may be prejudiced in a way which leads to
unjust principles.
To take a simple example, if every member of the base
class detests dingoes, on the basis of mistaken data as to dingoes'
behaviour, then by the Pareto ranking test the collective ranking will
rank states where dingoes are exterminated very highly, from which it will
generally be concluded that dingoes ought to be exterminated (still
unfortunately the evaluation of most Australian farmers, though it lacks
any requisite empirical basis).
Likewise it would just be a happy
accident, it seems, if collective demand (horizontally summed from
individual demand) for a state of the economy with sperm whales as a
mixed good, were to succeed in outweighing private whaling demands;
for
if but few in the base class happened to know that sperm whales exist or
cared a jot that they do, then even the most "rational
economic decision
making would do nothing to prevent their extinction. But whether the
sperm whale survives should not have to depend on what humans know or what
they see on television.
Summed human interests, or preferences of certain
private individuals, are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis
for deciding upon what is environmentally desirable.
Nor would such
accidental bases be adequate.
Moreover ways out of the problem do not bear much investigation.
It cannot be assumed, for instance, that the base class is on the whole
good, and hence will not enjoin reprehensible behaviour, because such an
assumption seems false, would at best be contingently true (so that the
theory would fail for different circumstances to which it should apply),
and would involve a deep problem in the theory, since it would then seem
to admit the determination of goodness - that of the base class, on the
whole - independently of what the theory was set up to determine, among
other things, goodness. Nor can it be assumed, without serious circularity
that the optimisation is constrained by requirements of justice or fairness
(see Routley (b) and §5 above).
The ethical and economic theories just singled out (which are based
on optimisation over select features of the base class) are not alone in
their species chauvinism;
much the same applies to mosf going meta-
ethical theories which, unlike intuitionistic theories, try to offer some
rationale for their basic principles.
That is, the argument against
utilitarian-type ethical and economic theories generalises.
For instance,
on social contract positions, obligations are a matter of mutual agreement
89
between individuals of a given (but again problematic) base class;
on a
social justice picture, rights and obligations spring from the application
of symmetrical fairness principles to members of the base class, usually
a rather special class of persons;while on a Kantian position, which
has some vogue, obligations somehow arise from respect for members of the
base class, persons.In each case, if members of the base class happen
to be ill-disposed to items outside the base class, then that is unfortun
ate for them:
that is (rough) justice.
Looking outwards from the ethics, the abandonment of chauvinism has
likewise a wide set of consequences, both theoretical and practical, in
One
economics, politics and law, and generally in the social sciences
major practical economic impact of environmental ethics is in the extent
to which free enterprise can operate unimpeded or unchanged.
of business and enterpreneurial activity - to
But
consider one option - will
involve, in turn, either legal constraints, or reallocation of activity
by such devices as environmental pricing, which directs activity away from
environmentally undesirable pursuits.
For example, if it is wrong to
destroy a rare ecosystem in order to make a few more dollars, then
restrictions should be imposed on business activity by one method or
another. To some limited extent this is already happening in the field of
pollution, but primarily because of the likely effects, direct or not too
far removed, that pollution comes to have on other humans, not for a wider
set of reasons, and often not for the right reasons.
With a wider environ
mental code, the public and legal intrusion into areas typically regarded
as "private" and open to the free enterprise operations (of "open go")
would be much more extensive.
The same applies in the case of private
100 Thus for example,
[Rawls'] original position seems to presuppose not just a neutral
theory of the good, but a liberal, individualistic conception
according to which the best that can be wished for someone is the
unimpeded pursuit of his own path, provided it does not interfere
with the rights of others.
This view is persuasively developed in
the later portions of the book, but without a sense of its controver
sial character (T. Nagel, 'Rawls on justice', PkiZcscphicuZ
82 (1973), p.228).
Nagel also effectively argues that Rawls' original position is not
neutrally determined but involves substantial moral assumptions (e.g.
pp.232, 233);
they are mostly, as it happens, of a chauvinistic cast.
10^ While the first of Kant's maxims is not so restricted in actual form
ulation, others are (see H.J. Paton, TPe
Hutchinson, London,
1947. And, firstly, such maxims are s^pp<9se^ to be equivalent to ones
formulated in terms of persons; secondly, they are supposed to be
derived from features of, or connected with, people.
90
property;
for example, given that it is not permissible to erode hill
sides then there should, in this setting, be (legal) restrictions on
farmers' and foresters' activities.
Although the impact on the practice of economics of a thoroughgoing
environmental ethic would be drastic - market negotiations, firms'
activities,-international trade, all would be affected - the impact on
the underlying theories of preference and choice is comparatively
less,
but still far from negligible. For much of economics is squarely founded
on chauvinism.
The theoretical bias follows directly from the utilitarian
bases of the theory, which is fairly explicit in welfare theory and rather
heavily disguised in neoclassical theory.
But although choice and value
theory are, as characteristically presented in economics and elsewhere,
damagingly chauvinistic, they do not have to be.
For the theories can be
reformulated in a non-chauvinistic way, as was indicated (in §5) above
for utilitarianism - upon which economic theory is modelled.
On such a
revamped foundation an environmental economics to match the chosen
environmental ethic can be built (for some preliminaries on this approach,
see Routley (d), appendices 1 and 6).
Several of the objections to base class theories such as utilitar
ianism apply not merely against orthodox economic theory, but also to
voting theory, to representative democratic systems of determination of
political action.
If, for, example, the base class consists of private
individuals motivated by their own self-contained interest then such
procedures can readily lead to most undesirable results, especially if
these individuals
compromise
representative individuals.
their autonomy through the election of
For the more powerful of these representative
individuals can be - and typically are, as their behaviour if not their
protestations show - not favourably disposed to (the welfare of) things
outside the base class or even to many members of the base class.
Nearer the theoretical surface, especially in such branches of
economics as "resource management", the chauvinism is more conspicuous.
The following narrowly utilitarian assumption is quite typical:
The goal of resource managers should be to communicate and act in
ways that maximize human satisfaction (H.J. Campbell, 'Economic and
social significance of upstream aquatic resources' in Forest
Fses
Oregon State University, Corcallis,
1971, p-14, also p.17).
When
management - where such is
management becomes
needed at all - the goals will be changed from such chauvinistic ones.
91
The method of interference in
"free economic enterprise", of
controls and regulations, of legal and political constraints, is only one
way in which leading principles of an environmental ethics can be put
into effect.
A quite different, and ultimately far more appealing,
approach is by way of structural change, by changing the socio-economic
structure in such a way that it comes to reflect on environmental ethics
(by altering the frame of reference, or axes, to use the physical picture
of §4, so.that major problems vanish).
Requisite structural change is
102 .
far-reaching, both practically and theoretically'
in every reach of
social science.
For example, while on the
position,
capitalist markets are subject to further regulation, either directly
imposed or by way of suitable pricing policies, in the sfrzzcfLzraZ-
position, capitalist markets are eliminated;
while under state
regulation private property is subject to further controls,given approp
riate structural change private property disappears.
Looking inwards, an environmental ethic has an impact on the
practice of many sciences other than the social sciences - what they do
experimentally with natural objects (e.g. the treatment of animals in
laboratory testing);
how their research programmes are organised and
directed (consider, e.g., projects involving irradiation or broadscale
herbicide treatments of rainforests);
the way classifications are made
and which are made (consider, e.g. the extent to which human perception
enters into classifications in botany);
recommended on the basis of such sciences.
and, of course, what is
For as it stands human
chauvinism is deeply embedded in the practice of science, directly in
research and experimentation and in shaping classifications, theses and
theories.
Indeed the effect of a different ethic may extend even to the
theory of such sciences, in particular through the bearing the ethic has
103
on metaphysics which in turn influences the foundations or such sciences.
Such a new ethic would quite properly upset (as §1 should indicate) the
extent to which humans are seen at the centre of things and things as
accountable through them and scientific theories as 'human constructions
wrestled from a hostile nature'
(after Popper).
It would help overthrow
the pernicious chauvinistic idea that, apart from certain elementary facts,
AZZes
value.
isf AfeyzscZzoMMor^., all necessity, all intensionality,
all
It should result too in the shattering of still widespread
As (g) V. and R. Routley, 'Social theory, self management and
environmental problems', this volume, begins to explain.
Cf. R. Harre,
P/zi^osop?zies of
1972;
and also Routley (e).
92
Oxford University Press,
assumptions as to the nature of animals and plants, for instance that
their apparently goal-directed and intensional behaviour can be explained
(away) mechanistically, and the deeply-rooted idea that some sort of
Cartesian metaphysical picture of natural, as distinct from spiritual or
rational, objects can be maintained (cf. again §1).
In metaphysics there are at least two further important classes of
effects.
Firstly, the orthodox views of man's relation to nature, the
dominant and modified dominant and lesser traditions, have to be abandoned
and new positions worked out.
In this sense, a new environmental ethic
implies a similarly new metaphysic redefining Man's place in nature and
human/nature relationships.^^4 such a new philosophy of nature will
recognise various natural objects other than humans as of independent
value, so it will not be naturalistic.
Nor will it view natural objects
as simply available for the use, wise or otherwise, of humans.
Several
principles derived from the orthodox metaphysical positions will have to
be abandoned and replacements worked out (as in the case of (D) in ethics).
Thus superseded, for example, will be the principles of total use of
natural areas for human use and of maximum long-term productivity of the
earth's resources (principles criticised in their application in forestry
in Routley (d)).
At a deeper level, such a philosophy of nature will
involve a turning away from the leading ideological principles of both the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment and of much that went with them (e.g.
with the Rennaissance, the rise of commerce, bureaucracy, professionalism,
formal education, and subsequently, with the Enlightenment, the rise of
the modern state, capitalism and scientific enlightenment).
For it means
the dismissal of the chauvinistic principles of the Renaissance, with 'Man
as the kernel of the Universe', a creature 'half-earthly and half—divine,
his body and soul form[ing] a microcosm enabling him to understand and
control Nature . ..'.^O-^
It means too removal of the humanism of the
Enlightenment, the reduction of what formerly was assigned to the religious,
such as ethical and political principles, to the human, a reduction which
404
Passmore has observed - inconsistently with what is claimed in his
(a) - in 'Attitudes to Nature', Poz/aZ. Irzstitz^te
P/ziZ-csopTzz/ lectures,
volume 8, Macmillan, London, 1975. As against Passmore (a) p.3, such
new ethics and metaphysics need involve no abandonment of 'the
analytical, critical approach which is the glory of the West': on the
contrary, they may well mean a more thoroughly critical and analytical
approach than hitherto.
104 goth quotations are from ?7ze
<9/ t/z<3 Pgrzaissa^cg (ed. D. Hay)
Thames and Hudson, London 1967, pp.7-10, where too main movements,
practical and ideological, of the Renaissance are usefully
indicated.
93
was based on the false dichotomy, which has still not lost its hold:
reli.gious or humanistic.
Secondly, the removal of humans from a dominant position in the
natural order renders immediately suspect a range of familiar philosophical
positions of a verificationistic or idealistic kind such as phenomenalism
in epistemology (how can what exists depend on what is perceived by
members of such a transitory and perhaps not so important species or on
whether there exist <2722/ perceivers?), intuitionism in mathematics, con
ventionalism in logical theory, the Copenhagen interpretation in micro
physics, and subjectivisms not only in ethics but in every other
philosophical sphere.
True, most of these positions are defeated on the
basis of other considerations anyway;
but it is an immediate and further
point against them that they are damagingly chauvinistic.
Thus a corollary of the thoroughgoing rejection of human chauvinism,
of very considerable philosophical importance, is the rejection of all
'the
usual forms of idealism, i.e. all positions which accord primacy to
the human subject and make the existence of a world of things or the
nature of things dependent upon such subjects.
A paradigmatic example is
phenomenalism; other examples are Kantian idealisms, Hegelianisms and
later German idealisms, Christian philosophies based on the primacy of
human (and superhuman) consciousness, existentialisms;
more surprising
examples are empiricisms - inasmuch as all knowledge and truth is supposed
to be ultimately derived from human experience - and their holistic
images, dialectical materialisms and Marxisms.
A satisfactory environ
mental philosophy will be significantly different from all these
positions.
94
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Text
issue of nuclear power raises many basic issues in ethics.
The
By means of an example,
we argue
sorts of
transfers of costs,
benefits
from a
illegitimacy of certain
the
for
transfers
from one party who obtains
given course of action,
onto other parties who do
The inadequate methods currently available
not.
nuclear power
wastes mean
that
transfer of
serious
could permit
risks onto
costs and
the arguments
for
future
these crucial ethical
ignore
the i)7pra 1
to
Social Dimensions
Ethical and
Nuclear Power
are
not
the acceptability of
by
the
fact
such an illegitimate
future people.
that
Many of
such risks on
imposing
transfer
the
We argue
issues.
that
transfer principles give rise
constraints on action such
removed
for storing nuclear
those affected
future and
are
not present people.
The nuclear
issue and associated arguments also raise in a
highly
topical w3y
really
’need'
allow for,
or are
and
all
is
such needs
framework?
many basic issues in
the consumer
in part
theory.
items nuclear power is
it authoritarian or wrong
to
Are existing democratic mechanisms
framework adequate,
and
excessive
question
prevent
what
lives?
The approach to all
are
these basic elements pure
or do we
need
to assume both,
alterable social
the answer to
kinds of social
changes would
framework and over
social
their own
crucially on
intera ction are conceived
they social wholes,
individuals,
are
distinct and
irreducible,
argue?
R.
the
allow for more adequate
these questions depends
how the underlying elements of
to
If
such.concentrations of power and
control by people over the social
supposed
they give inadequate control
or do
concentrations of power?
is affirmative,
people
for control over
I
last
Do
frustrate such needs,
imposed by a particular,
the social
permit
social
Routley
as we
shall
�NUCLEAR POWER - ETHICAL,
■•MB
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ptMENSIONS
Wl/,
I.
COMPETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE.
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really
lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a
debate about values ...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones.
Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily
one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do
They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the
2
lines of competing paradigms.
According to the entrenched paradigm discerned,
to others.
that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant
Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm),
economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of
individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief
in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering
around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes
best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are
necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of
labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise.
In particular,
there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of
scientists in particular. ...
there is an emphasis on quantification.
The rival world viewT, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm
(the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists,
in ways summarised in the following table
A
Dominant Social Paradigm
CORE VALUES
Material (economic growth, progress and development)
Natural environment valued as resource
Alternative Environmental
Paradigm
Domination over nature
Non-material (self-realisation)
Natural environment intrinsically
valued
Harmony with nature
ECONOMY*
Market forces
Risk and reward
Rewards for achievement
Differentials
Individual self-help
Public interest
Safety
Incomes related to need
Egalitarian
Collective/social provision
POLITY
Authoritative structures (experts influential)
Hierarchical
Law and order
Action through official institutions
Participative structures (citizen/
worker involvement)
Non-hierarchical
Liberation
Direct action
SOCIETY
Centralised
Large-scale
Associational
Ordered
Decentralised
Small-scale
Communal
Flexible
NATURE
Ample reserves
Nature hostile/neutral
Environment controllable
Earth's resources limited
Nature benign
Nature delicately balanced
KNOWLEDGE
Confidence in science and technology
Rationality of means (only)
Limits to science
Rationality of ends
State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs
as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced
system by a command system). But since there is virtually no debate
confines of state socialism,
that minor variant on the Old Paradigm
from the Old Paradigm really only
by central planning (a market
over a nuclear future within the
need not be delineated here.
�2
No doubt t’ne competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple
(and
subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements:
really
and
instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm).
Nonetheless it is empirically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed.
Large-
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to
the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic
practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details:
whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irrational.
Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails.
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism.
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured.
main parts?:-
There are two
It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project
selection).
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
�3
the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian means to predetermined ends.)
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues -
whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical
8
or legal or mathematical details.
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many interrelated problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
before assembled:
establishment, on a massive scale, of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive
wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and
economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for
its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and
restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is
the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both passengers and freight.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the
�4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
All of
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will, that the world needs his product and it is
his duty to supply it, and
that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it.
These
sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
I
when the consigner, again a ’’responsible” businessman, puts his workers’ health
context.
or other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is his own and others’ pressing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a
by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
especially.
Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case.
progresses.
How fitting the
analogy is will become apparent as the argument
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
9
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
�5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
may require
and which, some have estimated,
million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem.
Serious problems
have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage,
even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last
twenty years.Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter
vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human
affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock
deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain
suitably isolated from human environment.^ In short, the best present storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
damaging their environment ,
Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance, none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may
�well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
provide a rigorous guarantee of
Only a method that could
safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe
long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
12
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage
sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons-
grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year
storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000,
which gets around the wastestorage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways,
an article of faith.
It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no
limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that
cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always
immediately economically feasible).
The assumption has played
part in development plans and practice.
technological optimism (not to say hubris
an important
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution
is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the
form of limitation theorems^); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk
analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed
below).
The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would
provide unlimited energy (a 'clean unlimited supply of power').
shattered.
and nuclear
That dream soon
The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power,
fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power.
�The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
are, then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could
be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of .10 generations
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an
with it.
over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents’ dreams of global
industrialisation are realised, more and more of the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life,
are in a run-down condition.
Such points
tell against the idea that future
people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least
indirect beneficiaries.
It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only)
by nuclear power.
The'Solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits.
The ’’solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
�8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
the future.There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner’s action in the circum
stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case.
Just as in the case of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the question of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop
ment.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
Ill
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
�9.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the
effect of our actions on
future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive.
Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or
entitlement.
People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
enforce any claims they might have for their rights against us.
Secondly, there
are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement.
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them.
�10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has little or no sympathy.
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).
Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable.
Consider, for example, a scientific group which, tor no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
�the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
result of the action.
direct and predictable
The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is
an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately
criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to future people.
the following sort
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable
of policy:-
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants,
will
over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests,
without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as
well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the
unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such
counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many
of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in
mind in denying moral obligation is rather that- future people can look after
themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally
independent of the present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counter
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so
thereby acquire many Of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to
take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be
careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
�12.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired
or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or
assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which
require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone,
and for which no act of acquisition is required.
There is a considerable
difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved.
In the first case
one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g.
have loves, synpathy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibility arises
as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable
consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied.
They apply as a result
of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably
predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not
(yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist.
While
it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed
obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make
special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
from harming them.
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
�13.
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner
is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package on the train.
The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both
to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something
which has to be assumed or required.
The conflation is encouraged by reductionist
positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly
endeavour to collapse all obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral
constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter
examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;
there are in practice no obligations to the distant future.
17
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through
the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which
each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the
succeeding generation.
account.
There are at least three objections to this chain
First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future
as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of
constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals
can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create
individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire
generation.
Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the
responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility.
Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to
the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be
adequate, as examples again show.
For the picture is unable to explain several
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to Influence matters.
�14.
Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of
disadvantages to people of the more distant future.
Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances
be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors.
Such
cases can hardly be written off as ’’never-never land" examples since many cases
of environmental exploitation might be seen as of just this type. e.g. not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the
long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overuse.
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONQMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While there are grave difficulties for the
unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future.
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people.
The
attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position.
objectionable in such an approach is that
What is
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are.
There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
�15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
18
the waste problem.
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations
may well not
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
can carry much weight.
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
developments as nuclear power.
sacrifice argument.
That is, it depends on the already scotched
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economically - costs much less now than later.
Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes,
what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into
monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss
of life.
There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species.
In fact
the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed:
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
19
monetarily,
but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value.
It is also
presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
�16.
are bound to apply discounting.
This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and
discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly
inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined
and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.).
20
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrained position.
If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a
sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints.
In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of
discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
21
more than about 15 years,
and application of such rates would simply beg
the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method
of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral
constraints.
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.
The distant
future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate
future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching
or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.
But
then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying
them against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future
people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people
where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of conflict
between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much
lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent
risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity
to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy
use.
And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted,
�17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit, he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision
problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some,
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from
it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way
related to a person’s extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability
argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes,
and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway.
reveals,
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments.
�18.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to
distant future.
take serious account of the effects of our actions on the
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of
separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments are mistaken, the first
on a Priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument
is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to
the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can
obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable,
fuzzy and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should
act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain
able about the present which would indicate different action.
Therefore we must
regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
More formally and
crudely:
One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the
distant future.
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations' by
'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to
considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with
respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which
is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present
and with respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest
a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we
suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant
future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those
things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints.
We can
and constantly do act on the basis of such "unreliable" information, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic
proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future.
In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for certain that the
container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not even have
to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consigner's action.
risk of harm in this sort of case.
It is enough that there is a significant
It does not matter if the decreased well
being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
of the so-called "speculative" and "unreliable".
But if we do not require
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why
�should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration
can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference
between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them.
this way:-
The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every
(action) x”, then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
information about future actions which would enable us to detach the
antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the
It is
wrong to do x” type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about
how to act.
on action.
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
�20,
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, 'especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or
that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
�21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a
sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there
is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are
morally committed to.
Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that
future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be
Even if one is
morons or forever plugged into enjoyment or other machines.
prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration — what we are being handed in such arguments
as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn't looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal—pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline
of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities.
Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that
future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such cases before such actions could
�22.
be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe
that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities.
The
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great
as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action.
A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the
application of moral constraints.
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form?
The question is raised
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
�23.
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and
representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest.
It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve
or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict
cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular,
there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of
interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then:
are. there any features of
future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or
reduce their claims to such below those of present people?
principle None.
The answer is :
in
Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike,
in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present:
in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white
skinned) humans, etc.
The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way.
These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determination of best probable or' practical course of action given only
present information).
In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort
being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain
information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
24
consideration;
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
�23a,
universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as
to the present;
and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them
and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
Uncertainty
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
�harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide, adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII.) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the. tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORP: MELTDOWN. The
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
another state’s or region’s yard or waters?
When that region receives no due
compensation (whatever that would amount to, in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the
arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive
wastes upon future people.
But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan
cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can
discount, people of two centuries hence.
(But what this consideration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can
be discounted over time .)
Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only
the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the
assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of
those in the neighbourhood of reactors, and, differently, as regards the
distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations.
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that
reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant,
25
�25.
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor.
An
immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any
ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs” of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other largescale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The ’’normal” emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers
and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over
the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under
what conditions?
Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into
decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an
26
acceptable level of risk/safety for the public.
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner
working in summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
compensate for the agony of cancer.
The point is that the costs to one party
are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being
imposed.
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a
�26.
particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults).
In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly,
for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent
majority).
Whatever
charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even
under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that tiie imposition of
radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable.
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US
Atomic Energy Commission,^ is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population
has
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural” level) is also likely
to have negligible consequences.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course,
so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-
effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person s well-being,
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose.
Furthermore, the
monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Public policy is determined not so
as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered.
public pacifier
while
�27.
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’.
But such accidents can happen,
3
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island).
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the
result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly
and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages
would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
31
these conservative US government figures are given :
the consequences of a
similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still.
The consigner in risking the lives, well-being and property of the
passengers on the train has acted inadmissibly.
Does a government-sponsored
private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train.
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners’ action is, as we would ordinarily
sible.
suppose, inadmissible and irrespon
The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
Indeed in the
32
influential Rassmussen report “ - which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be Almost) impossible.
The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself.
These
assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents
and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual,
a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear
�28.
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof
and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different.
But we do not live in such a world.
According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodologically sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and
"reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as
not
credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
eliminations that are otherworldly.
In fact the methodology and data of the report
33
has been soundly and decisively criticized.
And it has been shown that there
is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater
order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
here we
encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment
models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off
models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to
different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
34
therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
the. likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are
accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable.
A little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional
and other relevant aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical
assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or
�29,
primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other
parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of
the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a
comparison on such a basis would be valid.
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes
in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk,
etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant
activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
A risk that is ethically
acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify
nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i)
and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the
nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the
costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing.
It is
a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and
already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to
the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g.
it can be substituted for or done without.
Thus, for instance, one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
oneself.
Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which
is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
service, on the train, to the next village.
The inhabitants of this village are
then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult
disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else
leaving the village and their livelihoods.
transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
Most of us would see this kind of
�30.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world
countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one
of its most objectionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the l_ramsmission.
principle.
For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories).
VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in^or arising from?the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material,
and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have
parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating
power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ^the same risk of
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry".38 Furthermore, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location
I
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive
material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation, with where
one already lives things are very different.
The uranium-miner s choice of
occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific
Islander’s "fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue of arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations.
�31.
Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more irdtimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of
large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a
specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio
active lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many large
industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown).
Though theft of material from more
dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at
large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such
massive explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so
many fronts.
In part to reduce it£ vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to
information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information,
formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil
liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it
answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
■JLhee-e- developments^in the IJnd t^d
—and worjc in West Gcmafiy-ji presage
along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
societies.
That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences
tells heavily against it.
�32.
Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct
connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is fortunately true that
ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war
is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances -
are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however,
the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and
chances of, nuclear engagement.
Since nuclear wars are never accountable
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread
of nuclear power accordingly
expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself
undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also
undesirable.
The details and considerations that fill out this argument,
from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many.
They are firstly
technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to
make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear power plant? secondly political,
that nuclear engagements once instituted
likely to escalate and that those
who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants
do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with
nuclear engagement (up to ’’strategic nuclear strikes” at least); and thirdly
ethical, that wars invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is.
Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted
than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations.
The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself
undesirable.
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is
a case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular of the gross
uncertainties involved in nuclear development.
In cases of this type the
appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each
alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst
consequences (this is a pretty uncontroversial part of the maximin rule which
enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences).
The
nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable
alternative.
�33.
VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
DEVELOPMENT.
As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed,
the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments,
such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more
prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed.
The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious
risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
particular, applied to the nuclear case.
For this reason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote
nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity
utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct ~ it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and
will ensue.
For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his
village will starve.
It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others,
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing
commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
significant risk of serious harm.
The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
�34.
to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than
the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments
as well.
In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of
false dichotomies.
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination
either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase
unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally
poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through
encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.^ The argument that nuclear
energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is
both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it
requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists
and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its
feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission
systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into
the system.
Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised
entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political
41
structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy
is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course
mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the
westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these
countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes.
It
is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
�35.
The poverty argument is then a fraud.
help the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries
there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of
developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better
prospects for helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear
development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap,
procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development.
And there are various
alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar
options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
42
each possibly in combination with conservation measures.
Despite the availability
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups).
Such an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickledown argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
runs:-
For the argument
Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing)
affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
development benefits the poor.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy'
is substituted for ’nuclear’.
It has also to be shoum, what the next major
argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
alternatives in increasing affluence.
The second assumption, that affluence
Inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical
data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and
developed, and through economic models which reveal how ’affluence” can increase
without redistribution occurring.
Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set
of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have,
it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions
which our culture has developed.
Unless our high-technology, high energy
industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and
traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth
it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
4:
�36.
The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller
examination, can be avoided.
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
It assumes that technologic
society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse.
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish -
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
The assumption that technological
society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so — after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technologic^
restructuring and consumption modification.
If western society's demands for energy
are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could
be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction,
lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather,
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things.
While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at
�37.
present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
44
consumption which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the
lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on
burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
the Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear
45
situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable
aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high technology-
nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
�38,
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
appeal to futurity, closed.
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other arguments — from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future.
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of market-
centred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice.
Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy.
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic
ends.
Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission
research and development, in marked contrast to other newer rival sources or
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs.
The reasons can be
divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
(out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, publicly
economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real
reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social.
control.
�The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth.
valuable!):-
Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
The first premiss is
A6
part of US energy policy,
and the second premiss is supplied by standard
unrest, etc.).
economics textbooks.
But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified
economic growth.More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less
vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards.
For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alternatives.
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically
best’ being filled out as 'most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having most favourable
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things
a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done.
decisively, unless
Much data, beginning with
the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can^ be assembled to show as much.
Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true
premisses
if the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments.
Virtually all available data
concerns the USA; in Europe, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly^
controlled” nuclear power
are generally not divulged.
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants.
Romanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
49
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985.
And
capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants.
rather decisively
Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators.
Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were
designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative
costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design
capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more
�40.
expensive than estimated.
The discrepancy between actual and estimated
capacity
is especially important because a plant with an actual capacity factor of 55%
produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
The low reliability
of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the superior
reliability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nuclear power.
These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account.
The main subsidies are through research and development, by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
Act^), in enrichment, and in waste management.
It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more).
When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public
costs involved in producing nuclear power.
For example, the analyses ignore
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently
what the costs involved are.
But even using actual waste handling costs (while
wastes await storage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuclear.
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in
favour of alternatives to nuclear and
against nuclear power.
In short, even on
proper Old Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be rejected.
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been
kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public
subsidization, of several types.
In USA, to take a main example where
information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through
heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, .th«xugh the
Price-Anderson Act^ which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear
development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all
radioactive wastes.
While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical
developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for
uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
social welfare.
Duly admitting social welfare and some
equity
principles
�41.
in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leadsjtne modern
version of the Old Paradigm, called the-Modified Old Paradigm.
The main
changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of
economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated
or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism).
Now it
has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power
is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example,
aparL^from those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap
electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance
brown-outs and the like.1
use, avoidance of shortages, rationing,
Since
4^
alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve s^me ends given power was
supplied with suitable extravagance, the
argument has again to show that the
choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite
respects, in serving the public interest.
Such an argument is a matter for
decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives
also fall as special cases.
Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice
between alternatives; it is presented as the
theory which
deals with the^
problem of choosing one. course of action among several possible courses .
Thus the choice of alternative modes of energy production, the energy choice
problem, becomes an exercise
in decision theory; and the nuclear choice is
often’justified” in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory.
But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put
to work in such practical cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronted with is a
depauperate
theory drastically
pruned down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic
theory.
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one
important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where
uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the
expected utility model.
The general model for best choice among alternatives
specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constraints, which may
include
ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given
conditions.
Expected utility
models demote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate
constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a
high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless).
Thus, in
�particular,
ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage
sustained.
Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical)
economic
assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of
everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms ■ everything worth accounting has a price), and as to the legitimacy
of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty.
It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable),
because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them.
Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core meltdown
of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development :
widespread radio
active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain.
The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy
choice, maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended.
In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected.
Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same
rejections for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected.
All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option.
A further convergence can be effected
also, because the best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as
coal and a hydroelectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated). Under these
o
conditions complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Horwicz rule) which take
---- ----------outcomes
------------ ------4^-^
account of both best possible and ^ost- possible
under
reduce to the maximin
rule.
each option
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximum rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options
where worst outcomes are
substantially better
than that of the nuclear
option (just, consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear
dream, is realised).
Further application of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects
on the earth’s climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels.
�43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with
position several rivals to maximin
each
proposed,
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
rules, such as the risk- added
which ’assesses
maximin
Some of these
reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of
the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly
and rather than offering a
rational
decision procedure appears to
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
What will be argued, or rather
dubious,
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival
rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option.
For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility
(not an entirely unquestionable rule
rule
’of strictly limited applicability’)
excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have
an air of irreversibility ... ’’One cannot
the
way one can abandon
simply abandon
a coal-fired plant"’
(p.506).
a nuclear reactor
The compare-the-
alternatives rule* in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit
assessments, which,
as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-sustainable-benefits rule,
which ’directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net
benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
sources’, ruling out the nuclear option.
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
further from the Old Paradigm framework,
harm-avoidance and protecting-the-
vulnerable. also yield/ the same nuclear-excluding results.
Harm-avoidance,
in particular, points ’decisively in favour of "alternative" and "renewable"
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
(p.442).
the result is the same, a
standards.
nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with
probabilities duly multiplied in, and the
conclusion
is as before from
cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut: nor does its Modification.
The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached.
It is, in any case,
sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical economic
�theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social
theory.
democratic
There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one:
corporations so committed are understandably
keen to realise returns on capital already invested.
There are also typical
self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on.
There are.
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief
in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith
in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular,
so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
governing and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs.
along with its state
It is then, contemporary corporate
enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure, corporate
capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice.
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis.
split into two main cases, the national
This diagnosis can be
development of nuclear power in the
US? and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible.
the
Eastern bloc is
which had in 1977 only
nuclear plants.
By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
small
about
one -sixth
the wattage output of
US
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else
where to any great extent.
American technology has.
�45.
The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of
great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US.
These companies were
encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlled or influenced reasons:-
Firstly, owing to
governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one.
Secondly,
the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively
encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development.
In particular, state
limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear
accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear
investment.
In the 70s, though the state subsidization
continued, the private
’high costs of construction combined with low capacity
cO
,
factors and poor reliability have wiped out the iyst advantage that nuclear power
picture changed :
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few
corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly
and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies,
Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
55
technology. '
These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for
Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology,
research, enriched uranium and financial capital.
’The US offered a Estate
subsidized] nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the
British could not compete*.
In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common
Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies
held
dudlJug with relevant governments) substantial interests in European
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for
example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel,
Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa,
Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam.
The US proceeded,
Spain,
in this way, to ship
nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic
Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations,
but most of whose *budget and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear
activities’.
�46.
A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
markets for reactors.
Less developed countries
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safety regulations
are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition
is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
easy sales.
[For]
... the US has considerable leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet
would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support.
Many of those same regimes
are now^ pursuing
the
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons.
It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor
proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and five social Modification, but that the practices (or
corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much
that is ethically unacceptable, whether
percepts;
for principles such as
by older, modified, or alternative
thos
and self-determination are grossly violated.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated
phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the
despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use
in meeting very high projected consumption figures.
Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
.
i
58
and replacement.
To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroelectricity.
The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both
conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet
�47.
given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter
of examining the goals.
That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates
them.
It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these
alleged needs conceived of as inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.)
Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are
superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed
on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of
electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and
contemplated by many other energy organisations).
While few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of ’’solar energy'
or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world s
already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resources'.
Many forests are
in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values.
In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced.
It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future.
The adaition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must
regard with alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
�48.
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid
regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural
ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one
poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any
more basic structural and social change is inadequate.
Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved.
It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear
program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the
way pressure appeared
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely
given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsoring
nuclear
development.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and
an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force,
are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control
and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive
very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods
and services.
A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction
in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to oe
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non-
genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently
becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of
adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the
move away
from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism
and materialist values.
The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does
question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The conventional
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
needs ^) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can
�49.
be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a false
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
It is commonly argued by representatives
The point is readily illustrated.
of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying
these wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level
(e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual
choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social framework as a major
factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel,
and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
corporate and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of reasons than
such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
62
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective , a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option represents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such
far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is
imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a. little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
compare also
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34.
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue both, from one’s own position against the other, and in the
other’s own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
what, suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclusion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g.,
�2
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11.
See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428.
11a.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation, unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional
(Old Paradigm) way.
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
13.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
power.
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology,
[ability to manage technology represents the past]
14.
On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and voting "paradoxes
other.
on the
Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81.
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
necessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p. 34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
15a.
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
.
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
.
’What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed’ (Barry, p.243).
Therefore, a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice.
�3
16.
For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers’
positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a).
17.
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls’ position.
18.
For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
Goodin, pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfactory fashion.
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p).
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error”.
Furthermore the different
more appropriate rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of
"possible" outcomes.
are really two points.
Goodin’s point can be alternatively stated however.
There
The first trouble is that such ragbag alternatives
cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is
at that point that applications of the models breaks down.
The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making
under risk.
Secondly, many influential applications of decision theory methods,
the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible
alternatives from their modellings.
21.
Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, EcOYiorri'icsi 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1967, p.351.
22.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
23.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
The contrast is with mere logical possibility.
�4
24.
Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and
Rousseau to Rawls (p.293).
How
the principle is argued for will depend
heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the
Poverty argument.
26.
SF, p. 27.
Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat critical of the
carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that ’whoever affirms or
denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree,
symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and cultural
norms’
27.
(p. 28).
The example parallels the sorts of counterexamples often advanced to
utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible
lynching
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
of an innocent person because
For the more general case
against utilitarianism, see ...
28.
US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of
Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing
Office, Washington, D.C., December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
29.
As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail.
As she remarks,
... since standards need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the
licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them,
current policy allows government regulators to trade
human health and welfare for the [apparent] good
intentions of the promotors of technology.
[Such]
good intentions have never been known to be sufficient
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very
demanding, and
the alliance of regulators with those they are supposed to be
regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just
of (nuclear) pollution control.
30.
�31.
The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report:
possibilities and consequences of major
'Theoretical
accidents in large nuclear plants’,
USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957.
This report was requested in the first place because the Commission
bn Atomic Energy
wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the
private insurance companies" so that they would provide
coverage for the nuclear industry.
Since even the
conservative statistics of the report were alarming it
was
suppressed and its data were not made public until
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of
the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9).
32.
Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of
Accident Risks in US Commercial Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C., 1975.
This report, the only allegedly complete study,
concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the
public.
Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant
organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew
its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive
analysis of nuclear power approved by the US Government.
32a.
Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy.
33.
34.
Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected.
35.
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against
numbers such as probabilities.
In this way risks, construed as probable
costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment.
(Alternatively, risks may
be assessed through such familiar methods as insurance.)
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
(ii’)a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b
and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which
the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
�in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final
Report, Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and
p. 288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly
accepted by society as alternative power sources.
In other applications b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii’).
The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissible conventional character.
For look at the origin of b: b may be
socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially
What
accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced.
is required in (ii’), for instance, for the argument to begin to look, convincing
is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with
the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features,
involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an uncon
strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation:
see R. and
V. Routley ’An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’.
37.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p.
39.
Goodin, p. 433.
40.
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
15, where references are also cited.
Energy, Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner
On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well E18], p. 23. On the employment issues, see too H.E. Daly in L9 J, p.
149.
�A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Energy and Equality, Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of
what the poor need.
41.
For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher,
Small is Beautiful, Blond and Briggs, London, 1973.
As to the capital and
other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and also [7] and
[9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy
technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see
the paper of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Environment (edited
J.H. Winslow), Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1977.
42.
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not
Taken, Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs,
October 1976); see also [17], [6], [7], [14], p. 233 ff, and Schumacher, op. cit.
43.
An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question of saving resources.
In Passmore this argument
for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned
by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of the present and immediate future.
The argument has all
the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
44.
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commoner.
45.
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil
liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White,
Nuclear Prospects.
A comment on the individual, the State
and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
46.
'US energy policy, for example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act, has been that nuclear power is necessary to provide ”an economical
and reliable basis”
needed "to sustain economic growth” (SF, p.lll, and
references there cited).
�There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the
literature.
For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms
of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see
Routley (b), and also Berkley and Seckier.
To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion
of some discussions of nuclear power, c.f. Elster, is to leave out
alternatives; the contraction
crucial
of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial
interests in main nuclear
involved companies.
Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
it is difficult to obtain comprehensive data.
Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the
sample of plants chosen and the assumptions made
concerning the measurement of plant performance
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49.
50.
See Kalmanoff, p.
See Comey.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF onargument
from ignorance etc.
53.
These e.g. Elster, p. 377.
54.
A recent theme in much economic literature is that Bayesian decision
On decision theory see also,
theory and risk analysis can be universally applied.
The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines.
In any case, even
within these confines there is no consensus at all on, and few (and
widely diverging) figures for,the probability of a reactor core meltdown,
and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation.
Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that 'such uncertainties plague energy theories'
as to 'render expected utility calculations impossible’.
55.
For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff., from which presentation of the
international story is adapted.
�7
56.
Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308.
points, see Chomsky
57.
For elaboration of some of the important
and Hermann.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old
Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many
people
can
respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism.
58.
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and
limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as coal, but in
presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic
social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such
measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an
equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production.
Other
(sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should
also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers
to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and
power industries.
59.
Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did
the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than
they already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g.
the argument in L.R.B. Mann ‘Some difficulties with energy farming for portable
fuels’, and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
60.
For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also Woodmansee.
61.
The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b),
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature), Baran and
Sweezy.
62.
The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised
by Naess.
For its environmental importance see Routley (c)
further references are cited).
(where
�/bU/
REFERENCES.
In order to contain references to a modest length, reference
to
primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Generally the reader can easily trace the primary sources.
For those parts of
the text that overlap Routley (a), fuller references will be found by
consulting the latter article.
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review 28 (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E. Goodin,
’No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends, No Nukes: everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne,
1977.
R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980 (referred to as SF).
W.R. Catton, Jr., and R.E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant
sociology’, American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47.
United States Interagency Review group on Nuclear Waste Management, Report
to the President, Washington.
29442)
(Dept, of Energy) 1979.
(Ref. No. El. 28. TID-
(cited as US(a)).
A.B. Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco, 1975.
R. Routley, ’On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems’, Logique et Analyse,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routley, ’Necessary limits for knowledge: unknowable truths’, in Essays in
honour of Paul Weingartner,
(ed. E. Morscher), Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duekworth, London, 19 74.
�2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Edition, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1971.
P.W. Berkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, New York, 1972.
J. Elster, ’Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power’, Social Science Information
18 (3)
(1979) 371-400.
J. Robinson, Economic Heresies, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
B. Barry,
'Circumstances of Justice and future generations’ in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. R.T. Sikora and B. Barry), Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, 1978.
II. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London, 1962 (reissue).
B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York, 1975.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Rights, 2 vols., Black
Rose Books, Montreal, 1979.
J. Woodmansee, The World of a Giant Corporation, North Country Press, Seattle,
Washington, 1975.
P.A. Bd\ran and P. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, Penguin, 1967.
A. Naess, 'The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movement.
A summary’, Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100.
�
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issue of nuclear power raises many basic issues in ethics.
The
By means of an example,
we argue
sorts of
transfers of costs,
benefits
from a
illegitimacy of certain
the
for
transfers
from one party who obtains
given course of action,
onto other parties who do
The inadequate methods currently available
not.
nuclear power
wastes mean
that
transfer of
serious
could permit
risks onto
costs and
the arguments
for
future
these crucial ethical
ignore
the i)7pra 1
to
Social Dimensions
Ethical and
Nuclear Power
are
not
the acceptability of
by
the
fact
such an illegitimate
future people.
that
Many of
such risks on
imposing
transfer
the
We argue
issues.
that
transfer principles give rise
constraints on action such
removed
for storing nuclear
those affected
future and
are
not present people.
The nuclear
issue and associated arguments also raise in a
highly
topical w3y
really
’need'
allow for,
or are
and
all
is
such needs
framework?
many basic issues in
the consumer
in part
theory.
items nuclear power is
it authoritarian or wrong
to
Are existing democratic mechanisms
framework adequate,
and
excessive
question
prevent
what
lives?
The approach to all
are
these basic elements pure
or do we
need
to assume both,
alterable social
the answer to
kinds of social
changes would
framework and over
social
their own
crucially on
intera ction are conceived
they social wholes,
individuals,
are
distinct and
irreducible,
argue?
R.
the
allow for more adequate
these questions depends
how the underlying elements of
to
If
such.concentrations of power and
control by people over the social
supposed
they give inadequate control
or do
concentrations of power?
is affirmative,
people
for control over
I
last
Do
frustrate such needs,
imposed by a particular,
the social
permit
social
Routley
as we
shall
NUCLEAR POWER - ETHICAL,
■•MB
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ptMENSIONS
Wl/,
I.
COMPETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE.
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really
lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a
debate about values ...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones.
Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily
one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do
They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the
2
lines of competing paradigms.
According to the entrenched paradigm discerned,
to others.
that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant
Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm),
economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of
individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief
in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering
around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes
best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are
necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of
labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise.
In particular,
there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of
scientists in particular. ...
there is an emphasis on quantification.
The rival world viewT, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm
(the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists,
in ways summarised in the following table
A
Dominant Social Paradigm
CORE VALUES
Material (economic growth, progress and development)
Natural environment valued as resource
Alternative Environmental
Paradigm
Domination over nature
Non-material (self-realisation)
Natural environment intrinsically
valued
Harmony with nature
ECONOMY*
Market forces
Risk and reward
Rewards for achievement
Differentials
Individual self-help
Public interest
Safety
Incomes related to need
Egalitarian
Collective/social provision
POLITY
Authoritative structures (experts influential)
Hierarchical
Law and order
Action through official institutions
Participative structures (citizen/
worker involvement)
Non-hierarchical
Liberation
Direct action
SOCIETY
Centralised
Large-scale
Associational
Ordered
Decentralised
Small-scale
Communal
Flexible
NATURE
Ample reserves
Nature hostile/neutral
Environment controllable
Earth's resources limited
Nature benign
Nature delicately balanced
KNOWLEDGE
Confidence in science and technology
Rationality of means (only)
Limits to science
Rationality of ends
State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs
as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced
system by a command system). But since there is virtually no debate
confines of state socialism,
that minor variant on the Old Paradigm
from the Old Paradigm really only
by central planning (a market
over a nuclear future within the
need not be delineated here.
2
No doubt t’ne competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple
(and
subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements:
really
and
instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm).
Nonetheless it is empirically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed.
Large-
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to
the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic
practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details:
whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irrational.
Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails.
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism.
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured.
main parts?:-
There are two
It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project
selection).
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
3
the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian means to predetermined ends.)
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues -
whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical
8
or legal or mathematical details.
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many interrelated problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
before assembled:
establishment, on a massive scale, of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive
wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and
economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for
its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and
restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is
the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both passengers and freight.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the
4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
All of
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will, that the world needs his product and it is
his duty to supply it, and
that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it.
These
sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
I
when the consigner, again a ’’responsible” businessman, puts his workers’ health
context.
or other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is his own and others’ pressing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a
by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
especially.
Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case.
progresses.
How fitting the
analogy is will become apparent as the argument
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
9
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
may require
and which, some have estimated,
million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem.
Serious problems
have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage,
even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last
twenty years.Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter
vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human
affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock
deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain
suitably isolated from human environment.^ In short, the best present storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
damaging their environment ,
Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance, none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may
well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
provide a rigorous guarantee of
Only a method that could
safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe
long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
12
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage
sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons-
grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year
storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000,
which gets around the wastestorage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways,
an article of faith.
It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no
limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that
cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always
immediately economically feasible).
The assumption has played
part in development plans and practice.
technological optimism (not to say hubris
an important
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution
is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the
form of limitation theorems^); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk
analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed
below).
The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would
provide unlimited energy (a 'clean unlimited supply of power').
shattered.
and nuclear
That dream soon
The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power,
fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
are, then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could
be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of .10 generations
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an
with it.
over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents’ dreams of global
industrialisation are realised, more and more of the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life,
are in a run-down condition.
Such points
tell against the idea that future
people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least
indirect beneficiaries.
It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only)
by nuclear power.
The'Solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits.
The ’’solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
the future.There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner’s action in the circum
stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case.
Just as in the case of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the question of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop
ment.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
Ill
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
9.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the
effect of our actions on
future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive.
Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or
entitlement.
People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
enforce any claims they might have for their rights against us.
Secondly, there
are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement.
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them.
10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has little or no sympathy.
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).
Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable.
Consider, for example, a scientific group which, tor no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
result of the action.
direct and predictable
The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is
an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately
criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to future people.
the following sort
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable
of policy:-
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants,
will
over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests,
without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as
well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the
unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such
counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many
of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in
mind in denying moral obligation is rather that- future people can look after
themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally
independent of the present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counter
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so
thereby acquire many Of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to
take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be
careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
12.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired
or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or
assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which
require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone,
and for which no act of acquisition is required.
There is a considerable
difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved.
In the first case
one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g.
have loves, synpathy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibility arises
as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable
consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied.
They apply as a result
of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably
predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not
(yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist.
While
it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed
obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make
special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
from harming them.
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
13.
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner
is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package on the train.
The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both
to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something
which has to be assumed or required.
The conflation is encouraged by reductionist
positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly
endeavour to collapse all obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral
constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter
examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;
there are in practice no obligations to the distant future.
17
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through
the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which
each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the
succeeding generation.
account.
There are at least three objections to this chain
First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future
as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of
constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals
can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create
individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire
generation.
Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the
responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility.
Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to
the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be
adequate, as examples again show.
For the picture is unable to explain several
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to Influence matters.
14.
Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of
disadvantages to people of the more distant future.
Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances
be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors.
Such
cases can hardly be written off as ’’never-never land" examples since many cases
of environmental exploitation might be seen as of just this type. e.g. not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the
long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overuse.
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONQMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While there are grave difficulties for the
unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future.
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people.
The
attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position.
objectionable in such an approach is that
What is
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are.
There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
18
the waste problem.
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations
may well not
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
can carry much weight.
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
developments as nuclear power.
sacrifice argument.
That is, it depends on the already scotched
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economically - costs much less now than later.
Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes,
what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into
monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss
of life.
There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species.
In fact
the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed:
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
19
monetarily,
but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value.
It is also
presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
16.
are bound to apply discounting.
This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and
discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly
inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined
and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.).
20
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrained position.
If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a
sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints.
In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of
discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
21
more than about 15 years,
and application of such rates would simply beg
the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method
of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral
constraints.
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.
The distant
future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate
future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching
or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.
But
then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying
them against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future
people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people
where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of conflict
between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much
lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent
risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity
to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy
use.
And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted,
17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit, he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision
problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some,
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from
it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way
related to a person’s extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability
argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes,
and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway.
reveals,
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments.
18.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to
distant future.
take serious account of the effects of our actions on the
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of
separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments are mistaken, the first
on a Priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument
is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to
the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can
obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable,
fuzzy and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should
act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain
able about the present which would indicate different action.
Therefore we must
regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
More formally and
crudely:
One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the
distant future.
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations' by
'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to
considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with
respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which
is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present
and with respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest
a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we
suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant
future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those
things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints.
We can
and constantly do act on the basis of such "unreliable" information, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic
proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future.
In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for certain that the
container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not even have
to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consigner's action.
risk of harm in this sort of case.
It is enough that there is a significant
It does not matter if the decreased well
being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
of the so-called "speculative" and "unreliable".
But if we do not require
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why
should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration
can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference
between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them.
this way:-
The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every
(action) x”, then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
information about future actions which would enable us to detach the
antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the
It is
wrong to do x” type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about
how to act.
on action.
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
20,
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, 'especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or
that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a
sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there
is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are
morally committed to.
Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that
future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be
Even if one is
morons or forever plugged into enjoyment or other machines.
prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration — what we are being handed in such arguments
as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn't looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal—pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline
of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities.
Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that
future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such cases before such actions could
22.
be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe
that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities.
The
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great
as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action.
A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the
application of moral constraints.
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form?
The question is raised
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
23.
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and
representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest.
It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve
or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict
cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular,
there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of
interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then:
are. there any features of
future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or
reduce their claims to such below those of present people?
principle None.
The answer is :
in
Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike,
in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present:
in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white
skinned) humans, etc.
The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way.
These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determination of best probable or' practical course of action given only
present information).
In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort
being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain
information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
24
consideration;
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
23a,
universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as
to the present;
and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them
and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
Uncertainty
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide, adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII.) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the. tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORP: MELTDOWN. The
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
another state’s or region’s yard or waters?
When that region receives no due
compensation (whatever that would amount to, in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the
arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive
wastes upon future people.
But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan
cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can
discount, people of two centuries hence.
(But what this consideration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can
be discounted over time .)
Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only
the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the
assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of
those in the neighbourhood of reactors, and, differently, as regards the
distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations.
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that
reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant,
25
25.
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor.
An
immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any
ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs” of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other largescale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The ’’normal” emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers
and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over
the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under
what conditions?
Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into
decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an
26
acceptable level of risk/safety for the public.
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner
working in summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
compensate for the agony of cancer.
The point is that the costs to one party
are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being
imposed.
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a
26.
particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults).
In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly,
for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent
majority).
Whatever
charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even
under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that tiie imposition of
radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable.
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US
Atomic Energy Commission,^ is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population
has
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural” level) is also likely
to have negligible consequences.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course,
so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-
effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person s well-being,
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose.
Furthermore, the
monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Public policy is determined not so
as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered.
public pacifier
while
27.
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’.
But such accidents can happen,
3
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island).
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the
result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly
and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages
would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
31
these conservative US government figures are given :
the consequences of a
similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still.
The consigner in risking the lives, well-being and property of the
passengers on the train has acted inadmissibly.
Does a government-sponsored
private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train.
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners’ action is, as we would ordinarily
sible.
suppose, inadmissible and irrespon
The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
Indeed in the
32
influential Rassmussen report “ - which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be Almost) impossible.
The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself.
These
assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents
and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual,
a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear
28.
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof
and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different.
But we do not live in such a world.
According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodologically sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and
"reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as
not
credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
eliminations that are otherworldly.
In fact the methodology and data of the report
33
has been soundly and decisively criticized.
And it has been shown that there
is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater
order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
here we
encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment
models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off
models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to
different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
34
therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
the. likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are
accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable.
A little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional
and other relevant aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical
assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or
29,
primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other
parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of
the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a
comparison on such a basis would be valid.
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes
in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk,
etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant
activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
A risk that is ethically
acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify
nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i)
and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the
nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the
costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing.
It is
a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and
already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to
the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g.
it can be substituted for or done without.
Thus, for instance, one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
oneself.
Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which
is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
service, on the train, to the next village.
The inhabitants of this village are
then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult
disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else
leaving the village and their livelihoods.
transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
Most of us would see this kind of
30.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world
countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one
of its most objectionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the l_ramsmission.
principle.
For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories).
VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in^or arising from?the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material,
and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have
parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating
power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ^the same risk of
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry".38 Furthermore, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location
I
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive
material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation, with where
one already lives things are very different.
The uranium-miner s choice of
occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific
Islander’s "fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue of arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations.
31.
Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more irdtimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of
large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a
specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio
active lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many large
industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown).
Though theft of material from more
dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at
large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such
massive explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so
many fronts.
In part to reduce it£ vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to
information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information,
formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil
liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it
answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
■JLhee-e- developments^in the IJnd t^d
—and worjc in West Gcmafiy-ji presage
along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
societies.
That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences
tells heavily against it.
32.
Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct
connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is fortunately true that
ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war
is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances -
are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however,
the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and
chances of, nuclear engagement.
Since nuclear wars are never accountable
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread
of nuclear power accordingly
expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself
undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also
undesirable.
The details and considerations that fill out this argument,
from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many.
They are firstly
technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to
make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear power plant? secondly political,
that nuclear engagements once instituted
likely to escalate and that those
who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants
do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with
nuclear engagement (up to ’’strategic nuclear strikes” at least); and thirdly
ethical, that wars invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is.
Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted
than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations.
The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself
undesirable.
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is
a case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular of the gross
uncertainties involved in nuclear development.
In cases of this type the
appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each
alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst
consequences (this is a pretty uncontroversial part of the maximin rule which
enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences).
The
nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable
alternative.
33.
VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
DEVELOPMENT.
As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed,
the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments,
such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more
prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed.
The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious
risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
particular, applied to the nuclear case.
For this reason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote
nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity
utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct ~ it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and
will ensue.
For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his
village will starve.
It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others,
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing
commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
significant risk of serious harm.
The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
34.
to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than
the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments
as well.
In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of
false dichotomies.
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination
either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase
unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally
poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through
encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.^ The argument that nuclear
energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is
both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it
requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists
and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its
feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission
systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into
the system.
Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised
entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political
41
structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy
is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course
mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the
westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these
countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes.
It
is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
35.
The poverty argument is then a fraud.
help the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries
there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of
developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better
prospects for helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear
development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap,
procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development.
And there are various
alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar
options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
42
each possibly in combination with conservation measures.
Despite the availability
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups).
Such an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickledown argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
runs:-
For the argument
Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing)
affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
development benefits the poor.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy'
is substituted for ’nuclear’.
It has also to be shoum, what the next major
argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
alternatives in increasing affluence.
The second assumption, that affluence
Inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical
data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and
developed, and through economic models which reveal how ’affluence” can increase
without redistribution occurring.
Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set
of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have,
it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions
which our culture has developed.
Unless our high-technology, high energy
industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and
traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth
it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
4:
36.
The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller
examination, can be avoided.
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
It assumes that technologic
society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse.
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish -
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
The assumption that technological
society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so — after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technologic^
restructuring and consumption modification.
If western society's demands for energy
are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could
be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction,
lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather,
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things.
While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at
37.
present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
44
consumption which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the
lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on
burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
the Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear
45
situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable
aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high technology-
nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
38,
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
appeal to futurity, closed.
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other arguments — from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future.
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of market-
centred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice.
Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy.
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic
ends.
Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission
research and development, in marked contrast to other newer rival sources or
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs.
The reasons can be
divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
(out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, publicly
economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real
reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social.
control.
The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth.
valuable!):-
Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
The first premiss is
A6
part of US energy policy,
and the second premiss is supplied by standard
unrest, etc.).
economics textbooks.
But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified
economic growth.More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less
vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards.
For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alternatives.
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically
best’ being filled out as 'most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having most favourable
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things
a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done.
decisively, unless
Much data, beginning with
the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can^ be assembled to show as much.
Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true
premisses
if the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments.
Virtually all available data
concerns the USA; in Europe, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly^
controlled” nuclear power
are generally not divulged.
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants.
Romanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
49
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985.
And
capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants.
rather decisively
Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators.
Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were
designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative
costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design
capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more
40.
expensive than estimated.
The discrepancy between actual and estimated
capacity
is especially important because a plant with an actual capacity factor of 55%
produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
The low reliability
of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the superior
reliability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nuclear power.
These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account.
The main subsidies are through research and development, by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
Act^), in enrichment, and in waste management.
It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more).
When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public
costs involved in producing nuclear power.
For example, the analyses ignore
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently
what the costs involved are.
But even using actual waste handling costs (while
wastes await storage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuclear.
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in
favour of alternatives to nuclear and
against nuclear power.
In short, even on
proper Old Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be rejected.
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been
kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public
subsidization, of several types.
In USA, to take a main example where
information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through
heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, .th«xugh the
Price-Anderson Act^ which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear
development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all
radioactive wastes.
While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical
developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for
uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
social welfare.
Duly admitting social welfare and some
equity
principles
41.
in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leadsjtne modern
version of the Old Paradigm, called the-Modified Old Paradigm.
The main
changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of
economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated
or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism).
Now it
has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power
is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example,
aparL^from those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap
electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance
brown-outs and the like.1
use, avoidance of shortages, rationing,
Since
4^
alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve s^me ends given power was
supplied with suitable extravagance, the
argument has again to show that the
choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite
respects, in serving the public interest.
Such an argument is a matter for
decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives
also fall as special cases.
Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice
between alternatives; it is presented as the
theory which
deals with the^
problem of choosing one. course of action among several possible courses .
Thus the choice of alternative modes of energy production, the energy choice
problem, becomes an exercise
in decision theory; and the nuclear choice is
often’justified” in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory.
But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put
to work in such practical cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronted with is a
depauperate
theory drastically
pruned down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic
theory.
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one
important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where
uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the
expected utility model.
The general model for best choice among alternatives
specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constraints, which may
include
ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given
conditions.
Expected utility
models demote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate
constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a
high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless).
Thus, in
particular,
ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage
sustained.
Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical)
economic
assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of
everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms ■ everything worth accounting has a price), and as to the legitimacy
of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty.
It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable),
because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them.
Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core meltdown
of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development :
widespread radio
active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain.
The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy
choice, maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended.
In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected.
Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same
rejections for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected.
All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option.
A further convergence can be effected
also, because the best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as
coal and a hydroelectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated). Under these
o
conditions complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Horwicz rule) which take
---- ----------outcomes
------------ ------4^-^
account of both best possible and ^ost- possible
under
reduce to the maximin
rule.
each option
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximum rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options
where worst outcomes are
substantially better
than that of the nuclear
option (just, consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear
dream, is realised).
Further application of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects
on the earth’s climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels.
43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with
position several rivals to maximin
each
proposed,
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
rules, such as the risk- added
which ’assesses
maximin
Some of these
reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of
the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly
and rather than offering a
rational
decision procedure appears to
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
What will be argued, or rather
dubious,
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival
rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option.
For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility
(not an entirely unquestionable rule
rule
’of strictly limited applicability’)
excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have
an air of irreversibility ... ’’One cannot
the
way one can abandon
simply abandon
a coal-fired plant"’
(p.506).
a nuclear reactor
The compare-the-
alternatives rule* in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit
assessments, which,
as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-sustainable-benefits rule,
which ’directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net
benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
sources’, ruling out the nuclear option.
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
further from the Old Paradigm framework,
harm-avoidance and protecting-the-
vulnerable. also yield/ the same nuclear-excluding results.
Harm-avoidance,
in particular, points ’decisively in favour of "alternative" and "renewable"
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
(p.442).
the result is the same, a
standards.
nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with
probabilities duly multiplied in, and the
conclusion
is as before from
cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut: nor does its Modification.
The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached.
It is, in any case,
sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical economic
theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social
theory.
democratic
There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one:
corporations so committed are understandably
keen to realise returns on capital already invested.
There are also typical
self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on.
There are.
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief
in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith
in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular,
so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
governing and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs.
along with its state
It is then, contemporary corporate
enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure, corporate
capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice.
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis.
split into two main cases, the national
This diagnosis can be
development of nuclear power in the
US? and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible.
the
Eastern bloc is
which had in 1977 only
nuclear plants.
By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
small
about
one -sixth
the wattage output of
US
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else
where to any great extent.
American technology has.
45.
The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of
great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US.
These companies were
encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlled or influenced reasons:-
Firstly, owing to
governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one.
Secondly,
the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively
encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development.
In particular, state
limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear
accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear
investment.
In the 70s, though the state subsidization
continued, the private
’high costs of construction combined with low capacity
cO
,
factors and poor reliability have wiped out the iyst advantage that nuclear power
picture changed :
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few
corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly
and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies,
Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
55
technology. '
These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for
Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology,
research, enriched uranium and financial capital.
’The US offered a Estate
subsidized] nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the
British could not compete*.
In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common
Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies
held
dudlJug with relevant governments) substantial interests in European
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for
example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel,
Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa,
Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam.
The US proceeded,
Spain,
in this way, to ship
nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic
Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations,
but most of whose *budget and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear
activities’.
46.
A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
markets for reactors.
Less developed countries
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safety regulations
are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition
is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
easy sales.
[For]
... the US has considerable leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet
would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support.
Many of those same regimes
are now^ pursuing
the
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons.
It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor
proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and five social Modification, but that the practices (or
corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much
that is ethically unacceptable, whether
percepts;
for principles such as
by older, modified, or alternative
thos
and self-determination are grossly violated.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated
phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the
despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use
in meeting very high projected consumption figures.
Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
.
i
58
and replacement.
To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroelectricity.
The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both
conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet
47.
given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter
of examining the goals.
That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates
them.
It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these
alleged needs conceived of as inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.)
Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are
superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed
on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of
electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and
contemplated by many other energy organisations).
While few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of ’’solar energy'
or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world s
already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resources'.
Many forests are
in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values.
In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced.
It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future.
The adaition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must
regard with alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
48.
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid
regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural
ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one
poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any
more basic structural and social change is inadequate.
Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved.
It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear
program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the
way pressure appeared
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely
given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsoring
nuclear
development.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and
an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force,
are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control
and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive
very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods
and services.
A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction
in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to oe
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non-
genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently
becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of
adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the
move away
from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism
and materialist values.
The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does
question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The conventional
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
needs ^) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can
49.
be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a false
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
It is commonly argued by representatives
The point is readily illustrated.
of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying
these wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level
(e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual
choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social framework as a major
factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel,
and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
corporate and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of reasons than
such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
62
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective , a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option represents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such
far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is
imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train.
FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a. little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
compare also
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34.
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue both, from one’s own position against the other, and in the
other’s own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
what, suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclusion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g.,
2
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11.
See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428.
11a.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation, unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional
(Old Paradigm) way.
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
13.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
power.
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology,
[ability to manage technology represents the past]
14.
On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and voting "paradoxes
other.
on the
Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81.
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
necessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p. 34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
15a.
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
.
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
.
’What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed’ (Barry, p.243).
Therefore, a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice.
3
16.
For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers’
positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a).
17.
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls’ position.
18.
For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
Goodin, pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfactory fashion.
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p).
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error”.
Furthermore the different
more appropriate rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of
"possible" outcomes.
are really two points.
Goodin’s point can be alternatively stated however.
There
The first trouble is that such ragbag alternatives
cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is
at that point that applications of the models breaks down.
The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making
under risk.
Secondly, many influential applications of decision theory methods,
the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible
alternatives from their modellings.
21.
Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, EcOYiorri'icsi 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1967, p.351.
22.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
23.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
The contrast is with mere logical possibility.
4
24.
Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and
Rousseau to Rawls (p.293).
How
the principle is argued for will depend
heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the
Poverty argument.
26.
SF, p. 27.
Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat critical of the
carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that ’whoever affirms or
denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree,
symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and cultural
norms’
27.
(p. 28).
The example parallels the sorts of counterexamples often advanced to
utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible
lynching
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
of an innocent person because
For the more general case
against utilitarianism, see ...
28.
US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of
Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing
Office, Washington, D.C., December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
29.
As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail.
As she remarks,
... since standards need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the
licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them,
current policy allows government regulators to trade
human health and welfare for the [apparent] good
intentions of the promotors of technology.
[Such]
good intentions have never been known to be sufficient
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very
demanding, and
the alliance of regulators with those they are supposed to be
regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just
of (nuclear) pollution control.
30.
31.
The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report:
possibilities and consequences of major
'Theoretical
accidents in large nuclear plants’,
USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957.
This report was requested in the first place because the Commission
bn Atomic Energy
wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the
private insurance companies" so that they would provide
coverage for the nuclear industry.
Since even the
conservative statistics of the report were alarming it
was
suppressed and its data were not made public until
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of
the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9).
32.
Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of
Accident Risks in US Commercial Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C., 1975.
This report, the only allegedly complete study,
concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the
public.
Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant
organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew
its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive
analysis of nuclear power approved by the US Government.
32a.
Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy.
33.
34.
Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected.
35.
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against
numbers such as probabilities.
In this way risks, construed as probable
costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment.
(Alternatively, risks may
be assessed through such familiar methods as insurance.)
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
(ii’)a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b
and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which
the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final
Report, Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and
p. 288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly
accepted by society as alternative power sources.
In other applications b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii’).
The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissible conventional character.
For look at the origin of b: b may be
socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially
What
accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced.
is required in (ii’), for instance, for the argument to begin to look, convincing
is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with
the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features,
involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an uncon
strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation:
see R. and
V. Routley ’An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’.
37.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p.
39.
Goodin, p. 433.
40.
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
15, where references are also cited.
Energy, Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner
On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well E18], p. 23. On the employment issues, see too H.E. Daly in L9 J, p.
149.
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Energy and Equality, Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of
what the poor need.
41.
For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher,
Small is Beautiful, Blond and Briggs, London, 1973.
As to the capital and
other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and also [7] and
[9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy
technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see
the paper of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Environment (edited
J.H. Winslow), Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1977.
42.
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not
Taken, Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs,
October 1976); see also [17], [6], [7], [14], p. 233 ff, and Schumacher, op. cit.
43.
An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question of saving resources.
In Passmore this argument
for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned
by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of the present and immediate future.
The argument has all
the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
44.
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commoner.
45.
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil
liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White,
Nuclear Prospects.
A comment on the individual, the State
and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
46.
'US energy policy, for example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act, has been that nuclear power is necessary to provide ”an economical
and reliable basis”
needed "to sustain economic growth” (SF, p.lll, and
references there cited).
There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the
literature.
For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms
of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see
Routley (b), and also Berkley and Seckier.
To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion
of some discussions of nuclear power, c.f. Elster, is to leave out
alternatives; the contraction
crucial
of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial
interests in main nuclear
involved companies.
Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
it is difficult to obtain comprehensive data.
Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the
sample of plants chosen and the assumptions made
concerning the measurement of plant performance
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49.
50.
See Kalmanoff, p.
See Comey.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF onargument
from ignorance etc.
53.
These e.g. Elster, p. 377.
54.
A recent theme in much economic literature is that Bayesian decision
On decision theory see also,
theory and risk analysis can be universally applied.
The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines.
In any case, even
within these confines there is no consensus at all on, and few (and
widely diverging) figures for,the probability of a reactor core meltdown,
and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation.
Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that 'such uncertainties plague energy theories'
as to 'render expected utility calculations impossible’.
55.
For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff., from which presentation of the
international story is adapted.
7
56.
Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308.
points, see Chomsky
57.
For elaboration of some of the important
and Hermann.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old
Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many
people
can
respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism.
58.
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and
limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as coal, but in
presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic
social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such
measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an
equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production.
Other
(sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should
also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers
to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and
power industries.
59.
Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did
the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than
they already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g.
the argument in L.R.B. Mann ‘Some difficulties with energy farming for portable
fuels’, and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
60.
For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also Woodmansee.
61.
The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b),
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature), Baran and
Sweezy.
62.
The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised
by Naess.
For its environmental importance see Routley (c)
further references are cited).
(where
/bU/
REFERENCES.
In order to contain references to a modest length, reference
to
primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Generally the reader can easily trace the primary sources.
For those parts of
the text that overlap Routley (a), fuller references will be found by
consulting the latter article.
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review 28 (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E. Goodin,
’No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends, No Nukes: everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne,
1977.
R. and V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980 (referred to as SF).
W.R. Catton, Jr., and R.E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant
sociology’, American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47.
United States Interagency Review group on Nuclear Waste Management, Report
to the President, Washington.
29442)
(Dept, of Energy) 1979.
(Ref. No. El. 28. TID-
(cited as US(a)).
A.B. Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco, 1975.
R. Routley, ’On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems’, Logique et Analyse,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routley, ’Necessary limits for knowledge: unknowable truths’, in Essays in
honour of Paul Weingartner,
(ed. E. Morscher), Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, Duekworth, London, 19 74.
2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Edition, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1971.
P.W. Berkley and D.W. Seckier, Economic Growth and Environmental Decay,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, New York, 1972.
J. Elster, ’Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power’, Social Science Information
18 (3)
(1979) 371-400.
J. Robinson, Economic Heresies, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
B. Barry,
'Circumstances of Justice and future generations’ in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. R.T. Sikora and B. Barry), Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, 1978.
II. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London, 1962 (reissue).
B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York, 1975.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Rights, 2 vols., Black
Rose Books, Montreal, 1979.
J. Woodmansee, The World of a Giant Corporation, North Country Press, Seattle,
Washington, 1975.
P.A. Bd\ran and P. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, Penguin, 1967.
A. Naess, 'The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movement.
A summary’, Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100.
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Box 106: Culture, Politics, Environment, Economics [War and Peace]
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Text
NUCLE AR POWER -
I.
ETHIC AL,
SOC I AL AND POLltt AAL DI MiN S I ONS
COMPETING PARADIGMS AN D THE NU CLEAR DEBAT E.
1870
One ha rdly needs initia t i on i nt o the dark my s te ri e s of
nucl ear ph ys i cs to contribu te use f ully t o t he debat e no w
wid e l y r anging ov e r nuc lear powe r . While ma ny i mpo r tan t
empi rica l que stions ar e s t i ll unr e s olved, t hese do not r e a lly
l i e a t th e ce nt r e of t he con t r ove rsy. In st e ad, it is a
de ba t e about val ue s . ..
ma ny of the que s tions ~hi ch a ri s e are s oc i al an d et hica l one s . 1
Socio logical inves tigation s have conf i rme d that th e n ucl ea r deba t e is primaril
y
one ove r what is wor th having or pursuing and over what we a re ent i t l ed to do
to o th e rs .
They ha ve also confirme d tha t t he debate i s polaris ed a lon g t he
li nes o f compe ting paradigm s. 2 Accordin g to the entre nc he d parad i gm dis ce rn e
d,
that conste llation of value s , attitude s and be liefs o fte n ca ll e d t he Domi nan t
So ci a l Pa radigm (hereaft er the Old Paradigm ),
economic criteria be come the be nchmark by whi ch a wi de ran ge of
individu al and social action is judged and e va luat e d . And be li e f
in the market and marke t mechan isms is quit e ce ntral . Clust e rin g
around this core belief is the convicti on th a t e nt e r p r i s e flou r is hes
bes t i n a system of r isks and rewards, that di ffe r e nti als a r e
neces sary ..• , and in the nece ssity for some fo r m o f di vis i on of
labour, and a hi e rarchy of skills and exper t is e . In pa rt i cul a r,
t here i s a be li e f in th e comp e t e nce o f e xperts i n gener a l and of
sci entis t s in pa r ticular .
the re is an empha s i s on q uantif i ca t ion . 3
The ri v a l world view , sometime s c all e d t he Alte rnative Environm e ntal Par ad igm
(the New Paradi gm) dif f ers on almos t e ve ry pcint , and, acco rdin g t o so ciologi
sts ,
in ways summari sed i n th e fo llowing t a bl e 4 Domi nant Socia l Para digm
CORE VALUES
Ma te r i a l (e conomic growth , progress an d dev elopmen t )
Na tu ra l env ironment va lu e d as resourc e
Dom i nat i on over na t ur e
Al t e rn a tive Env ir onme nt al
Pa rad igm
Non-ma terial (se l f -r eali sa t io n)
Na t ural e nvir onm e nt i ntrin s i cally
valu ed
Ha r mo ny with na tu r e
ECONOMY*
Ma rket forces
Ri s k a nd rewa r d
Rewa r ds for ach i evemen t
Diff e rent i a l s
Individ ua l se lf-help
Public i nte r es t
Sa fety
Incomes r elat ed t o nee d
Egali t a r ian
Co ll ective/soc i al provi s i on
PO LITY
Authori t at iv e s t ru c t ures (e xp e r t s in flue ntia l)
Hi e r a r ch1.c a l
Law and order
Ac t io n through o ffi c ia l i nst it ut io ns
Pa rtic ip a tive s t ruc t ur e s ( ci ti zen/
wo r ke r invo lveme n t )
No n- hi era r chical
Liberation
Di r ec t a c ti o n
SOCIETY
Ce ntr a lised
La r ge-s ca le
As socia tional
Or der ed
Dece ntr a l ised
Small - s ca l e
Communa l
Flexib l e
NATURE
Ampl e rese r ves
Nature host il e/ ne u t r a l
Envi r onmen t cont roll a ble
Earth ' s r esou r c e s lim i ted
Nature be nign
Na t ure de l i ca t el y ba l a nc ed
KNOWLEDGE
Co nf idence in sc i ence and t ec hnology
Ra t i onal i t y of mea ns (only)
Li mit s t o sc i e nce
Rati ona lit y of en ds
*Stat e
socia l ism , as pr a ctised i n mo s t of t he " Eastern b l oc" , di ffers
as to eco nomi c o r ganisation , t he ma r ket i n pa r ticula r be i ng rep l ac ed
sys tem hy ~ comma nd sy st e m) . Bu t sin c e t he r e i s v irt ual l y no debate
r·o ni i nes 'l l s r a t <! ., ociali sm , 5 that mJnnr va riant on th e Old Para digm
from t he Ol d Pa rad i gm r eall y on ly
by cen t ral planning (a ma r ke t
over o nu c lea r futu r e within t he
ne ed no t be de lineat ed he r e .
�2
No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple (and
subs equently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old econ omic assumptions with social welfa r e requirements :
really
and
instead of a New Paradigm there are rather count erpa radigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm) .
Nonetheless it is empi rically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focuss ed .
Large -
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world ,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Pa radigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nucl ear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the recei ved paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, th e nuclear debate is confined to
the tenns of the narrow utilitarianism up on which contemporary economic
practice is p r emisse d, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details :
whatever falls outside these terms is ( dismissed as)
.
.
1.6
irrationa
Furthermore, nuclear development rece ive s its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption frame.work of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails .
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimat ely fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by th e ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism .
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured.
.
7
main parts : -
There are two
It is argue d, firstl y , from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e . g . co sts of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and crite ria for project
selection) .
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of th e
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
�3
th e place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within th e
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory argume nts, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian me ans to predetermined ends . )
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear deb a te is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues whe th e r over minutiae and contingenci es of present techno l ogy o r ove r medical
or legal or mathematical details. 8
The double approach can be applied as regards each of t he main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many i nte rr ela t ed problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nucle ar power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
befo re assembled :
establishment, on a massive scale , of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
p roduction possible catastrophe , which delivers as a by-product rad ioactive
wastes which require up to a million years' storage but for which no sound and
e conomic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which r equires for
i t s operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of informa tion and
r es trictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in orde r
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, supper½ and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological develo pmen t, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
e thical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power que st i on s , is
th e unreso l ved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II . THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE .
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both pass e ngers and fr e i gh t.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someon e con signs as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a high ly toxic and exp losive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain th e gas for the
�4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if th e train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
o r deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
All of
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while othe r s could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will , that the world needs his pr~uct and it is his duty to supply it , and
that in a ny case he is not responsible for th e train or the people on it. These
sorts of excuses however wo uld norrrally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
context . What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
I
when the consigner, again a "responsible" b usin essman , puts his workers ' health
or other peoples ' welf are at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is hi s own and otherd press ing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls,which produces the material as a
by-product , is in bad financia l straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails , he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and th e whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effe ct, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
espe cially. Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification .
Even where there are serious risks and costs to ones e lf or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not t o be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they a ri se from one's own, or one's group 's, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case . How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as th e argument
progresses . There is no known proven safe way to package th e highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around th e world as
large- scale nuclear development goes ahead. 9 The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
�5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average , annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb .
Much of this waste is extremely t oxic .
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer .
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
the ir expected life times of perhaps 40 years , and which, some have estimated,
may require l½ million years to reach saf e levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environ ment fo r
th e ir entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period
a ve rages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million yea r storage problem . Serious problems
have aris en with both short-term and proposed long-t erm methods of storage,
e ven with th e comparatively small quantities of waste produced ove r th e last
10
twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human in t e rven tion, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human i nterference and risk of leakage through non-human factors .
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose flu ctua tion s
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages , could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human
affa irs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years . Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already pro ved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the r e sult in multilayered metal containe rs before rock
deposit , simulation mo dels reveal that radioactive material may not rema in
suitably is ola ted from human environment . 11 In short, the best pres ent storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
.
h .
.
lla
d amaging t eir environment.
Given the heavy costs which could be involve d fo r the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodological ly unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance , none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly test e d, and they may
�6.
well prove to involve unforeseen difficultie s and risks when an attemp t is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could
provide a rigorous guaran t ee of safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future µuman factors . But even if an economicall y viable, rigorously safe
long t e rm storage method could be devised , there is the problem of gua rantee ing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economicall y and politically ) seems to p r esuppose a level of efficiency,
pe rfection and concern for the f u ture which has not previously been e ncountere d
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nucl ea r industry. 12
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long t e rm storage
sites through pe rhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weaponsgrade radioactive material will be accessible , over much of the million year
storage peri od, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
Th e assumption that a way will nonetheless be found , before 2000,
which gets around the wastestorag e problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumpti ons of way s ,
an article of faith . It is an assunption supplied by the Old Par adigm, a no
limitations ass ump tion , that there are really no (developmen t) problems that
cannot be solved technologic ally (if not in a fash i on that is always
immediately economi cally feasible).
The assumption has played
an important
part in development plans and pra ctic e.
It has not only encouraged an unwarrant e d
technolog ical optimism (not to say hubris 13 ), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish , es pe cially through science ; it has led t o the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactor ily solved or a solution
is even in sight , and it has led to th e idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled .
It has also led, not surprisingl y, to disasters .
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which a r e becoming known in the
form of limitation theorems 14 ); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technologic al development s often fail to take due account of (risk
a nalysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discuss e d
below) . The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fissi on would
provide unlimi t ed energy (a 'clean unlimited supply of power '). That dr e am soon
shattered. The nu clear industry apparently remains a net consume r of power,
and nuclear fission will be but a quite shor t-t erm supplier of power. 15
�)
7.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclea r development
are , then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder r eactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be se riously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of futur e people could
be fo rced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people o f 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials th e only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the fu ture .
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem , that of making a transition t o renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably , again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it .
For they may well have to face the change to renewable res ources in an
over- populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents' dreams of global
industrialisation are realised , more and more of the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associat ed technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it .
It will , moreover, probably be a world which is larg ely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which su ch r enewable r eso urces as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life ,
15a
are in a run-down condition. Such points
tell against th e idea th a t future
people mGst be , if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy , at least
indirect beneficiaries .
It is for such reasons th at the train pa rabl e cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for exampl e , the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (onl y)
by nuclear power.
The 'solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems .
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to ge t itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of e conomies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits .
The " solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
�8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner's action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
cl e ar alternatives to · this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them .
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived , the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
of t en not in fact ) in the contemporary wo rld, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
15a
th e future .
There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear pa rcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least whe re the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case .
Just as in the cas e of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in th e present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the ques tion of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear development.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
III
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e . non-immediat e) fut ure, the futur e with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obliga tions to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass , and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democra ti c and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
�9.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that th ere are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next gene ration .
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on a ct ing or failing to act deriving from the
ef fect of our actions on future people . Of those philosophers who say , or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity .
Th us moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time ( o r sometimes in space) . Fo r example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive . Among su ch suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
r eq uirements on moral obligation , which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these :- Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his r ights or
en titlement . People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
e nforce any claims they might have for their rights against us.
Secondly , there
a re those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement .
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there couid be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them .
�10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the cont ex t of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rul e out th e
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive r ela tions
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent ) people in the far distant futu r e about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has l ittle or no sympa th y .
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
peop l e ; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
some thing acquired, either individually or institutionally , something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. pa rticipatin g
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e . g . love, sympathy, empathy). 16 Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice wh e ther or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable. Consider, for example , a scientific group which, for no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch . No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
...
�11.
the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictab le
result of the action. The unconstra ined position clearly implies that this is
an acceptabl e moral enterpris e, that whatever else we might legitimat ely
criticize in the scientis ts' experimen t, perhaps its being ove r-e xpensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to futu re people . The unconstra ined position also endorses as morally acceptabl e
the following sort
of policy: -
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining , processin g and manufactu ring a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendan ts, will
over a pe ri od of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous ep idemi c of cancer among the inhabitan ts of the earth at that time .
According to the unconstra ined view the firm is free to act in its own interests ,
without any considera tion for the harm it does r emote future people.
Such counterex amples to the unconstra ined view, which are easily vari e d
and multiplie d , might seem childii>hl y obvious. Yet the unconstra ined position
concernin g the future f rom which they follow is far from being a straw man ; not
only have several philosoph ers endorsed this position, but it is a cl e ar
implicati on of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligatio n, as
well as of prevailin g e conomic theory. It seems that those who opt for the
unconstra ined position have not considere d such examples , despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstra ined position admits such
counterex amples , that being free to act implies among other thin gs being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstra ined
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many
of those who have put forward the unconstra ined position seem to have had in
mind in denying moral obligatio n is rather that · future people can look after
themselve s, that we are not responsib le for their lives. The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causal l y
independe nt of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself .
Present people are influenci ng it , and in doing so
thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsi bilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obli gation to
tak e accoun t i n what they do of people affected and their interests , to be
care ful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probabili ty of their
actions causing harm, and to see that th ey do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
�12.
Furth e rmore, to say that we are not respon s ible f o r th e lives o f future
people does not amount to th e same thing as sayin g t hat we are fr ee to do as we
like with r es pe ct to them , that there are no moral constraints on our act io n
involving th e m. In just th e same way , th e fact that on e does no t hav e o r ha s not
acquired an obliga tion to some stran ge r with whom one has ne ver been i nvolved , that
on e has no responsibil ity for his life, does not imply that on e is fr ee t o do
what on e like s with respect to him, for e xample to r ob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to on e self which could s e riously ha rm him.
These difficultie s for the uncons trained position arise in part from the
(sometime s deliberate) failure to make an important distinction betwe e n acquired
or assume d obligation toward somebody , for which some act of acquisition or
a s sumption is required as a qualifying condition , and moral constraints , which
require, for example, that one should not act so as t o damage or harm someone ,
a n d for which no act of acquisition is required.
There i s a conside rable
di ffer ence in the level and kind of responsibil ity involved. In the first cas e
on e must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e . g.
have loves, sy!ll)athy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibil it y arises
as a r e sult of being a causal agent who is aware of the cons eque nces o r probable
consequence s of his action, and thus does not have to be es pecially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latt e r class , moral c onstra ints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult o r i mpossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfi e d . They appl y a s a result
o f th e abil i t y to produce causal effects on the distant future of a r eas onably
pr e dict a ble nature .
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what do e s not
(ye t) e xist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist . Wh ile
it may pe rhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or a ssume d
ob liga tion in order for it to be claimed that contemporar y people mus t make
special sacrifices f or future people of an heroic kind, or even to he lp them
e s pe cially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrain e d
from harming them . Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigne r cannot
argue in justificatio n of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
re s ponsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
l ove or sympathy for th em and that t hey are not part of his moral community , in
short that he has no special obligations to help them. All that one ne eds to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case , is that there are mo ral
constrain ts against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibil ity for the live s of people involved .
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self- sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinction s between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogat ion this is just
�13 .
to misrep resent the positio n of these obliga tions. For exampl e, one
is no more
engagin g in heroic self-sa crifice by not forcing future people into
an unviab le
life positio n or by refrain ing from causing then direct harm than
the consign er
is resorti ng to heroic self-sa crifice in re frainin g from placing his
dangero us
package on the train.
The conflat ion of moral restrai nts with acquire d obliga tion, and the
attemp t there~ ith to view all constra ints as acquire d and to write
off nonacq uired
constr aints, is facilit ated through the use of the term ' moral obligat
ion ' both
to signify any type of deontic constra ints and also to indicat e r athe
r someth ing
which has to be assumed or require d . The conflat ion is encoura ged
by reduct ionist
positio ns which, in attemp ting to accoun t for obligat ion in genera
l, mistake nly
endeavo ur to collaps e all obligat ions . Hence the equa ti on , and some
main roots
of the uncons trained positio n, of the erron eous belief that there
are no moral
constr aint s concern ing the distant future.
The uncons trained view tends to give way , under the weight of counte
rexampl es , to more qualifi ed, and sometim es ambiva lent, positio ns ,
for example
the positio n that
our obliga tions are to immedi ate poster ity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immedi ate succes sors in a better conditi on, and that is all; 17
there are in practic e no obliga tions to the distan t futur e . A main
argume nt
in favour of the latter theme is that such obliga tions would in practic
e be
otiose . Everyth ing that needs to be accoun ted for can be en compass
ed through
the chain picture of obliga tion as linking succes sive genera tions,
under which
each genera tion has obliga tions, based on loves or sympath y , only
to the
succeed ing genera tion . The re are at least three objecti ons to this
chain
accoun t. First, it is inadeq uate to treat constr aints concern ing
the future
as if they applied only between genera tions, as if there were no questio
n of
constr aints on individ uals as opposed to whole genera tions, since
individ uals
can create causal effects , e . e. harm, on the future in a way which
may create
individ ual respon sibility , and which often cannot be sheeted home
to an e ntire
genera tion .
Nuclea r power and its wastes , for exampl e, are strictl y the
respon sibility of small groups of power- hol ders, not a genera tional
respon
sibility .
Second ly, such chains, since non-tr ansitiv e, cannot yield direct obligat
ions to
the distan t future . But for this very r eason the chain pict ure cannot
be
adeq uate, as exampl es again show. For the pic ture is unable to explain
severa l
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the exampl es already
discuss ed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distan t future
withou t
affecti ng the next genera tion, who may not even be able to influen
ce matters .
�14.
Thirdly, improvement s fo r immediate successors may be achieved at th e expense of
disadvantag es to people of the more distant future . Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstanc es
be most easily achieved by , ruining it for less immediate successors . Such
cases can hardly be written off as "ne ver- never land" examples since many cases
of environment al exploitatio n might be seen as of just this type. e . g . not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewab le resources and the
long- term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overus e .
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from th e
fa vouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed ove r time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests .
IV . ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE: ECONOMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS. While there are grave difficultie s for the
unconstrain ed position, qualificatio n leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we a r e not entirely unconstrain ed
with respe ct to the distant future , there are obligations , but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the pres ent and immediate
future . The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, coun t for
very much l ess than the interests of present people. Hence such thin gs as nuclear
development and various exploitativ e activities which benefi t present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewha t) disadvantag ed by them .
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories , where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate , so dis counting costs and risks to future people.
a t tempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingl y common , can lead then to the qualified position. What is
objectionab le in such an approach is that
The
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints , just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints , not detennine what those constraints are. There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
�15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
th e waste problem. 18 Since there is mounting evidence that future ge ne rations
may well not be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argume nt for discounting the interest s of future gcncrntionfl on thi s
can carry much weight. Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
biH:1i. B
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporar ies would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
development s as nuclear power .
That is, it depends on the already scotched
sacrifice argument .
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimatel y bequeathed to the future gene rations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be , not just better off , but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs. It is argued , from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immedia te future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources . Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalizatio n of monetary
value, that compensatio n - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economica lly - costs much less now th an later . Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g . in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least , insurmounta ble practical difficultie s about
applying such discounting , e . g . how to de t ermine appropriate future discount rates .
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes ,
what is false, that compensatio n, like value, can always be converted into
monetary e quivalents , that peo ple (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, i n cluding cancer and loss
of life . There is no compensatin g a dead man, or for a lost species. In fact
the argument presupposes a do uble reduction neither part of which can succeed :
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
monetarily , 19 but (as against utilitariani sm, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to mat t ers of value . It is also
presupposed that all decision me thods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
�16.
are bound to apply discounti ng . This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropria te decision rules do not allow discounti ng, and
discounti ng only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-bene fit and benefit-r isk analyses) , which are, he contends strictly
inapplica ble for nuclear choices (since no t all outcomes can be duly determine d
and assigned probabil ities, in the way that applicatio n of the rules requires. ). 20
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounti ng move often has the same
result as the unconstra ined position . If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensa tion, it is evident that over a
sufficien tly long period of time discounti ng at curren t prices would lead to the
conclusio n that there are no recoverab le damages and so , in economic terms, no
constrain ts . In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the applicatio n of
discoun t rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about 15 years, 21 and applicati on of such rates would simply beg
the question against the i.nterests and rights of future pe ople . Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example , the whole method
of discounti ng is simply inapplica ble, and its use would violate moral
constrain ts .
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids th e objection s
from cases of certain damage, comes from probabili ty considera tions. The distant
future, it is argued , is much more uncertain than t he present and itillue diate
fut ure, so that probabili ties are consequen tly lower, perhaps even approachi ng
or coincidin g with zero for any hypothesi s concernin g the distant future. But
then if we take ac count of probabil iti es in the obvious way , by simply multiplyi ng
th e m against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future
people , except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty ,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbour ing people
where (much ) high~r probabil ities are attached. So in the case of confl ict
between the present and the future where it i s a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediat e future against a much
lower probabili ty of indetenni nate costs to an indetermi nate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved . But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nucle ar case, especial ly if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years , with consequen t
risk of serious harm to thousands of ge nerations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportuni ty
to maintain corporati on profitabi lity or to continue unnecess arily high energy
use.
And even if the costs an d benefits were comparabl e or
evenly weighted,
�"
17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner's action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
s ufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefi t or risk-benefi t approach to moral and decision
problems , with o r without the probability frills , is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintu itive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large ga in from
it. But the costs and benefits involved are not transferabl e in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly rais e moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefi t approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of tran sfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptabili ty of the nuclea r
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking . In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelmin g extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved . In contrast the users and supposed beneficiari es
of nuclear energy will be r isking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-benefic iaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any dire ct way
related to a person ' s extent of use .
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian ' s
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introductio n of p r obability consideratio ns - as in utilita r ian de cision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis . One might further object to the probability
argument that probabiliti es involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes ,
and that the outcomes of some morai prob l ems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway .
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
reveals , that a significant risk is created ; such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments .
�18 .
Uncerta inty argumen ts in various forms are the most common and importan t
ones used by philo s ophers, economi sts and others to argue f or the position that
we
cannot be expe cted to
distant future .
take serious ac count of the effects of our actions on th e
There are two strands to the uncertai nty argumen t, capable of
s eparatio n , but frequen tly tangled up. Both argumen ts are mistaken , the first
on a priori grounds, the second on a posterio ri grounds. The first argumen t
is a gene ralised uncerta inty argumen t which runs as fol lows :- In contras t to
the exa ct informa tion we can obtain about the present, the informa tion we can
obtain about the effects of our a-ctions on the di s tant future is unreliab le,
fuzzy and highly specula tive. But we cannot base assessm ents of how we shoul
d
act on informa tion of this kind, especia lly when accurate informa tion is obtainable about the present which would indicate differen t act ion. Therefo re we must
r eg retfully ignore the uncertai n effects of our actions on the distant fut ure.
More formally and crudely: One only has obligati ons to the futur e if t hese
obliga tions are based on reliable in forma tion at present as regards th e
distant future. Therefo re one has no obligati ons to the distant future. This
first argumen t is essentia lly a variant on a sceptica l argwnen t in epistemo logy
concerni ng our knowledg e of the future (formall y, replace 'obligat ions ' by
'knowled ge' in the crude stateme nt of the argumen t above). The main ploy is
to
conside rably overesti mate and oversta te the degree of certaint y availabl e with
r es pect to the present and immedia t e future, and the degree of certaint y which
is required as the basis fo r moral conside ration with r espect to the present
and with respect to the f uture.
Associa ted with thi s is the attempt to sugges t
a sharp division as regards certaint y between the present and immedia te future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other . We shall not find, we
suggest , that there is any such sharp or simple divi sion between the distant
future and the adjacen t future and the present, at l east with re spect to those
things in th e pres e nt which are normally subject to moral constra ints. We can
and constan tly do act on the basis of such "unrelia ble " informa tion, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveni ently labels "unce rta i nty"; for scepticproof certaint y is rarely, or never, availab le with respect to much of the
present and immedia te future . In moral situatio ns in the pres e nt, action
often takes acco unt of risk and probabi lity , even quite low probab iliti es .
Conside r again the train example. We do not need to know for certain that the
containe r will break and the lethal gas escape . In fact it does not even have
to be probable , in the relevan t sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consign er's action. It is enough that there is a signific ant
risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decrease d wellb eing of the consigne r is certain and that the prospec ts of the passeng ers
quite uncertai n, the resoluti on of the problem is neverth eless clearly in fa
vour
of the so-calle d "specul ative" and "unrelia ble". But if we do not require
certaint y of action to apply moral constra ints in cont emporary affairs, why
�19.
should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, ep istemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral act ion concerning the present and adjacent futur e does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consi deration
ca n be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining th e difference
between the present and the future a nd to justify ignoring future peoples'
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
e ach class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical unc e rtainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account becaus e uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross th a t we canmot determine what the lik ely
cons equences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rati onal ground for
ch oosing between them.
this way : -
The seco!ld uncertainty argume nt can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for eve r y
(action) x", then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
info rmation about future actions which would enable us to detach the
an tecedent of the implication .
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain cl ear
conclusions or dire ctions concerning contemporary action action of th e "It is
wrong to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
th e distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what th e effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to th e
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain an y clea r conclusions about
how to act.
on action .
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate .
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future , but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
�"
20 .
argument has to assume .
There are some areas where un certainty is not so grea t as
to ex clude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point ,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certain ty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncerta inty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally r e levant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
t o moral is sues .
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavour s of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, espe cially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what peop le there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unli ke our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or ge netic defec ts, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the ear th of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place .
For this sort of r eason ,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of orde r as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
prope r consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncer taint y
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves .
For example, we may be told that we cannot r eally
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that th ey will exis t or
that their tast es and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
�21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon compl e t e ce r taint y of a
sort be yond what is required for the pre sent and imme diate future, whe r e there
i s also commonly no guarantee that some disast e r will not overtake t hose we are
mo rally cowmi tted to. Again we may be told that th e r e i s no guarant ee that
future peopl e will be worthy of any e fforts on our part, because th ey may be
mo rons or for ever plugged into enjoyme nt or other machin es . Even if on e is
prepare d t o accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or int e ll e ctual standards a r e
e ligible for moral consideration - what we are being han de d in such ar guments
as a serious defeating consideration is a gain a mere outside possibility li ke the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is pe rhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular r e ason for doing so, but bec ause he
hasn't looked around the back , drilled holes in it, etc. etc .
Ne ith e r the
cont emporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleas ure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
th e se me re logical possibilities the very real historically supportab l e risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty argume n t s of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succee d in showing th a t it is
a c ce ptab l e to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
,
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste cas e .
This is the argument that
future p eople may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage me thod for
nuclear was tes before they are damaged by escaped waste material . Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not) .
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible . In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer : that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logi cal possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible . The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
s orts were admissible only j_f what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it . In such cases before such actions could
�22.
be conside r e d admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect th emselves .
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example wh ere the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of th e effec t of his actions on
the passengers b ec ause they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g . the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positi ve r eason to believe
that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities.
The
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great
as to preclude the consigner's taking account of the passengers' welf are and th e
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the re al possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly r eq uired high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strate gy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat th e
application of moral constraints .
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future .
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example , with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present .
Since th e ir numbers are
ind eterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is rais ed
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latte r are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
�23,
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributio nal problems as large and
representat ive of a class of moral prob lems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest. It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indetermina cy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be othe r conflict
cases where the level of indetermina cy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
e . g . the train example which is a conflict case of a t ype . In particular,
th e re will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numb ers , n umbers of
interests, or whatever , cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteris tics of future people .
The crucial question which emerges is then :
are there any features of
futu re people which would disqualify them from full moral consideratio n o r
r e duce thei r claims to such below those of present people? The answe r is:
in
principle None .
Prima facie, moral principles are universalis able , and lawlike,
in that they ap ply independent ly of position in space or in time, for examp le.
But universalis ability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
whi ch are capable of dealing satisfactor ily with the pres ent : in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards th e present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e .g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (whit e skinned) humans , etc .
The only candidates for characteris tics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indetermina cy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see thes e features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way. These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determinatio n of best probable of practical course of action given only
present information ) . In particular, they do not affect cases of th e so~t
be ing considered, nuclear development , where highly determinate or certain
infonnation about the numbers and characteris tics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universaliz ability
principle is not required: it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideratio n; 24
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminat e morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position . As a result of this
�.
23a.
universalizabi lity, there are the same general obligations to future peo ple as
to the present; and thus there i s the same obligation to take account of them
and thei r interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage , and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life . Uncertainty
and inde t e rminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
�24.
harm in the future case under conside ration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceed ing with the action, thus discri mina ting
against future people.
Accordin gly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity , the conclusi on already tentativ ely reached, that proposa ls for nuclear
developm ent in the present and likely future state of technolo gy and practice
s
for future waste disposa l are immoral.
Before we conside r (in section VII) the remainin g escape route from this
conclusi on, through appeal to overridi ng circumst ances , it is importan t to
pick up th e further case (which heavily r einforce s the tentativ e conclusi on)
against nuclear developm ent, since much of it relies on ethical princip les
similar to those that underlie obligati ons to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenua ting ci rc umstanc es.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN . The
eth ical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to futur e creature
s.
Just as remoten ess in time does not erode obligati ons or enti tl emen ts t o just
treatmen t, neither does location in spac e , or a particu lar geograp hical position
.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposa l rais es serious question s
of
distribu tive justice not only across time, across generat i ons, but also across
space. Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioac tive polluti on in
another state's or region's yard or water s? When that region receives no due
compens ation (whateve r that would amount to, in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)? The answer, and
the
argumen ts underpin ning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentativ e conclusi on concerni ng the injustic e of imposing radioac tive
wastes upon future people. But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and
Japan
cannot endeavo ur to discoun t peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioac tive pollutio n in quite the same way the y can
discoun t people of two centurie s hence . (But what this conside ration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitl ement to just treatmen t can
be discoun ted over time.)
Ethical issues of distribu tive justice, as to equity , concen1 not only
the spatio-t emporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewher e in the
assessm ent of nuclear developm ent; in particu lar, a s regards the treatmen t of
those in the neighbou rhood of reactors , and, dif fe rently, as regards the
•
distribu tion of (alleged ) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations. 25
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks : firstly, radioac tive pollutio n, due to the fact that
reactors discharg e radioac tive materia ls into the air and water near the plant,
�25 .
and secondly catast rop hic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor .
immediate question is whether such costs an d risks can be imposed, with any
An
eth ical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs" of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with otl1er largescale polluting industry, where local participation and que stions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional det ermination and popular sovereignty , are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The "normal" emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
car ri es carcinogenic and mutagenic costs .
While the re are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely numbe r of cancers
and precise ex tent of genetic damage induced by exp os ure to such rad iation , over
the local health costs involved. Under t he Old Paradigm, whi ch (ill egi timately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the e thical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nucl ear power, and under
what conditions? Under the Old Paradigm the issue is th en translat e d into
decision-theor etic questions, such as to 'how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation' and ' how to determine what is an
acceptab le level of risk/safe ty for the public. 26
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage . An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal th ey have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster. It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it's nice to have this air con ditioner
working in summer . Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
comp ensate for the agony of cancer . 27 The point is that the costs to one party
a r e not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alte rnatively obtained without such awful costs , and morally indef ensible , being
imposed .
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant . (Children , for example, are in a
�26.
particularl y vulnerable position, since they are severa l times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults). In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligi ble percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, all egedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear powe r production (allegedly,
for th e real reasons for nucl e ar development do not concern this silent
majority) . Whatever
charm the argument from overriding benefits had, e ve n
unde r the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that t he re are alternative ,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of deliveri ng the r eal benefi ts
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of
r adia tion on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serio us
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable. One ch eape r trick, deployed by the US
Atomic Energy Commission, 28 is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a pop ulation
has
received with apparently negligible consequence s, th e argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural" level) is also likely
to have negligible consequence s.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted no rmal, and, of course,
so it is th en claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. None of the steps
in this argument is sound.
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no illeffects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affe ct a person's well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, unde r such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal,
e . g. two murde rs or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptabl e .
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits ra diation emissions very
sub s tantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than me re consideratio n of the standards would disclose. Furthermore , the
monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to th e nuclear op erators
themselves, scarcely disintereste d parties . Public policy is determin ed no t so
as to guarantee public he alth, but rather to serve as a ' public pacifier' wh ile
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered . 29
�2 7.
While radioacti ve emissions are nn ordinary feature of react o r op e ration,
breakdown is, hopefully , not: an accident of magnitude is accounted , by official
definitio n, an 'extraord inary nuclear occurrenc e'. But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island). 30
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
30a
r e actors ,
then the core melts and 'containm ent failure' is likely, with the
r e sult that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioacti vely contamina ted .
I n the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly
and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident , prope rt y da mages
would exceed $1 7 billion and an area the size of Pennsylva nia would be destroyed .
Mod e rn nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
.
.
31
t h ese conservat ive
Us governmen t f'igures are given
t he con s equences of a
s imilar accident with a modern reactor would according l y be much great e r still.
Th e consigner in risking the lives, we ll-being and property of the
passenger s on the train has acted inadmissi bly. Does a governme nt-sponsor ed
private utility act in a way that is anything other th an much less responsib le
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community , in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train.
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigner s ' action is , as we would ordinaril y ·suppo se , inadmissi ble and i rrespon-
sible.
The proponent s of nuclear power have in effect argued to the cont rary,
while at the same time endeavour ing to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena
and into a technolog ical dispute as to means (in accordanc e with the Old Paradigm) .
It has been contended , firstly, what con trasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibili ty of a catas trophic nuclear accident . Indeed in the
influenti al Rassmusse n report 32 - which was extensive ly used to support public
confidenc e in US nuc lear fission technolog y - an even stronger, an incredibl y
strong , improbab ility claim was stated: n amely , the likelihoo d of a catastrop hic
nucle ar accident is so remote as to be '3.lmost) impossi.bl e. The main argument for
this claim de rives from the assumptio ns and estimates of the report i.tself . These
assumptio ns like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents , incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathemat ical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technolog ical limitatiom s and human error, of waste leakage and r eactor inciden t s
and quite possibly accidents , not in an ideal world far removed from the actual ,
a technolog ical dream world whe re there is no real possibili ty of a nuclear
�28,
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclea r world, wh e re wa s t e disposal we r e fool-proof
and reactors we re accident-proof, thin gs would no doubt be morally different.
But we do no t live in s u ch a world .
According to the Rasmuss en r e port its calc ulat ion of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological a ssumptions
and is methodo logically sound.
This is ve ry far from being the cas e .
The under-
ly ing mathematical methods, variousl y called "fault tree analysis " and
"reliability estimating techniques", a r e unsound, because they exclude as "not
credible" po s sibilities or as "not significant" branches that are re a l
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
eliminations that are othe rworldly .
In fact the me thodology and dat a of the report
· · 1 y cr1.t1.c1.ze
h as b een soun dl y an d d ec1.s1.ve
. · ·
d . JJ And 1.t
. h as b een s h own t1at
I
t he r e
is a real possibili t y, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident .
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negli gib l e
prob abi li ty of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, be ing of no greater
orde r than risks of accidents t hat ar e already socially accepted.
Here we
enco unt e r agai n that insidious e ngin e ering approach to morality built into
mod e ls of an e conomic cast, e.g. benefit - cost balance s heets , risk assessment
mode ls, et c.
Risk assessment, a sophistica ti on of trans ac tion or tr ade -off
mode ls, pur.-ports to p ro vide a compari s on between th e relative ri sks at tach ed to
different options, e . g . e nergy options, which settl es th e ir ethical status .
The fo llowing lines of argume nt are encountered in a risk assessme nt as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
(ii )
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries , etc .) which is less than th at of option b, which is already accepted;
there for e op tion a is acceptable . 34
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accident s , which a r e
accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable .
A little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argt.mlent involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
I t is far too simple -minded, and it ignores distrib ut ional
and other r e l e vant aspect s of the context.
In o rde r to ob tain an ethical
assessment we s hould need a much fuller pi cture and we sho uld nee d to know at
least t he s e thin gs :- do the costs and benef it s go to th e same parti es ; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also t he person who receives the benefits or
�29.
primar ily, as in driving or cigare tte smokin g, or are the costs impos
e d on other
parties who do not benefi t? It is only if the parties are the same
in the case of
th e options compar ed, and there are no such distrib utiona l problem
s, that a
compar ison on such a basis would be val.id. 35 This is rarely the cas
e , and it is
not so in the case of risk assessm ents of energy options . Second
ly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activit y which he knowin gly
underta kes
in a situati on where he has a r easona ble choice, knowing it entails
the risk,
etc ., and is the level of risk in propor tion to the le~el of the
rel evant
ac tivity, e.g. as in smoking ? Thirdly , for what reason is the risk
imposed :
is it for a s e rious or a relativ ely trivial reason? A risk that is
e thica lly
accepta ble for a serious reason may not be ethica lly accepta ble for
a trivial
reason. Both the argume nts (i) and (ii) are often employe d in trying
to justify
nuclea r power. The second argume nt (ii) involve s the fallaci es of
th e firs t (i)
and an additio nal set , namely that of forgett ing that the health risks
in the
36
nuclea r s e nse are cumula tive , and already high if not , some say ,
too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefi ts you have to accept th e costs "
is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefi ts then you have to accept
the
costs (or some of them at least)" is anothe r and very differe nt thin
g . It is
a widely accepte d moral princip le, already argued for by way of exampl
es and
already invoked , that one is not, in genera l, entitle d to simply
transfe r cos ts
of a signifi cant kind arising fron an activit y which benefi ts onesel
f onto other
parties who are not involve d in the activit y and are not benefi ciaries 37
.
This
transfe r princip le is especi ally clear in cases where the signifi cant
costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof , and where
the benefi t to
the benefi tting par ty :is of a noncru cial or dispen sible nature , becaus
e, e . g.
it can be substit uted for or done withou t. Thus, for instanc e , one
is not
usually entitle d to harm , or risk harmin g, anot her in the process
of be nefitti ng
onesel f . Suppose , for anothe r example , we consid er a village which
produc es, as a
result of an indust rial process by which it lives, a noxious waste
materi al which
is expens ive and difficu lt to dispose of and yet creates a risk to
life and health
if undispo sed of. Instead of giving up thei r i.ndus trial process and
turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surroun ding
country side,
they persis t with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way
deliver y
service , on the train, to the next village . The inhabi tants of this
village are
then forced to face the problem either of under taking the expens ive
and difficu lt
dispos al process oor of sustain ing risks to thei r own lives and health
or else
leaving the village and their livelih oods. Most of us would see
this kind of
transfe r of co s ts as morally unacce ptable .
�JO.
From this arises a necessary condition for ene rgy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the trans fer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its us e .
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
vil lages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors , especially, as in third world
co untries, neighbours who are not nuclear powe r users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain wide spread and serious forms of pollution, a nd is one
of its most obje ctionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we sho ul d not hand the world on t o
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - t he tramsmission
principle.
For if we did then that would be a signi ficant transfe r of costs .
(The corollary can be independerltly argued for on the basis of certain e t hic al
theories) .
VI . OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discuss ed by no means exhaus t the
envi ronme ntal, health and safety risks and costs in or arising from th e nuclea r
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle include s man y sta ges both before and after
r eacto r operation , apart from waste disposal, namely mining , milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and trans po rtati on of
materials.
Seve ral of these stages involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionab le material,
and of the further prolife ration of nuclear armaments - thes e hazard s have
parallels, if not exact equival ents, in other very polluting method s of generating
power, e . g. "workers in the uranium mining industry sustain 'the same risk' of
38
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry".
Furth ermo re, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resultin g from location,
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in workin g with radio a ctive
material are now known in advance of choice of such a n occupation: with where
one al re ady lives things are very different.
The uranium mine r's choice of
occup ation can be compared with the airline pilot's choice, whe r eas t he Pacific
Islander ' s "fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue o f arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportuni ti es and often a t l east ease peo ple
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, i s not an i ssue newly produced by nuclear associated occupa tions .
�31.
Other social and environm ental problems - though endemic where large-sca le
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalita rian and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more imtimatel y linked with the nucle ar power
cycle.
Though pollu tion is a common and generally undesirab le component of
large-sca le industria l operation , radioacti ve pollution , such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especiall y a legacy of nuclear developme nt, and a
specially undesirab le one , as enormous rectifica tion estimates for de ad radioactive lands and waterways reveal .
Though sabotage is a threat t o many large
industrie s , so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentra tion
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequen ces, of a different order of magnitude from most industria l sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown) . Though theft of material from more
dubious enterpris es such as munitions works can pose threa ts to populatio ns at
large and can assist terrorism , no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterp rises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionab le material . No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabricatio n into such
massive explosive s.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerabl e on so
many fronts.
In part to reduce it, vulnerab ility, in part because of its long and
continuin g associati on with military activitie s, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourage s, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies , crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of associati on and of expressio n, and free access to
informati on . These practices include secrecy , restricti on of infonnati on,
formation of speci al police and guard forces, espionage , curtailme nt of civil
lib e rties.
Already operators of nuclear installat ions are given extraordi nary
powers, in vetting employees , to investiga t e the backgroun d and
activitie s not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installati ons themselve s
become armed camps, which especiall y offends British sensibili ties.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constable s) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installat ions and made it
answerabl e ..• to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority . 39
These developme nts in the United Kingdom, and worse in West Germany, presage
along with nuclear developme nt increasin gly authorita rian and anti-demo cratic
societies . That nuclear developme nt a ppears to force such political consequen ces
tells heavily against it.
�32.
Nuclear developme nt is further indicted political ly by the dire ct
connectio n of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is fortunate ly true that
e thical questions concernin g nuclear war - for example, whether a nucle ar war
is justified , or just, under any circumsta nces , and if so what circums tances are distingui shable from those concernin g nuclear power. Undoubted ly , however,
t he spread of nuclear powe r is substanti ally increasin g the technical me ans
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportuni ty for , and
chances of, nuclear engagemen t.
Since nuclear wars are neve r account able
positive goods , but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirab le .
The spread
of nuclear power according ly
expands the opportuni ty for, and chances of, highly undesirab le consequen ces.
Finally the la tt e r, so increasin g thes e chances and opportun ities, is itself
undesirab le, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear developme n t, is also
undesirab le .
The details and considera tions that fill out this argume nt,
from nuclea r war against nuclear developme n t, are many. They are fir stly
technical , that it is a relativel y straightfo rward and inexpensi ve matte r to
make nuclear explosive s given access to a nuclear powe r plant, secondly political ,
that nuclear engagemen ts once institute d
likely to escalate and that those
who control (or different ly are likely to force access to) nuclear power plant s
do not shrink from nuclear confronta tion and are certainly prepared to toy with
nuclear engagemen t (up to "strategi c nuclear strikes" at least) , and thirdly
ethical, that wars invariabl y have immoral consequen ces, such as mas sive
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justifica tion is.
Nucl ea r wars are certain to be considera bly worse as regards damage inflicted
than any pr e vious wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars p ut together) , because of th e enormous destructi ve power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioacti ve effec ts, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversi bility of any such confronta tions .
The supportin g considera tions are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
a r e designed to show that the chances of such undesirab l e out comes is itself
und e sirable .
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborate d in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternativ e options is
a case of de ci sion making under uncertain ty , because in particula r of th e gross
uncertain ties involved in nuclear developme nt. In cases of this type the
ap propriate rational procedure is to compare worst cons equences of each
alternati ve, to reject those alternati ves with th e wor s t of these worst
consequen ces (this is a pretty uncontrov ersial part of th e maximin rule which
enjoins selection of the alternati ve with the best worst consequen ces) . The
nuclear alternati ve has, in particula r because of the r e al possibili ty of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequen ce~ and is according ly a particula rly undesirab le
alternati ve.
�33.
VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS,AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
DEVELOPMENT. As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development , only one justificatory route r emains open, that of app e al to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed ,
the consigne r's action cannot be justifi ed by purely economistic argume nts,
such as that his profits would ris e , the firm or the village would be more
prosperous , or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitl ed to cre ate a serious
risk to othe rs for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
parti cular, applied to the nuclear case. For this r eason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under th e Old Paradi gm to promote
nuclear development - e .g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electri city
utilities, and the need otherwise fo r uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these econornistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristica lly derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vic e versa .
What do have to be considered are however moral confli ct arguments, that is
arguments to the effe ct that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alt e rnative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and will ensue . For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may a rgue that his action is justified becaus e unless it is take n his
village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others;
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcu t, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral confl i ct are based on competin f
commitments to present people, and others on competing obligatio ns to future people .
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impos e on the future
significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and e xhaustive set of
alternatives (or a t ].east practical alternatives ) and upon showing that the only
alterna tives to admittedly mo rally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in th e argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
�to starvi ng or to the sendin g off of the parce l, name l y ea
rning a liv ing in some
other way - then the argum ent is defect ive and cannot r eadily
be patche d . Just
s uch a suppre ssion of practi cable altern atives has occurr ed
in the argum ent
design ed to show that the altern atives to the nuclea r option
are even worse than
the option itself , and that there are other factua l defect
s in thes e argum ents
as well. .In short, the argum ents depend essen tially on the
presen tation of
false dichot omies .
A first argum ent, the povert y argum ent , is that there is
an ove rridin g
ob li gation to the poor , both the poor of the third world
and the poor of
indus trialis ed countr ies . Failur e to develo p nuclea r energy
, it is often claime d,
would amoun t to denyin g them the oppor tunity to reach the
standa rd of afflue nce
we curren tly enjoy and would create unemp loymen t and povert
y in th e indus triali s e d
n a tions.
The unemp loymen t and povert y argume nt does not stand up to
exami nati on
eithe r for t he poor of th e indus trial countr ies or for thos
e of th e thir d world.
The re is good eviden ce that large- scale nuclea r energy will
help to increa se
unemp loymen t and povert y in the indus trial world, throug h
the divers i on of very
much availa ble capita l into an indust ry which is not only
an excep tional ly
poo r provi der of di rect employ ment , but also helps to reduce
availa bl e jobs throug h
encour aging substi tution o f energy use for labour use. 40
The argume n t that nuclea r
ene rgy is needed for the third world is even less convin cing.
Nuclea r energy is
both politi cally and econom ically inapp ropria te for th e third
world, since it
requir es massiv e amoun ts of capita l , requir es numbe rs of
import ed sci en tists
and engine ers, but create s neglig ible local employ ment, and
depend s for its
feasib ility upon, what is largel y lackin g , establ ished electr
icity transm ission
system s and back-u p facili ties and suffic ient electr ical
applia nce s to plug into
the system . Politi cally it increa ses foreig n depend ence,
adds to ce ntrali sed
entren ched power and reduc es the chance for change in the
oppres sive politi cal
struct ures which are a large part of the proble m . 41 The
fa c t that nuclea r energy
is not in the intere sts of the people of t he third world
does not of course
mean that it is not in the intere sts of, and wanted by, their
rulers , the
wester nised and often milita ry elites in whose intere sts
the econom ies of thes e
countr ies are usuall y organi sed, and wanted often for milita
ry purpos es . It
is not patern alistic to examin e critic ally the demand s these
ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
�35 .
The po verty argume nt is then a fraud. Nuclear ene r gy will not be used t o
help th e poor. Both for the third world and for the industr ialised co untrie
s
there are well-kno wn energy-c onservin g alternat ives and the practi cal option
of
developi ng oth e r energy sources, alternat ives some of which offer f a r bette r
prospec ts for helping the poor .
It can no longer be pretende d that there is no alt e rnative to nuclear
de velopme nt: indeed nuclear de velopme nt is itself but a bridging , or stop-gap
,
procedu re on route to solar or perhap s fusion deve lopment . And there a r e various
alternat ives : coal and other fossil fuels, geotherm al, and a range of solar
op tions (includi ng as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
each po ss ibly in combina tion with cons e rvation measures ~ 2 Despit e the availab
ility
of alterna tives, it may still be pre t e nde d that nuclea r deve lopment is ne cess
ary
fo r affluenc e (what will emerge is that it is advantag eous for the power and
aff luence of ce rtain select groups ) . Such an assumpt ion really und erlies part
o f t he pover ty argumen t, which thus amounts to an elabora tion of th e trickledown argumen t (much f avoured within the Old Paradigm se tting) . For the a rgument
runs : - Nuc l ea r developm ent is necessar y for (continu ing an d in c r eas in g)
affluenc e.
Affluenc e inevitab ly tr i ckl es down to th e poor. Th e r e for e nuclear
developm ent benefits the poor . First, the argumen t does not on i ts own sh ow
a nything specific about nuclear power : for it works equally well if ' ene r gy '
is substitu ted f or ' nuclear ' .
It has also to be shown , what the next major
argumen t will try to claim, that nuclear developm ent is unique among e ne rgy
alternat ives in increasi ng affluenc e . The second assumpt ion , that affluenc e
inevitab ly trickles down, has now been roundly refuted , both by r ecent historic
al
da ta, which show increasi ng affluenc e ( e .g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
co upled with increasi ng poverty in several countrie s, both developi ng and
de veloped , and th r ough economic models which reveal how "affluen ce" can increase
withou t r e dist ribution occur ring .
Another maj o r argumen t a dvanced to show moral conflic t app eals to a set
of suppos e dly ove rr iding and competin g obligati ons to future people . We have,
it is said , a du ty to pass on the immense ly valuable things and institut ions
which our culture has develope d .
Unless our high-tec hnology , high ene r gy
industr ial society is continue d and fo s tered, our valuab l e institut ion s and
tra ditions will fall into de cay or be swept away. The ar gument is essentia lly
th a t without nuclear powe r, withou t th e conti n ued level of materia l wealth
43
it alone is assumed to make possible , the li gh ts of our civiliza ti on wil l go
out.
Fut ure people will be th e los e rs.
�36,
The lights-goin g-out argument doe s rais e quest ions as to what is valuable
in o ur society, and of what characteris tics are necess ary for a good society .
But for the most part th ese large questions, which deserve much full e r
ex amination , can be avoided .
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
un critical position with re spe ct to present high-techno logy societi es , apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable . It assumes that technologi c
society is unmodifiabl e , that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conse rvation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse. It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of ene rgy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is a ll eged t o furnish ar e essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
The assumption that technologic al
so c ie ty's energy patterns are unmodifiabl e is especially so - after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have r equired major social and technologic a
r es tructuring and consumption modificatio n. If western society ' s demands for energy
a re totally unmodifiabl e without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction , but one might ask what use its culture co uld
be to future people who would very likely , as a consequence of this destruction ,
lack the resource base which th e argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporar y society.
There is also difficulty with th e assumption of uniform valuablene ss;
but if this is rejected the question be comes not: what is necessary to maintain
exis ting high-techno logical society and its political institution s, but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and th e political
institution s which are needed to maintain those valuable things . While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to a rgu e that it
is e ssential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a du ty to pass .on to the fut ure.
The evidence, for instan ce from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
The re is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But e ve n
if a radical change in these di rec tions is independent ly desirable, as we should
arg ue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-goin g-out a rgument a re wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-b e ing is required to consume less energy than at
�37.
present , and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
consumption which is assumed in the usu al economic case for nucl ear energy . 44
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to preven t the
lights going out in west e rn civilisation , but to enable th e lights to go on
burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
th e Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high e nergy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, es pecially if e nergy
is obtained by nuclear fission means , be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an ext remely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susce ptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source , whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people's lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably t e nd to become
autho ritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
things, of its response to the threat pos ed by dissident groups in the nuclea r
.
.
situation.
45
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of th e worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valua ble
asp e cts, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
p ersonal and collective autonomy which exist , would be lost or diminish e d:
political freedom , for example, is a high price to pay for consume ri sm and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technologynuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rath e r, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argumen t, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
�38 .
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
appeal to fut urity, closed.
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scal e nuclear developmen t i s a crime agains t
the future is inevitable .
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other ar_guments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future .
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The arg ument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has r elied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for examp l e,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounte d (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of marketcentred economic theory ), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the cas e, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice .
Large-scale nucl ear developme nt is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy .
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alt ernatives to given economic
ends.
Admi t tedly so much capital has already been invested in nucle ar fission
research and development, in marka:l. contrast to other newer rival sources of
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs.
The reasons can be
divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
(ou t) , and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, pub l icly
eco nomic (in that they are app roved for public consumption), and th e r ea l
r ea s ons , which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social
control.
�39.
The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going -out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
valuable!): - Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e . g. to increas e the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistributi on problems, and connected social
unr e st, e tc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is
part of US energy policy, 46 and the second premiss is supplied by standard
economics textbooks . But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmen tal costs carried by unqualified
47
economi c growth .
More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rath e r an appropriate and less
vulne rabl e restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards. For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alt e rnatives .
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of th e premiss
Nuc lear power is the economicall y best way to sustain economic growth, 'economicall y
best' being filled out as ' most efficient', 'cheapest ' , 'having most favourable
benefit-cos t ratio', etc.
Unfortunate ly for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively, unless
a goo d deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done. Much data, beginning with
th e cancellatio n of nuclear plant orders, can't be assembled to show as much. Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to b e permitted at all, and evidently true
premisses
if the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public ( governmenta l)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments . Virtually all available data
concen1s the USA; in EuroZS, West and East, true cos ts of uniformly "publicly=
controlled" nuclear power
are generally not divulged.
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants .
Komanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26 % in 1985. 49 And
capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell rather decisively
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants . Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators . Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the elect ricit y th ey were
designed to produ ce , and that when Atomic Energy Commis sion estimates of relative
costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both opera t ed at 80% of design
capacity , were adjusted accordingly , nuclear generated power proved to be far more
�40.
.
h
.
d 50
expensive
tan
estimate.
The discrepancy between actual and estimated
capacity
is especially important because a plant with an ac tual capacity factor of 55 %
produced electricity at a cost about 25% high e r than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers' projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
The low reliability
of nuclear plants (p e r kilowatt output) as compared with the superior
r e liability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
grounds of ef ficienc y and product production costs , against nuclear powe r .
Thes e unfavourable assessments are from a privat e (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account .
The main subsidies are through research and development , by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
51
Act ), in en richme n 4 and in waste management . It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nucl ea r power by at least 25% ( and probably much more) .
Wh en official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is f ound that they inadmissibly omit seve ral of the public
costs i nvolve d in producing nuclear power .
For example, the analyses igno re
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known curren tly
wha t t he costs involved are .
But even using actual waste handling cos t s (while
wastes await s torage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuc l ear . 52
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage , are dul y taken into account, the balance is swung stil l further i n
favo ur of al te rnatives to nuclear and
aga i nst nuclear power .
In short , eve n on
proper Old Par a digm accounting, the nu c l ear alte rn at iv e s hould be rejected.
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly se ems ; it has b een
kept going n~ through its clear economic v iability, but by massive pub li c
s ubsidization , of s e vera l types .
In USA, to take a main examp le where
information is available , nuclear developme nt is publicly supported through
heavily subsidized or somet i mes free research and development , thro ugh the
Price-Anderson Act, which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i . e . wh ich in ef fe ct p rovided t he insurance subsidy making corporat e nuclear
development e conomicall y f e asibl e, and through government ag r eement to handle all
r adioactive wastes .
While the Old Paradigm str ictly construed c annot sup port un economical
developments, cont empo rary liberalisation of the Paradigm do e s allow fo r
un economi c projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
soc ial welfare.
Duly admitting s ocial welfare and some
equity
pr i nciples
�41,
i n th e dist ribut ion of wealt h (not necessa rily of pol l ution) l e ads the modern
version of the Old Paradigm , called the Mo dified Old Paradigm .
The main
changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of
economic facto rs, e . g . individual self-he lp is down- played , wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g . through t:axation , market forces are re gulated
or disp la ced (not in principle eliminat e d, as with stat e s ocialism).
Now it
has been cont ended - outrageous though it should now se e m - that nuclear powe r
is i n the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example ,
apart from those already mentioned suc h as energy fo r growth and che ap
e l ect ricity, and such as plantiful powe r f or heating and cooking a nd app lian ce
use , avoidan ce of shortages , rat ioning ,
brown-outs and the like .
Since
alternative power sources, such as coal, could s e rve some ends given power was
supplied with suitable extravagance, the
argumen t has aga in to show that t he
cho ice of nucle ar power over other a lterna tives is best in the requ isite
respects, in s erving the public interes t.
Such a n ar gumen t is a matter for
decision theory, unde r which head cost -bene f i t analyse s which rank alternatives
a l so fall as special cases .
Decision theory purports to cover th eo r e tically the field of choice
b e tween alte rnatives; it is present ed as the theory which ' dea l s with t he
.
pro bl em o f c h oosing
one cours e o f acti. on among s e vera 1 poss1'bl. e cou r ses 1 . 53
Th us the choice of alt e rnati~ modes of energy pro duc ti on, t he ene r gy choice
problem, be comes an exercise
in decision theory; and the nucl ea r choice is
often ''.justi f ied" in Old Paradigm terms t h rough app e al to decision t heo ry.
But though decision theory is in principle comp rehens ive , as soon as it is put
to work in such practi cal cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronte d with is a
depauperate
theory drastically
pruned down to confo r m with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream e conomic
theory .
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comp a ring , to take one
imp ortant example , a general optimisation model for decision (wh ere
uncertainty is not gross) with comparab le decision the ory methods, such as th e
expe cted uti lity model.
The general model for best choice among alte rnatives
specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constrain ts, which may
include
et hical constraints ex clud ing cert a in alt e rnati ves under gi ven
cond itions .
Expected utility
models dEmote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference prop e rt ies t hat may not obtain, and elimina te
constraints altoget her (absorbing what is fo rbidden, fo r examp le , as having a
hi gh dis u tili ty, but one that can be compensate d for none th eless ).
Thus , in
�42.
particula r,
e thical constrain ts against nuclear developme nt are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensat ion for damage
sustained . Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled , so no longer at issue are the defective (nee-clas sical)
economic assumptio ns made in the theory, for example as to the assessmen t of
everythin g t o be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms : everythin g worth accountin g has a price), and as to the legitimac y
of transferr ing with limited compensat ion risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework , a case of decision under uncertain ty . It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicabl e),
be cause some possible outcomes are so unce rtain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective ) quantifia ble probabil ities can be assigned to them.
It ems that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core me ltdown
of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear de velopment : 54
widesprea d radioactive pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain .
The correct rule for decision under uncertain ty is, in the case of energy
ch oice , maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended .
In fact, on ce again, it is unnecessa ry for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected .
Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same rejection s for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergen ce in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected . All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option .
A further convergen ce can be effected
also , because the best possible (economic ) outcomes of such leading options as
coal and a hydroelec tric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elabo rated). Unde r these
condition s complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Hor wicz rule) which take
account of both best possible and most possible outcomes under each option
reduce to the maximin
rule .
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximum rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options
where worst outcomes are
substanti ally better
than that of the nuclear
option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare , not th e nuclear
dream, is realised) . Further applicati on of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predomin antly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effe cts
on the earth 's climate from burning massive quantitie s of such fuels .
�43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with maximin
position several rivals to maximin
proposed,
each
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
Some of these
rules , such as the risk- added reasonin g criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
which 'assesses
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
risk it adds to those pre-existin g in the status quo, rather than in te rms of
th e absolute value of the risk associated with the policy' are decidedly
dubious,
and rather than offering a
rational
decision procedure appears t o
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
~~at will be argued, or rather
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival
rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option .
For example , the keep -options-op en or allow-for-r eversibility
(not an entirely unquestiona ble rule
rule
'of strictly limited applicabili ty')
e xcludes the nuclear option because 'nuclear plants and their by-products have
an air of irreversibi lity ... " One cannot simply abandon
a nuclear reactor
the way one can abandon
a coal-fired plant"' (p.506). The compare-the alt e rnatives rule, in ordinary application , leads back to th e cost -b e nefit
assessments , which, as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-s ustainable-b enefits rule,
which ' directs us to opt for th e policy producing the highest level of net
b enefits which can be sustained indefinitel y', 'decisively favours r e newable
sources ', ruling out the nuclear option.
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
further from the Old Paradigm framework,
harm-avoida nce and protecting- thevulnerable als o yields th e same nuclear-exc luding results. Harm-avoida nce,
in particular, points
1
decisively in favour of "alt ernative" and "renewable "
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy cons ervation'
(p.442) .
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
the result is the same, a nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
standards . Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefi t analyses,wi th
probabiliti es duly multiplied in, and the
conclusion
is as before from
cost-b enefit co nsideration s, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut : nor does its Modificatio n. The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached. It is, in any case,
sufficientl y evident that contemporar y e conomic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with nee-classic al economic
....
�44.
th eory nor, to consider the main modification , with social democratic
th eory .
There are , firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one :
corporations so committed are understandably
ke en to realise returns on capital already invested .
There are also typical
self-interest reasons fo r commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in politica l
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others , and so on .
The r e are
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by t e chnocratic-entrepre nial elite, a belief
in socl al control from above , control which nuclear powe r o f f ers f a r mo r e tlwn
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter th e power bas e , a f a ith
in th e unlimitedness of t e chnological enterprise, and nuclear in particular ,
so that any real probl ems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such b e li e f s are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
gove rning and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
thes e sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
thos e whos e types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear developme nt
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs .
It is then, contemporary corporate capitalsim, along with its state
e n t erprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure , corporate
capitalism , which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in we stern
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
t ype such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice .
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis.
split into two main cases, the notional
US
This diagnosis can be
development of nuclear power in the
and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible .
By comparison with the West, nuc lear power production i n
th e
small
Eastern bloc is
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
which had in 19 77 only about
nuclear plants .
one -sixth the wattage output of
US
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported elsewhere to any great extent .
American technology has .
�45,
The 60s were, because of the growth in electrici ty demand, a period of
great expansion of the elec trical utilities in the US . These companies we re
e ncouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlle d or influence d reasons:- Firs tly, owing to
governme ntal regulatio n procedure s the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one. Secondly ,
the US governmen t arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation ,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies , actively
encourage d a nuclear choice and nuclea r deve lopment. In particula r, state
limitatio n of liability and shoulderi n g of part o f insurance for nu clear
accidents and state arrangeme nts to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profit able private utility operation appear feasibl e and r esulting in nuclea r
investmen t.
In the 70s, though the state subsidiza tion continued , the private
pict ur e changed : 'high costs of construct ion combine d with low capacity
factors and poor r eli ability have wiped out the last advantage that nuclear power '
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in th e US is con trolled by a few
co rpor ations , so the world mark et is dominated by a few countries , predomina ntly
and first of all the US, which through its two leadi ng nuclear companies ,
We stinghous e and Gen e ral Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
technolog y. 55 These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequen tly world markets by US foreign policies, ba sically th e " Ato ms for
Peace" program supplemen ted by bilateral agreement s providing for US technolog y ,
r e search, enri ched uranium and financial capital. ' The US offered a [ s tat e
s ub si dize d ] nuclear package that Europe could not refus e and with whi ch the
British could not compete'.
In the 70s the picture of US dominatio n of Common
Market nuclear technolog y had given way to subtler influence : American companies
held (actually dealing with relevant governmen ts) substanti al interests in Europ ean
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technolog y which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
ag re ements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries , for
example, Argentina , Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia , Iran, Ire l and, Israel ,
Pakistan, Philippin es, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa, Spa in,
Taiwan, Turk ey , Venezuela , South Vi etnam.
The US proceeded ,
in this way, to ship
nuclear technolog y and nuclear materials in gre at quantitie s round th e world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear t echnology t hrough th e Internati onal Atomic
Ene rgy Agency , originall y de si gne d to control and saf eg uard nuclear ope rati ons,
but most of whos e ~udget and activitie s • .. have gone to promote nu c l ear
activitie s' .
�46.
A main reason for th e promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
markets for reactors. Less developed countries
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safe t y regulations
are loose and enforcement rar e , where public opposition
is not pennitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
easy sales.
[Forj
..• the US has considerabl e leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
expe rience that many of the worst dictatorshi ps in the planet
would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support .
Many of those same regimes
are now
pursuing
the
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons. 56
It is e v ident from this sketch of the ways and means of r eactor
proliferatio n that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and the social Modificatio n, but that the practices (of
corp orate capitalism and associated third world imperialism ) involve much
that is eth ically unacceptabl e, whether
by olde r, modif ied, or alternative
57
percepts;
for principles such as those
and self-d e termination are grossly vio late d.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES . The futur e energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable . For it
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associ ated
phe nomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to ment ion the
despoliatio n caused by extensive strip mining , all of which result from its us e
in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbenefic iaries for some concentrate d benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
58
and replacement .
To these conventiona l main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologie s, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroele ctricity . The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technologic al but social , and involves both
conservatio n measures and the restruct urin g of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumerist ic
and nonconsume ristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternative s , conventiona l t echnologica lly-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of de ciding in which way to meet
�4 7.
give n and unexamine d goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but als o a matter
of examining the goals. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technolog ies or substitut e ways of meeting some fi xed or give n
demand or level of consumpti on, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with s oft rather than hard technolog ies; we are also fac e d, and pr i ma rily, with th e
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society t hat creates
them . It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to mee t these
alleged needs conceived of as inevitabl e and unchangea ble . (Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessa ry trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.) Na turally this is not to deny that th e se softer options are
sup e rior because of the ethically unaccepta ble features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technolog y, howe ver benign in principle , will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expect e d to meet
unbounded and uncontrol led energy consumpti on and demands. Even the more benign
technolog ies such as solar technolog y could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriora ted world being hand e d
on to them . Consider, for example, the effect on the world's forest s , which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for productio n of methanol or o f
e lectricit y by woodchipp ing (as already planned by forest authoriti es and
contempla ted by many other energy organisat ions) . While few would object to t he
use of genui ne waste material for energy productio n, the unrestric ted exploi t ation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of " solar energy" or not. - to meet
e ver increasin g energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's
already hard-pres sed natural forests.
The effects of such additiona l demands on the maintenan ce of the
forests are often dismissed , even by soft technolo gicalists, by the simpl e
expedient of waving around the label 'renewabl e resources '. Many forests are
in principle renewable , it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitat ion , but in fact there are now very few forestry operation s anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completel y renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values. 59 In many regions too the rate of
e xploitatio n which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced . It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainfores t types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciat ion
of the conduct of contempor ary forestry operation s, who i s also concerned with
long-t erm conservat ion of the forests and remaining natural communiti e s, must
regard with alarm. The result of massive deforesta tion for energy purposes,
�48,
r esemb li n g the deforesta tion of England at the beginning of th e Industrial
Revolution, again for ene rgy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in s t eeper lands and trop i cal are as , dese rtification in more a rid
r egions, possib le climatic change, and massive impoverishm en t of na tural
ecosystems .
Some of us do not wa nt to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a de fores ted world to the future, any more than we want t o pass on on e
poisone d by nuclear products or polluted by coal p roduct s . In sh or t, a mere
swi t ch t o a more benign t e chnology - important though this i s - wi th out any
more bas ic structural and social change is inadequate .
Nor is such a simple technolo gi cal swi. tch likely to be achieved. It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuc lear
program (and that of the countrie s it influences, much of the world), in the
way pressure appeared
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplishe d, it is ve ry un likely
give n th e inte gration of political powe rholders with those sponsoring nuclear
de velopment . 60
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism , consumption far beyo nd genuine needs, a nd
a n e conomic s tructure which en coura ge s increasing use of highly energy-inte nsive
mode s of prod uc tion. This means, for instance, trying to change a social
stru c ture in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work f o rce
are cogs i n a production machine over which they have ve ry little r eal cont r ol
an d in which most people do unpleasant or boring work fro m which they derive
very 1i t tle real satisfactio n in orde r to obta i n the r eward of consume r goo ds
and services . A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
prod ucts rather than proc es s e s, fro m consumption , rath e r than from satisfac tion
in work an d in social r e lations and oth er activities , is virtually bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unn e cessary consumption . (A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but fo r created and nongenuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce . ) Consumption frequently
be comes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the large r set of
adjustments involved in s ocially implementin g the New Paradigm , the move away
f rom consumerism is for examp le part of th e more ge ner al shift from ma t eri al ism
and ma terialist values .
The social change option tends to be obscured in mos t dis cussions o f
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it do e s
que stion unde rlying values of current social arrangemen ts . The conventiona l
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
61
n ee ds
) as unchall e ngeable, and th e iss ue to be on e of which t ech nology can
�49.
be most profi tably employed to meet th em.
This e ffectiv e ly pre s en ts a f a l se
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand a s lacking a s ocial
contex t so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
take n as unchallengeable and unchangeable .
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argue d by representat i ves
of such industries as trans!X)rtation and petroleum, as for exampl e by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
powe r boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent th em from satisfying
th e se wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such nee ds and wants arise or are produced.
To point to th e de t e rmination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach a ccording to which they are entirely de t ermined at the framewo rk level
( e .g. by indu s trial organisation) and th e r e is no such thing as indivi dual
ch oic e or de termination at all.
It is to s ee the soci a l framework as a major
f a c t o r i n de t e rmining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel ,
a n d t o see ap pare ntly individual choices made in such matte rs as being channelle d
a nd dire cte d by a social framework de t e rmined l argely i n th e inte r es t s o f
corporat e an d private pro f it and advantage .
The so cial change option is a hard option - at l e ast it wil l b e difficult
to obtain pol itically - but it is the only way , so it has been argued , of a voidin g
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of r easons t han
suc h ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective 62 , a perspective integ ral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingl y requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and pol i tical adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative require s will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option repre sents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surp r ising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misre pres enting and often
ob scuring i t .
But difficult though a change will be , es pec ially one with s uch
f a r - r eaching e ffects on th e prevailing power struc tur e , is to obt ai n, it is
imp e rative t o try: we are al l on the n uclear train.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts , Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e . g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-settin g matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater ) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least a s important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
to the first, see references cited in Goodin , p . 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cot grove and Duff, and some of the references
As
given therein.
3.
Cot grove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34 .
5.
compare also
See, e.g ., Gyorgy , pp . 357- 8.
6.
For one illustration , see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty 's
Stationery Office , London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff , p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another .
One can argue both from one's own position against the other, and in the
other's own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nucle ar establishme nt, since they (those of th e
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualificatio ns) can release what, and only
what , suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmenta l inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear deve lopment; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclus ion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see , e . g.,
�2
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11 .
Se e the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428.
lla.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclea r radi ation , unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
exampl e , can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the convent ional
(Old Paradigm) way.
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
13.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
power.
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recent l y nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology.
[ability to manage technology repr esent s the past]
14 .
On such l imitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and vot ing "p aradoxes" on the
other.
Other different limitation resu1 ts are presented in Routley 81 .
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
n e cessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
th e Dominant Western Worldview,
the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p . 34) .
15.
See Lovins and Price .
15a .
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
'What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed' (Barry, p. 24 3).
Therefor e ~ a nuclear f utur e contrav enes r equirements of justice .
�3
16.
For examples , and for some details of the history of philosoph e rs'
positions on obligatio ns to the future, see Routley (a).
17 .
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore' s position is ambivalen t and , to
all appearanc es, inconsist ent. It is considere d in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls ' position.
18.
For related criticism s of the e conomists ' arguments for discounti ng,
a nd for citation of the often eminent economist s who sponsor them, see
Goodin , pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborate d here) are that the propertie s are different
e . g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings , being only partial orderings , do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfact ory fashion . What he claims is tha t we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expe ct ed util ity maximiza tion
presuppos es, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedure s. But
outstandi ng alternativ es can always be comprehen ded logically , at worst by
saying "all the rest" (e.g. "'P covers everythin g except p). For example ,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehen ded along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error". Furthermo re the different
more app ropriate rules Goodin subsequen tly considers also requir e listing of
"possible " outcomes .
Goodin's point can be alternati vely stated however.
There
are really two points.
The first trouble is that such ragbag alternati v es
cannot in general be assigned required quantitat ive probabil ities, and it is
at that point that applicati ons of the models breaks dovm. The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertain ty from decision making
under risk. Secondly, many influenti al applicatio ns of decision theory methods,
the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitim ately, delete possible
alternati ves from their modelling s.
21 .
Discount, or bank, rates in the economis ts' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson , Economics , 7th Edition, McGraw-H ill,
New York , 1967, p.351.
22 .
Thus the rates have little moral relevance .
A real possibili ty is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate . A real possibili ty requires producibl e evidence for its
considera tion . The contrast is with mere logical possibili ty.
23.
�4
24.
Such a princip le is explici t both in classica l utilitar iani s m (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414) , and in a range of contrac t and other theories from Kant and
Rousseau to Rawl s (p.293).
How the princip le is argu ed for will depe nd
heavily , however, on the underlyi ng theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend he avily on particu lar ethical theories .
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especia lly, the
Poverty argumen t.
26 .
SF, p. 27.
Shrader -Freche tte is herself somewha t critical of the
carte blanche adoption of these methods , suggesti ng that ' whoever aff irms or
den ies the desirab ility of ... [such] standard s is, to some degree,
symboll ically assentin g to a number of American value patterns and cu l tural
norms' (p. 28 ).
27.
The examp le paralle ls the sorts of countere xamp les often advance d to
utilitar ianism, e.g. the admissi ble lynching of an innocen t person because
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
against utilitar ianism, see ...
For the more general case
28 .
US Atomic Energy Commissi on , Compara tive Risk-Co st-B en ef it Study of
Alterna tive sources of Electric al Energy (WASH-1224), US Governm ent Printing
Office , Washing ton, D.C., Decembe r 1974 , p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
29 .
As SF points out, p.37-44 ., in some detail. As she remarks,
... since standard s need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclea r Regulato ry commiss ion] judges that the
licence shows 'a reasonab le effort' at meetin g them,
current policy allows governm ent regulato rs to trade
human health and welfare for the [apparen t ] good
intentio ns of the promo tors of technolo gy. [Such]
good intentio ns have never been known to be sufficie nt
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulati on, even where the standard s are as mostl y not very
demandin g, and the alliance of regulato rs with those th ey a re s upposed t o be
r eg ulating, are conspicu ous features of modern environm ental control, not just
of (nuclear ) pollutio n control.
30 .
�31 .
The figures are thos e from the origin al Bro okhaven Report: ' Theo r e
t ical
possib ilities and consequ ences of major accide nts in large nuclea
r plants ',
USAEC Report WASH-740, Governm ent Printin g Office , Washin gton , D. C.,
1957.
This r e port was r eques ted in the first place because the Commis sion
on Atomic Energy
wanted pos i tive safe t y conc l usions "to r eass ure th e
private insuran ce compan ies" so that they would pr ovid e
coverag e for th e nuclea r indust ry. Since even th e
cons e rvative statist ics of the r eport we r e alannin g it
was supp r essed and its data we r e not made public until.
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brough t as a r esult of
the Freedom of Inform ation Act (Shrad er-Frec hette, pp. 78-9).
32 .
Atomic Energy Commis sion, Re actor Safe ty Study: An Ass e ssment of
Acc ident Risks in US Comme rcial Nuclea r Power Plants , Governm ent
Printin g Offi ce ,
Washin gton, D.C., 1975 . This report, the only alleged ly comple te
study ,
conclud ed that fission reactor s presen ted only a minima l health risk
t o the
public .
Early in 1979, th e Nuclea r Regula tory Commis sion (th e r elevan t
organ isation that superse ded the trouble d Atomic Energy Commis sion)
withdre
w
i ts suppor t for the report, with the result that there is now no
compreh ensive
analys is of nuclea r power approve d by the US Governm ent.
32a .
Most presen t and planned r eactors are of this type: see Gyo r gy .
33 .
34 .
Even then relevan t environ ment factors may have been neglec t ed .
35.
There are variati ons on (i) and (ii) which multip ly costs agains t
number s such as probab ilities. In this way risks, constru ed as probab
le
cos ts, can be taken into accoun t in the assessm ent.
(Alt e rnative ly, risks may
be assesse d through such familia r method s as insuran ce.)
A princip le varying (ii), and fonnula ted as follows :
(ii ) a is ethica lly accepta ble if (for some b) a include s no more
risks than b
and b is sociall y acce pted. was the basic ethica l princip le in terms
of which
the Cluff Lak e Board of Inquiry recentl y decided that nuclea r power
de velo pme nt
1
�in Saskat chewan is ethically acceptable :
s e e Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final
Report, Departme nt of Environment , Government of Saskatchewa n, 1978, p. 305 and
p . 288 . In this report, a is nuclear power and bis either a ctiviti e s clearl y
accepted by society as alternative power sources.
In other application s b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietna m War(!)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii'). The principles are certainly ethically substantive , since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissibl e conventiona l character. For l ook at the origin of b: b may be
socia lly accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibili ty is no longer so cle arcut and it would not have been socially
accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. 'What
is required in (ii'), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing
is then 'ethically acceptable' rather than 'socially accepted'. But even with
th e amendments the principles are invalid , for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcertin g that thes e arguments do not work . It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the exper ts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the tr oubl e with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian , and like utilitariani sm they neglect distributio nal features ,
involve na tu ralistic fallacies, et c.
Really they try to treat as an uncon-
straine d optimisatio n what is a deontically constraine d optimisatio n :
V. Routley 'An expensive repair kit for utilitarian ism'.
s ee R. and
37.
Ap parent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistr i bution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be i f taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population .
Example s such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexam ples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p. 15, where references are also cited.
39 .
Goodin, p. 433.
40 .
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
Energy , Environment a lists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiat ing th e interesting case of Commoner
[7 ] . On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well [18], p. 23 . On th e employment issues, see too H. E. Daly in [ 9], p. 149.
�7
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Ene rgy and Equality , Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly th e opp osite of
what the poor need.
41 .
For much more deta il on the inappropria teness see E.F . Schumacher,
Sma ll is Beauti ful, Blond and Briggs, London, 1973. As to the capital and
o ther requirement s, see [2] , p. 48 , and also [7] and [9] .
For an illuminatin g l ook at the sort of d evelopmen t high - energy
t e chnolo gy will t end to promote in the so-called unde rdeveloped countri es see
the pap e r of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Envfr•onment (edited
J . H. Wins l ow), Au s tr a l ian National University Press, Canb e rr a, 1977.
42 .
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins , Energy Strategy : The Road Not
Taken , Fr iends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Fo 1°eign Affair•s ,
Oc tob e r 1976); s ee also [ 17], [6 ] , [ 7], [14] , p . 233 ff, and Schumacher, op . cit .
43 .
An argument like this is suggested in Passmo re, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument
for the ove rriding importance of passing on contemporar y culture is underpinn e d
by what appears to be a future-dire cted ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed he
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good interventio n is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of t he present and immediate future. The argument has all
t he defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
44.
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p . 191, and also Commoner .
45 .
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been a dvanced by civ il
liberties groups and others in a number of countri e s: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White , Nuclear Pr ospects. A comment on the individual , the State
and Nuclear Power , Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties , London, 1976.
46.
' US energy policy, for example , since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act , has been that nuclear powe r is necessary to provide "an e conomical
and reliable basis"
n eed ed "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p . 111, and
r efe rences there cit e d) .
�47.
There are now a great many criticism s of the second premiss in th e
literat ure . For our criticism , and a r e formulati on of the premiss in terms
of selec tive economic growth (which would exclude nu clear developm ent), see
Routley (b) , and also Berkley and Seckler.
To simple-mi ndedly contrast e conomic growth with no-growth , in the fa shion
of some discussio ns of nuclear power, c . f . Elster, is to leave out
crucial
alte rnatives ; the contracti on of course much simplifie s the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear developme nt is explicitl y in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the governmen t has very s ubstantia l
interests in main nuclear involved companies . Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
it is difficult to obtain comprehen sive data.
Estimates of cost very dramtical ly according to the
sample of plants chosen and the assumptio ns made
concernin g the measureme nt of plant performan ce
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49 .
See Kalmanoff , p .
50.
See Corney.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF on argument
from ignorance etc.
53 .
These e . g. Elster, p. 377.
On deci sion theory see also,
54 .
A recent theme in much economic literatur e is that Bayesian dec ision
theory and risk analysis can be universal ly applied . The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines. In any case , even
within these confines there is no consensus at all on, a nd few (and
widely diverging ) figures for the probabili ty of a reactor core meltdown,
an d no reliable estimates as to the likelihoo d of a nuclear confronta t i on.
Thus Goodin argue s (in 78) that 'such uncertain ties plague energy theories'
as to 'rend er expected utility calculati ons impossibl e '.
55 .
For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff ., from which presentat ion of the
internati onal story is adapted.
�1
56.
Gyo rgy, p . 307, and p. 308.
points, see Chomsky
For elaborati on of some of th e important
and Hermann.
57.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principle s underlyin g the Old
Paradigm or its Modificat ion - and they do form a coherent set th at many
people can
respect - these are not the principle s unde rlying contempor ary
corporate capitalism and associate d third-wor ld i.mperialis m.
58.
Certainly practical transitio nal programs may involve tempo rary and
limited us e of unaccepta ble long t erm commoditi es such as coal, but in
presentin g su ch practical details one should not lose sigh t of the more basic
social and structura l changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitio nal strategie s should make use of such
measures as en vironment al (or replaceme nt) pricing of energy i . e . so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of r e placing it by an
equivalen t unit taking account of environm ental cost of productio n. Other
(sometime s coopU.ve) s trategies towards more satisfact ory alternativ es should
a lso, of course , be adopted, in particula r the removal of institutio nal barriers
to energy conservat ion and alternati ve technolog y (e . g. local governmen t
regulatio ns blocking these), and the removal of state assistanc e to fuel and
power industrie s.
59.
Symptoma tic of the fact that it is not treated as r enewable is that
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewabi lity - if th ey did
the losses and deficits on forestry operation s would be much more s triking tha n
t hey already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermo re, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully r e newable operation if net energy productio n is to be worthwhil e; see, e.g .
the argument in L. R.B . Mann 'Some difficult ies with energy farming for portable
fuels', and add in the costs of e cosystem maintenan ce.
60.
For an outline and explanati on of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also Woodmansee .
61 .
The requisite distinctio n is made in several places , e . g . Routley (b),
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literatur e), Baran and
Sw eezy .
62 .
The distinctio n between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasise d
by Naess. For its environm en tal i mpo rtance see Routl ey (c) (wher e
further reference s are cited) .
�•
REFERENCES .
In o rde r to contai n refe r e n ces to a modes t length, r efrre ncc to
primary sources has often been replaced by referen ce through secondary sources .
Generally the reader can easily trace the primary sour ces . For those parts of
the text that ove rlap Routley (a), fuller references wil l be found by
consulting the latter article.
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, 'Environmen talism, middle-clas s radicalism an d
politics', Sociologica l Review 28 (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E . Goodin, 'No moral nukes ', Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends , No Nukes: everyone's guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Ato mic Energy, Outb ack Press , Melbourn e ,
1977.
R. a nd V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', Inquiry
21 ( 1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Repo rt: Ranger Uranium Environmen tal I nquiry First Report , Australian
Go vernmen t Publishing Service, Canberra , 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Fr echet te, Nu clea r Power and Publi c Policy, Reidel, Do rdrecht,
1980 (refe rred to as SF).
W. R. Cat ton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, 'A new ecol ogical paradigm for post - ex uber an t
sociology', Ame rican Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47 .
Unite d States Interagency Review group on Nuclea r Waste Managemen t, Repo rt
to the President, Wash i ngton. (Dept. of Energy) 1979. (Ref. No . El. 28 . TID29442) (cited as US(a)) .
A.B . Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuc lear Futures : The Case for an Eth ical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth Internation al, San Fran cisco , 1975.
R. Routley , 'On the impossibili ty of an ortho dox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmen tal problems', Logique et Analyse,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routl ey , 'Necessa r y limits for knowledge: unknowable tru ths', in Es says in
honour of Paul Wei nga rtner,
(ed. E. Norscher ), Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore , Man's Responsibi lity for Nature, Du ckworth , London, 1974 .
�,,,.
.-2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Editi on, RSSS, Austra lian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J . Rawls , A Theory of Justice, Harvard Unive rsit y Press, Cambridge , Mass.,
19 71.
P . hl . Berkl ey a nd D.W . Seckler, Economic Gr owth and Environment a l Dec ay,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch , New York, 1972 .
J . Elster, 'Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power' , Soci al Science Information
18 (3) (1979) 371-400.
J. Robinson , Economic Heresi e s, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
B. Barry, 'Circumstan ces of Justice and future generat i ons ' in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. R.I. Sikora and B. Barry), Templ e Universit y Press,
Philadelphi a, 1978.
H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics , Macmillan, London , 1962 (r e issue ).
B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power , Knopf, New York, 1975.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Right s , 2 vols., Black
Rose Books, Montreal, 1979 .
J. Woodmans ee , The World of a Giant Corporation , North Coun tr y Pr es s , Seattle ,
Washing ton, 1975.
P . A. B~r a n and P . Sweezy, Monopoly Capita l, Penguin, 1967.
A. Naess, ' The shallow and the deep, long range eco l ogy movement.
A summary ', Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100.
�
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NUCLE AR POWER -
I.
ETHIC AL,
SOC I AL AND POLltt AAL DI MiN S I ONS
COMPETING PARADIGMS AN D THE NU CLEAR DEBAT E.
1870
One ha rdly needs initia t i on i nt o the dark my s te ri e s of
nucl ear ph ys i cs to contribu te use f ully t o t he debat e no w
wid e l y r anging ov e r nuc lear powe r . While ma ny i mpo r tan t
empi rica l que stions ar e s t i ll unr e s olved, t hese do not r e a lly
l i e a t th e ce nt r e of t he con t r ove rsy. In st e ad, it is a
de ba t e about val ue s . ..
ma ny of the que s tions ~hi ch a ri s e are s oc i al an d et hica l one s . 1
Socio logical inves tigation s have conf i rme d that th e n ucl ea r deba t e is primaril
y
one ove r what is wor th having or pursuing and over what we a re ent i t l ed to do
to o th e rs .
They ha ve also confirme d tha t t he debate i s polaris ed a lon g t he
li nes o f compe ting paradigm s. 2 Accordin g to the entre nc he d parad i gm dis ce rn e
d,
that conste llation of value s , attitude s and be liefs o fte n ca ll e d t he Domi nan t
So ci a l Pa radigm (hereaft er the Old Paradigm ),
economic criteria be come the be nchmark by whi ch a wi de ran ge of
individu al and social action is judged and e va luat e d . And be li e f
in the market and marke t mechan isms is quit e ce ntral . Clust e rin g
around this core belief is the convicti on th a t e nt e r p r i s e flou r is hes
bes t i n a system of r isks and rewards, that di ffe r e nti als a r e
neces sary ..• , and in the nece ssity for some fo r m o f di vis i on of
labour, and a hi e rarchy of skills and exper t is e . In pa rt i cul a r,
t here i s a be li e f in th e comp e t e nce o f e xperts i n gener a l and of
sci entis t s in pa r ticular .
the re is an empha s i s on q uantif i ca t ion . 3
The ri v a l world view , sometime s c all e d t he Alte rnative Environm e ntal Par ad igm
(the New Paradi gm) dif f ers on almos t e ve ry pcint , and, acco rdin g t o so ciologi
sts ,
in ways summari sed i n th e fo llowing t a bl e 4 Domi nant Socia l Para digm
CORE VALUES
Ma te r i a l (e conomic growth , progress an d dev elopmen t )
Na tu ra l env ironment va lu e d as resourc e
Dom i nat i on over na t ur e
Al t e rn a tive Env ir onme nt al
Pa rad igm
Non-ma terial (se l f -r eali sa t io n)
Na t ural e nvir onm e nt i ntrin s i cally
valu ed
Ha r mo ny with na tu r e
ECONOMY*
Ma rket forces
Ri s k a nd rewa r d
Rewa r ds for ach i evemen t
Diff e rent i a l s
Individ ua l se lf-help
Public i nte r es t
Sa fety
Incomes r elat ed t o nee d
Egali t a r ian
Co ll ective/soc i al provi s i on
PO LITY
Authori t at iv e s t ru c t ures (e xp e r t s in flue ntia l)
Hi e r a r ch1.c a l
Law and order
Ac t io n through o ffi c ia l i nst it ut io ns
Pa rtic ip a tive s t ruc t ur e s ( ci ti zen/
wo r ke r invo lveme n t )
No n- hi era r chical
Liberation
Di r ec t a c ti o n
SOCIETY
Ce ntr a lised
La r ge-s ca le
As socia tional
Or der ed
Dece ntr a l ised
Small - s ca l e
Communa l
Flexib l e
NATURE
Ampl e rese r ves
Nature host il e/ ne u t r a l
Envi r onmen t cont roll a ble
Earth ' s r esou r c e s lim i ted
Nature be nign
Na t ure de l i ca t el y ba l a nc ed
KNOWLEDGE
Co nf idence in sc i ence and t ec hnology
Ra t i onal i t y of mea ns (only)
Li mit s t o sc i e nce
Rati ona lit y of en ds
*Stat e
socia l ism , as pr a ctised i n mo s t of t he " Eastern b l oc" , di ffers
as to eco nomi c o r ganisation , t he ma r ket i n pa r ticula r be i ng rep l ac ed
sys tem hy ~ comma nd sy st e m) . Bu t sin c e t he r e i s v irt ual l y no debate
r·o ni i nes 'l l s r a t <! ., ociali sm , 5 that mJnnr va riant on th e Old Para digm
from t he Ol d Pa rad i gm r eall y on ly
by cen t ral planning (a ma r ke t
over o nu c lea r futu r e within t he
ne ed no t be de lineat ed he r e .
2
No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple (and
subs equently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old econ omic assumptions with social welfa r e requirements :
really
and
instead of a New Paradigm there are rather count erpa radigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm) .
Nonetheless it is empi rically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focuss ed .
Large -
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world ,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Pa radigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nucl ear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the recei ved paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, th e nuclear debate is confined to
the tenns of the narrow utilitarianism up on which contemporary economic
practice is p r emisse d, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details :
whatever falls outside these terms is ( dismissed as)
.
.
1.6
irrationa
Furthermore, nuclear development rece ive s its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption frame.work of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails .
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimat ely fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by th e ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism .
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured.
.
7
main parts : -
There are two
It is argue d, firstl y , from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e . g . co sts of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and crite ria for project
selection) .
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of th e
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
3
th e place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within th e
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory argume nts, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian me ans to predetermined ends . )
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear deb a te is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues whe th e r over minutiae and contingenci es of present techno l ogy o r ove r medical
or legal or mathematical details. 8
The double approach can be applied as regards each of t he main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many i nte rr ela t ed problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nucle ar power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
befo re assembled :
establishment, on a massive scale , of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
p roduction possible catastrophe , which delivers as a by-product rad ioactive
wastes which require up to a million years' storage but for which no sound and
e conomic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which r equires for
i t s operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of informa tion and
r es trictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in orde r
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, supper½ and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological develo pmen t, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
e thical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power que st i on s , is
th e unreso l ved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II . THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE .
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both pass e ngers and fr e i gh t.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someon e con signs as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a high ly toxic and exp losive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain th e gas for the
4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if th e train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
o r deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
All of
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while othe r s could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will , that the world needs his pr~uct and it is his duty to supply it , and
that in a ny case he is not responsible for th e train or the people on it. These
sorts of excuses however wo uld norrrally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
context . What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
I
when the consigner, again a "responsible" b usin essman , puts his workers ' health
or other peoples ' welf are at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is hi s own and otherd press ing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls,which produces the material as a
by-product , is in bad financia l straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails , he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and th e whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effe ct, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
espe cially. Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification .
Even where there are serious risks and costs to ones e lf or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not t o be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they a ri se from one's own, or one's group 's, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case . How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as th e argument
progresses . There is no known proven safe way to package th e highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around th e world as
large- scale nuclear development goes ahead. 9 The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average , annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb .
Much of this waste is extremely t oxic .
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer .
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
the ir expected life times of perhaps 40 years , and which, some have estimated,
may require l½ million years to reach saf e levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environ ment fo r
th e ir entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period
a ve rages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million yea r storage problem . Serious problems
have aris en with both short-term and proposed long-t erm methods of storage,
e ven with th e comparatively small quantities of waste produced ove r th e last
10
twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human in t e rven tion, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human i nterference and risk of leakage through non-human factors .
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose flu ctua tion s
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages , could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human
affa irs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years . Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already pro ved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the r e sult in multilayered metal containe rs before rock
deposit , simulation mo dels reveal that radioactive material may not rema in
suitably is ola ted from human environment . 11 In short, the best pres ent storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
.
h .
.
lla
d amaging t eir environment.
Given the heavy costs which could be involve d fo r the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodological ly unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance , none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly test e d, and they may
6.
well prove to involve unforeseen difficultie s and risks when an attemp t is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could
provide a rigorous guaran t ee of safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future µuman factors . But even if an economicall y viable, rigorously safe
long t e rm storage method could be devised , there is the problem of gua rantee ing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economicall y and politically ) seems to p r esuppose a level of efficiency,
pe rfection and concern for the f u ture which has not previously been e ncountere d
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nucl ea r industry. 12
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long t e rm storage
sites through pe rhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weaponsgrade radioactive material will be accessible , over much of the million year
storage peri od, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
Th e assumption that a way will nonetheless be found , before 2000,
which gets around the wastestorag e problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumpti ons of way s ,
an article of faith . It is an assunption supplied by the Old Par adigm, a no
limitations ass ump tion , that there are really no (developmen t) problems that
cannot be solved technologic ally (if not in a fash i on that is always
immediately economi cally feasible).
The assumption has played
an important
part in development plans and pra ctic e.
It has not only encouraged an unwarrant e d
technolog ical optimism (not to say hubris 13 ), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish , es pe cially through science ; it has led t o the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactor ily solved or a solution
is even in sight , and it has led to th e idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled .
It has also led, not surprisingl y, to disasters .
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which a r e becoming known in the
form of limitation theorems 14 ); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technologic al development s often fail to take due account of (risk
a nalysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discuss e d
below) . The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fissi on would
provide unlimi t ed energy (a 'clean unlimited supply of power '). That dr e am soon
shattered. The nu clear industry apparently remains a net consume r of power,
and nuclear fission will be but a quite shor t-t erm supplier of power. 15
)
7.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclea r development
are , then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder r eactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be se riously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of futur e people could
be fo rced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people o f 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials th e only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the fu ture .
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem , that of making a transition t o renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably , again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it .
For they may well have to face the change to renewable res ources in an
over- populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents' dreams of global
industrialisation are realised , more and more of the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associat ed technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it .
It will , moreover, probably be a world which is larg ely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which su ch r enewable r eso urces as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life ,
15a
are in a run-down condition. Such points
tell against th e idea th a t future
people mGst be , if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy , at least
indirect beneficiaries .
It is for such reasons th at the train pa rabl e cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for exampl e , the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (onl y)
by nuclear power.
The 'solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems .
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to ge t itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of e conomies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits .
The " solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner's action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
cl e ar alternatives to · this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them .
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived , the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
of t en not in fact ) in the contemporary wo rld, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
15a
th e future .
There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear pa rcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least whe re the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case .
Just as in the cas e of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in th e present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the ques tion of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear development.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
III
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e . non-immediat e) fut ure, the futur e with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obliga tions to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass , and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democra ti c and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
9.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that th ere are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next gene ration .
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on a ct ing or failing to act deriving from the
ef fect of our actions on future people . Of those philosophers who say , or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity .
Th us moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time ( o r sometimes in space) . Fo r example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive . Among su ch suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
r eq uirements on moral obligation , which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these :- Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his r ights or
en titlement . People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
e nforce any claims they might have for their rights against us.
Secondly , there
a re those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement .
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there couid be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them .
10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the cont ex t of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rul e out th e
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive r ela tions
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent ) people in the far distant futu r e about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has l ittle or no sympa th y .
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
peop l e ; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
some thing acquired, either individually or institutionally , something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. pa rticipatin g
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e . g . love, sympathy, empathy). 16 Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice wh e ther or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable. Consider, for example , a scientific group which, for no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch . No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
...
11.
the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictab le
result of the action. The unconstra ined position clearly implies that this is
an acceptabl e moral enterpris e, that whatever else we might legitimat ely
criticize in the scientis ts' experimen t, perhaps its being ove r-e xpensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to futu re people . The unconstra ined position also endorses as morally acceptabl e
the following sort
of policy: -
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining , processin g and manufactu ring a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendan ts, will
over a pe ri od of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous ep idemi c of cancer among the inhabitan ts of the earth at that time .
According to the unconstra ined view the firm is free to act in its own interests ,
without any considera tion for the harm it does r emote future people.
Such counterex amples to the unconstra ined view, which are easily vari e d
and multiplie d , might seem childii>hl y obvious. Yet the unconstra ined position
concernin g the future f rom which they follow is far from being a straw man ; not
only have several philosoph ers endorsed this position, but it is a cl e ar
implicati on of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligatio n, as
well as of prevailin g e conomic theory. It seems that those who opt for the
unconstra ined position have not considere d such examples , despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstra ined position admits such
counterex amples , that being free to act implies among other thin gs being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstra ined
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many
of those who have put forward the unconstra ined position seem to have had in
mind in denying moral obligatio n is rather that · future people can look after
themselve s, that we are not responsib le for their lives. The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causal l y
independe nt of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself .
Present people are influenci ng it , and in doing so
thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsi bilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obli gation to
tak e accoun t i n what they do of people affected and their interests , to be
care ful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probabili ty of their
actions causing harm, and to see that th ey do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
12.
Furth e rmore, to say that we are not respon s ible f o r th e lives o f future
people does not amount to th e same thing as sayin g t hat we are fr ee to do as we
like with r es pe ct to them , that there are no moral constraints on our act io n
involving th e m. In just th e same way , th e fact that on e does no t hav e o r ha s not
acquired an obliga tion to some stran ge r with whom one has ne ver been i nvolved , that
on e has no responsibil ity for his life, does not imply that on e is fr ee t o do
what on e like s with respect to him, for e xample to r ob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to on e self which could s e riously ha rm him.
These difficultie s for the uncons trained position arise in part from the
(sometime s deliberate) failure to make an important distinction betwe e n acquired
or assume d obligation toward somebody , for which some act of acquisition or
a s sumption is required as a qualifying condition , and moral constraints , which
require, for example, that one should not act so as t o damage or harm someone ,
a n d for which no act of acquisition is required.
There i s a conside rable
di ffer ence in the level and kind of responsibil ity involved. In the first cas e
on e must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e . g.
have loves, sy!ll)athy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibil it y arises
as a r e sult of being a causal agent who is aware of the cons eque nces o r probable
consequence s of his action, and thus does not have to be es pecially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latt e r class , moral c onstra ints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult o r i mpossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfi e d . They appl y a s a result
o f th e abil i t y to produce causal effects on the distant future of a r eas onably
pr e dict a ble nature .
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what do e s not
(ye t) e xist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist . Wh ile
it may pe rhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or a ssume d
ob liga tion in order for it to be claimed that contemporar y people mus t make
special sacrifices f or future people of an heroic kind, or even to he lp them
e s pe cially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrain e d
from harming them . Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigne r cannot
argue in justificatio n of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
re s ponsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
l ove or sympathy for th em and that t hey are not part of his moral community , in
short that he has no special obligations to help them. All that one ne eds to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case , is that there are mo ral
constrain ts against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibil ity for the live s of people involved .
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self- sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinction s between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogat ion this is just
13 .
to misrep resent the positio n of these obliga tions. For exampl e, one
is no more
engagin g in heroic self-sa crifice by not forcing future people into
an unviab le
life positio n or by refrain ing from causing then direct harm than
the consign er
is resorti ng to heroic self-sa crifice in re frainin g from placing his
dangero us
package on the train.
The conflat ion of moral restrai nts with acquire d obliga tion, and the
attemp t there~ ith to view all constra ints as acquire d and to write
off nonacq uired
constr aints, is facilit ated through the use of the term ' moral obligat
ion ' both
to signify any type of deontic constra ints and also to indicat e r athe
r someth ing
which has to be assumed or require d . The conflat ion is encoura ged
by reduct ionist
positio ns which, in attemp ting to accoun t for obligat ion in genera
l, mistake nly
endeavo ur to collaps e all obligat ions . Hence the equa ti on , and some
main roots
of the uncons trained positio n, of the erron eous belief that there
are no moral
constr aint s concern ing the distant future.
The uncons trained view tends to give way , under the weight of counte
rexampl es , to more qualifi ed, and sometim es ambiva lent, positio ns ,
for example
the positio n that
our obliga tions are to immedi ate poster ity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immedi ate succes sors in a better conditi on, and that is all; 17
there are in practic e no obliga tions to the distan t futur e . A main
argume nt
in favour of the latter theme is that such obliga tions would in practic
e be
otiose . Everyth ing that needs to be accoun ted for can be en compass
ed through
the chain picture of obliga tion as linking succes sive genera tions,
under which
each genera tion has obliga tions, based on loves or sympath y , only
to the
succeed ing genera tion . The re are at least three objecti ons to this
chain
accoun t. First, it is inadeq uate to treat constr aints concern ing
the future
as if they applied only between genera tions, as if there were no questio
n of
constr aints on individ uals as opposed to whole genera tions, since
individ uals
can create causal effects , e . e. harm, on the future in a way which
may create
individ ual respon sibility , and which often cannot be sheeted home
to an e ntire
genera tion .
Nuclea r power and its wastes , for exampl e, are strictl y the
respon sibility of small groups of power- hol ders, not a genera tional
respon
sibility .
Second ly, such chains, since non-tr ansitiv e, cannot yield direct obligat
ions to
the distan t future . But for this very r eason the chain pict ure cannot
be
adeq uate, as exampl es again show. For the pic ture is unable to explain
severa l
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the exampl es already
discuss ed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distan t future
withou t
affecti ng the next genera tion, who may not even be able to influen
ce matters .
14.
Thirdly, improvement s fo r immediate successors may be achieved at th e expense of
disadvantag es to people of the more distant future . Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstanc es
be most easily achieved by , ruining it for less immediate successors . Such
cases can hardly be written off as "ne ver- never land" examples since many cases
of environment al exploitatio n might be seen as of just this type. e . g . not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewab le resources and the
long- term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overus e .
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from th e
fa vouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed ove r time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests .
IV . ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE: ECONOMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS. While there are grave difficultie s for the
unconstrain ed position, qualificatio n leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we a r e not entirely unconstrain ed
with respe ct to the distant future , there are obligations , but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the pres ent and immediate
future . The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, coun t for
very much l ess than the interests of present people. Hence such thin gs as nuclear
development and various exploitativ e activities which benefi t present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewha t) disadvantag ed by them .
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories , where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate , so dis counting costs and risks to future people.
a t tempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingl y common , can lead then to the qualified position. What is
objectionab le in such an approach is that
The
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints , just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints , not detennine what those constraints are. There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
th e waste problem. 18 Since there is mounting evidence that future ge ne rations
may well not be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argume nt for discounting the interest s of future gcncrntionfl on thi s
can carry much weight. Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
biH:1i. B
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporar ies would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
development s as nuclear power .
That is, it depends on the already scotched
sacrifice argument .
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimatel y bequeathed to the future gene rations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be , not just better off , but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs. It is argued , from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immedia te future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources . Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalizatio n of monetary
value, that compensatio n - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economica lly - costs much less now th an later . Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g . in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least , insurmounta ble practical difficultie s about
applying such discounting , e . g . how to de t ermine appropriate future discount rates .
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes ,
what is false, that compensatio n, like value, can always be converted into
monetary e quivalents , that peo ple (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, i n cluding cancer and loss
of life . There is no compensatin g a dead man, or for a lost species. In fact
the argument presupposes a do uble reduction neither part of which can succeed :
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
monetarily , 19 but (as against utilitariani sm, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to mat t ers of value . It is also
presupposed that all decision me thods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
16.
are bound to apply discounti ng . This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropria te decision rules do not allow discounti ng, and
discounti ng only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-bene fit and benefit-r isk analyses) , which are, he contends strictly
inapplica ble for nuclear choices (since no t all outcomes can be duly determine d
and assigned probabil ities, in the way that applicatio n of the rules requires. ). 20
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounti ng move often has the same
result as the unconstra ined position . If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensa tion, it is evident that over a
sufficien tly long period of time discounti ng at curren t prices would lead to the
conclusio n that there are no recoverab le damages and so , in economic terms, no
constrain ts . In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the applicatio n of
discoun t rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about 15 years, 21 and applicati on of such rates would simply beg
the question against the i.nterests and rights of future pe ople . Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example , the whole method
of discounti ng is simply inapplica ble, and its use would violate moral
constrain ts .
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids th e objection s
from cases of certain damage, comes from probabili ty considera tions. The distant
future, it is argued , is much more uncertain than t he present and itillue diate
fut ure, so that probabili ties are consequen tly lower, perhaps even approachi ng
or coincidin g with zero for any hypothesi s concernin g the distant future. But
then if we take ac count of probabil iti es in the obvious way , by simply multiplyi ng
th e m against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future
people , except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty ,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbour ing people
where (much ) high~r probabil ities are attached. So in the case of confl ict
between the present and the future where it i s a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediat e future against a much
lower probabili ty of indetenni nate costs to an indetermi nate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved . But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nucle ar case, especial ly if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years , with consequen t
risk of serious harm to thousands of ge nerations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportuni ty
to maintain corporati on profitabi lity or to continue unnecess arily high energy
use.
And even if the costs an d benefits were comparabl e or
evenly weighted,
"
17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner's action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
s ufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefi t or risk-benefi t approach to moral and decision
problems , with o r without the probability frills , is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintu itive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large ga in from
it. But the costs and benefits involved are not transferabl e in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly rais e moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefi t approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of tran sfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptabili ty of the nuclea r
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking . In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelmin g extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved . In contrast the users and supposed beneficiari es
of nuclear energy will be r isking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-benefic iaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any dire ct way
related to a person ' s extent of use .
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian ' s
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introductio n of p r obability consideratio ns - as in utilita r ian de cision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis . One might further object to the probability
argument that probabiliti es involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes ,
and that the outcomes of some morai prob l ems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway .
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
reveals , that a significant risk is created ; such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments .
18 .
Uncerta inty argumen ts in various forms are the most common and importan t
ones used by philo s ophers, economi sts and others to argue f or the position that
we
cannot be expe cted to
distant future .
take serious ac count of the effects of our actions on th e
There are two strands to the uncertai nty argumen t, capable of
s eparatio n , but frequen tly tangled up. Both argumen ts are mistaken , the first
on a priori grounds, the second on a posterio ri grounds. The first argumen t
is a gene ralised uncerta inty argumen t which runs as fol lows :- In contras t to
the exa ct informa tion we can obtain about the present, the informa tion we can
obtain about the effects of our a-ctions on the di s tant future is unreliab le,
fuzzy and highly specula tive. But we cannot base assessm ents of how we shoul
d
act on informa tion of this kind, especia lly when accurate informa tion is obtainable about the present which would indicate differen t act ion. Therefo re we must
r eg retfully ignore the uncertai n effects of our actions on the distant fut ure.
More formally and crudely: One only has obligati ons to the futur e if t hese
obliga tions are based on reliable in forma tion at present as regards th e
distant future. Therefo re one has no obligati ons to the distant future. This
first argumen t is essentia lly a variant on a sceptica l argwnen t in epistemo logy
concerni ng our knowledg e of the future (formall y, replace 'obligat ions ' by
'knowled ge' in the crude stateme nt of the argumen t above). The main ploy is
to
conside rably overesti mate and oversta te the degree of certaint y availabl e with
r es pect to the present and immedia t e future, and the degree of certaint y which
is required as the basis fo r moral conside ration with r espect to the present
and with respect to the f uture.
Associa ted with thi s is the attempt to sugges t
a sharp division as regards certaint y between the present and immedia te future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other . We shall not find, we
suggest , that there is any such sharp or simple divi sion between the distant
future and the adjacen t future and the present, at l east with re spect to those
things in th e pres e nt which are normally subject to moral constra ints. We can
and constan tly do act on the basis of such "unrelia ble " informa tion, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveni ently labels "unce rta i nty"; for scepticproof certaint y is rarely, or never, availab le with respect to much of the
present and immedia te future . In moral situatio ns in the pres e nt, action
often takes acco unt of risk and probabi lity , even quite low probab iliti es .
Conside r again the train example. We do not need to know for certain that the
containe r will break and the lethal gas escape . In fact it does not even have
to be probable , in the relevan t sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consign er's action. It is enough that there is a signific ant
risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decrease d wellb eing of the consigne r is certain and that the prospec ts of the passeng ers
quite uncertai n, the resoluti on of the problem is neverth eless clearly in fa
vour
of the so-calle d "specul ative" and "unrelia ble". But if we do not require
certaint y of action to apply moral constra ints in cont emporary affairs, why
19.
should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, ep istemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral act ion concerning the present and adjacent futur e does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consi deration
ca n be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining th e difference
between the present and the future a nd to justify ignoring future peoples'
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
e ach class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical unc e rtainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account becaus e uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross th a t we canmot determine what the lik ely
cons equences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rati onal ground for
ch oosing between them.
this way : -
The seco!ld uncertainty argume nt can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for eve r y
(action) x", then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
info rmation about future actions which would enable us to detach the
an tecedent of the implication .
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain cl ear
conclusions or dire ctions concerning contemporary action action of th e "It is
wrong to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
th e distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what th e effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to th e
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain an y clea r conclusions about
how to act.
on action .
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate .
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future , but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
"
20 .
argument has to assume .
There are some areas where un certainty is not so grea t as
to ex clude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point ,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certain ty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncerta inty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally r e levant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
t o moral is sues .
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavour s of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, espe cially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what peop le there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unli ke our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or ge netic defec ts, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the ear th of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place .
For this sort of r eason ,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of orde r as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
prope r consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncer taint y
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves .
For example, we may be told that we cannot r eally
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that th ey will exis t or
that their tast es and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon compl e t e ce r taint y of a
sort be yond what is required for the pre sent and imme diate future, whe r e there
i s also commonly no guarantee that some disast e r will not overtake t hose we are
mo rally cowmi tted to. Again we may be told that th e r e i s no guarant ee that
future peopl e will be worthy of any e fforts on our part, because th ey may be
mo rons or for ever plugged into enjoyme nt or other machin es . Even if on e is
prepare d t o accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or int e ll e ctual standards a r e
e ligible for moral consideration - what we are being han de d in such ar guments
as a serious defeating consideration is a gain a mere outside possibility li ke the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is pe rhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular r e ason for doing so, but bec ause he
hasn't looked around the back , drilled holes in it, etc. etc .
Ne ith e r the
cont emporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleas ure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
th e se me re logical possibilities the very real historically supportab l e risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty argume n t s of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succee d in showing th a t it is
a c ce ptab l e to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
,
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste cas e .
This is the argument that
future p eople may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage me thod for
nuclear was tes before they are damaged by escaped waste material . Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not) .
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible . In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer : that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logi cal possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible . The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
s orts were admissible only j_f what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it . In such cases before such actions could
22.
be conside r e d admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect th emselves .
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example wh ere the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of th e effec t of his actions on
the passengers b ec ause they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g . the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positi ve r eason to believe
that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities.
The
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great
as to preclude the consigner's taking account of the passengers' welf are and th e
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the re al possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly r eq uired high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strate gy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat th e
application of moral constraints .
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future .
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example , with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present .
Since th e ir numbers are
ind eterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is rais ed
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latte r are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
23,
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributio nal problems as large and
representat ive of a class of moral prob lems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest. It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indetermina cy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be othe r conflict
cases where the level of indetermina cy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
e . g . the train example which is a conflict case of a t ype . In particular,
th e re will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numb ers , n umbers of
interests, or whatever , cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteris tics of future people .
The crucial question which emerges is then :
are there any features of
futu re people which would disqualify them from full moral consideratio n o r
r e duce thei r claims to such below those of present people? The answe r is:
in
principle None .
Prima facie, moral principles are universalis able , and lawlike,
in that they ap ply independent ly of position in space or in time, for examp le.
But universalis ability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
whi ch are capable of dealing satisfactor ily with the pres ent : in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards th e present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e .g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (whit e skinned) humans , etc .
The only candidates for characteris tics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indetermina cy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see thes e features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way. These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determinatio n of best probable of practical course of action given only
present information ) . In particular, they do not affect cases of th e so~t
be ing considered, nuclear development , where highly determinate or certain
infonnation about the numbers and characteris tics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universaliz ability
principle is not required: it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideratio n; 24
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminat e morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position . As a result of this
.
23a.
universalizabi lity, there are the same general obligations to future peo ple as
to the present; and thus there i s the same obligation to take account of them
and thei r interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage , and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life . Uncertainty
and inde t e rminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
24.
harm in the future case under conside ration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceed ing with the action, thus discri mina ting
against future people.
Accordin gly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity , the conclusi on already tentativ ely reached, that proposa ls for nuclear
developm ent in the present and likely future state of technolo gy and practice
s
for future waste disposa l are immoral.
Before we conside r (in section VII) the remainin g escape route from this
conclusi on, through appeal to overridi ng circumst ances , it is importan t to
pick up th e further case (which heavily r einforce s the tentativ e conclusi on)
against nuclear developm ent, since much of it relies on ethical princip les
similar to those that underlie obligati ons to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenua ting ci rc umstanc es.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN . The
eth ical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to futur e creature
s.
Just as remoten ess in time does not erode obligati ons or enti tl emen ts t o just
treatmen t, neither does location in spac e , or a particu lar geograp hical position
.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposa l rais es serious question s
of
distribu tive justice not only across time, across generat i ons, but also across
space. Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioac tive polluti on in
another state's or region's yard or water s? When that region receives no due
compens ation (whateve r that would amount to, in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)? The answer, and
the
argumen ts underpin ning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentativ e conclusi on concerni ng the injustic e of imposing radioac tive
wastes upon future people. But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and
Japan
cannot endeavo ur to discoun t peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioac tive pollutio n in quite the same way the y can
discoun t people of two centurie s hence . (But what this conside ration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitl ement to just treatmen t can
be discoun ted over time.)
Ethical issues of distribu tive justice, as to equity , concen1 not only
the spatio-t emporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewher e in the
assessm ent of nuclear developm ent; in particu lar, a s regards the treatmen t of
those in the neighbou rhood of reactors , and, dif fe rently, as regards the
•
distribu tion of (alleged ) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations. 25
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks : firstly, radioac tive pollutio n, due to the fact that
reactors discharg e radioac tive materia ls into the air and water near the plant,
25 .
and secondly catast rop hic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor .
immediate question is whether such costs an d risks can be imposed, with any
An
eth ical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs" of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with otl1er largescale polluting industry, where local participation and que stions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional det ermination and popular sovereignty , are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The "normal" emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
car ri es carcinogenic and mutagenic costs .
While the re are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely numbe r of cancers
and precise ex tent of genetic damage induced by exp os ure to such rad iation , over
the local health costs involved. Under t he Old Paradigm, whi ch (ill egi timately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the e thical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nucl ear power, and under
what conditions? Under the Old Paradigm the issue is th en translat e d into
decision-theor etic questions, such as to 'how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation' and ' how to determine what is an
acceptab le level of risk/safe ty for the public. 26
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage . An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal th ey have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster. It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it's nice to have this air con ditioner
working in summer . Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
comp ensate for the agony of cancer . 27 The point is that the costs to one party
a r e not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alte rnatively obtained without such awful costs , and morally indef ensible , being
imposed .
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant . (Children , for example, are in a
26.
particularl y vulnerable position, since they are severa l times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults). In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligi ble percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, all egedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear powe r production (allegedly,
for th e real reasons for nucl e ar development do not concern this silent
majority) . Whatever
charm the argument from overriding benefits had, e ve n
unde r the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that t he re are alternative ,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of deliveri ng the r eal benefi ts
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of
r adia tion on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serio us
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable. One ch eape r trick, deployed by the US
Atomic Energy Commission, 28 is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a pop ulation
has
received with apparently negligible consequence s, th e argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural" level) is also likely
to have negligible consequence s.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted no rmal, and, of course,
so it is th en claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. None of the steps
in this argument is sound.
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no illeffects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affe ct a person's well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, unde r such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal,
e . g. two murde rs or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptabl e .
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits ra diation emissions very
sub s tantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than me re consideratio n of the standards would disclose. Furthermore , the
monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to th e nuclear op erators
themselves, scarcely disintereste d parties . Public policy is determin ed no t so
as to guarantee public he alth, but rather to serve as a ' public pacifier' wh ile
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered . 29
2 7.
While radioacti ve emissions are nn ordinary feature of react o r op e ration,
breakdown is, hopefully , not: an accident of magnitude is accounted , by official
definitio n, an 'extraord inary nuclear occurrenc e'. But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island). 30
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
30a
r e actors ,
then the core melts and 'containm ent failure' is likely, with the
r e sult that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioacti vely contamina ted .
I n the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly
and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident , prope rt y da mages
would exceed $1 7 billion and an area the size of Pennsylva nia would be destroyed .
Mod e rn nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
.
.
31
t h ese conservat ive
Us governmen t f'igures are given
t he con s equences of a
s imilar accident with a modern reactor would according l y be much great e r still.
Th e consigner in risking the lives, we ll-being and property of the
passenger s on the train has acted inadmissi bly. Does a governme nt-sponsor ed
private utility act in a way that is anything other th an much less responsib le
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community , in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train.
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigner s ' action is , as we would ordinaril y ·suppo se , inadmissi ble and i rrespon-
sible.
The proponent s of nuclear power have in effect argued to the cont rary,
while at the same time endeavour ing to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena
and into a technolog ical dispute as to means (in accordanc e with the Old Paradigm) .
It has been contended , firstly, what con trasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibili ty of a catas trophic nuclear accident . Indeed in the
influenti al Rassmusse n report 32 - which was extensive ly used to support public
confidenc e in US nuc lear fission technolog y - an even stronger, an incredibl y
strong , improbab ility claim was stated: n amely , the likelihoo d of a catastrop hic
nucle ar accident is so remote as to be '3.lmost) impossi.bl e. The main argument for
this claim de rives from the assumptio ns and estimates of the report i.tself . These
assumptio ns like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents , incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathemat ical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technolog ical limitatiom s and human error, of waste leakage and r eactor inciden t s
and quite possibly accidents , not in an ideal world far removed from the actual ,
a technolog ical dream world whe re there is no real possibili ty of a nuclear
28,
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclea r world, wh e re wa s t e disposal we r e fool-proof
and reactors we re accident-proof, thin gs would no doubt be morally different.
But we do no t live in s u ch a world .
According to the Rasmuss en r e port its calc ulat ion of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological a ssumptions
and is methodo logically sound.
This is ve ry far from being the cas e .
The under-
ly ing mathematical methods, variousl y called "fault tree analysis " and
"reliability estimating techniques", a r e unsound, because they exclude as "not
credible" po s sibilities or as "not significant" branches that are re a l
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
eliminations that are othe rworldly .
In fact the me thodology and dat a of the report
· · 1 y cr1.t1.c1.ze
h as b een soun dl y an d d ec1.s1.ve
. · ·
d . JJ And 1.t
. h as b een s h own t1at
I
t he r e
is a real possibili t y, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident .
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negli gib l e
prob abi li ty of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, be ing of no greater
orde r than risks of accidents t hat ar e already socially accepted.
Here we
enco unt e r agai n that insidious e ngin e ering approach to morality built into
mod e ls of an e conomic cast, e.g. benefit - cost balance s heets , risk assessment
mode ls, et c.
Risk assessment, a sophistica ti on of trans ac tion or tr ade -off
mode ls, pur.-ports to p ro vide a compari s on between th e relative ri sks at tach ed to
different options, e . g . e nergy options, which settl es th e ir ethical status .
The fo llowing lines of argume nt are encountered in a risk assessme nt as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
(ii )
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries , etc .) which is less than th at of option b, which is already accepted;
there for e op tion a is acceptable . 34
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accident s , which a r e
accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable .
A little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argt.mlent involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
I t is far too simple -minded, and it ignores distrib ut ional
and other r e l e vant aspect s of the context.
In o rde r to ob tain an ethical
assessment we s hould need a much fuller pi cture and we sho uld nee d to know at
least t he s e thin gs :- do the costs and benef it s go to th e same parti es ; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also t he person who receives the benefits or
29.
primar ily, as in driving or cigare tte smokin g, or are the costs impos
e d on other
parties who do not benefi t? It is only if the parties are the same
in the case of
th e options compar ed, and there are no such distrib utiona l problem
s, that a
compar ison on such a basis would be val.id. 35 This is rarely the cas
e , and it is
not so in the case of risk assessm ents of energy options . Second
ly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activit y which he knowin gly
underta kes
in a situati on where he has a r easona ble choice, knowing it entails
the risk,
etc ., and is the level of risk in propor tion to the le~el of the
rel evant
ac tivity, e.g. as in smoking ? Thirdly , for what reason is the risk
imposed :
is it for a s e rious or a relativ ely trivial reason? A risk that is
e thica lly
accepta ble for a serious reason may not be ethica lly accepta ble for
a trivial
reason. Both the argume nts (i) and (ii) are often employe d in trying
to justify
nuclea r power. The second argume nt (ii) involve s the fallaci es of
th e firs t (i)
and an additio nal set , namely that of forgett ing that the health risks
in the
36
nuclea r s e nse are cumula tive , and already high if not , some say ,
too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefi ts you have to accept th e costs "
is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefi ts then you have to accept
the
costs (or some of them at least)" is anothe r and very differe nt thin
g . It is
a widely accepte d moral princip le, already argued for by way of exampl
es and
already invoked , that one is not, in genera l, entitle d to simply
transfe r cos ts
of a signifi cant kind arising fron an activit y which benefi ts onesel
f onto other
parties who are not involve d in the activit y and are not benefi ciaries 37
.
This
transfe r princip le is especi ally clear in cases where the signifi cant
costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof , and where
the benefi t to
the benefi tting par ty :is of a noncru cial or dispen sible nature , becaus
e, e . g.
it can be substit uted for or done withou t. Thus, for instanc e , one
is not
usually entitle d to harm , or risk harmin g, anot her in the process
of be nefitti ng
onesel f . Suppose , for anothe r example , we consid er a village which
produc es, as a
result of an indust rial process by which it lives, a noxious waste
materi al which
is expens ive and difficu lt to dispose of and yet creates a risk to
life and health
if undispo sed of. Instead of giving up thei r i.ndus trial process and
turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surroun ding
country side,
they persis t with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way
deliver y
service , on the train, to the next village . The inhabi tants of this
village are
then forced to face the problem either of under taking the expens ive
and difficu lt
dispos al process oor of sustain ing risks to thei r own lives and health
or else
leaving the village and their livelih oods. Most of us would see
this kind of
transfe r of co s ts as morally unacce ptable .
JO.
From this arises a necessary condition for ene rgy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the trans fer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its us e .
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
vil lages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors , especially, as in third world
co untries, neighbours who are not nuclear powe r users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain wide spread and serious forms of pollution, a nd is one
of its most obje ctionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we sho ul d not hand the world on t o
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - t he tramsmission
principle.
For if we did then that would be a signi ficant transfe r of costs .
(The corollary can be independerltly argued for on the basis of certain e t hic al
theories) .
VI . OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discuss ed by no means exhaus t the
envi ronme ntal, health and safety risks and costs in or arising from th e nuclea r
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle include s man y sta ges both before and after
r eacto r operation , apart from waste disposal, namely mining , milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and trans po rtati on of
materials.
Seve ral of these stages involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionab le material,
and of the further prolife ration of nuclear armaments - thes e hazard s have
parallels, if not exact equival ents, in other very polluting method s of generating
power, e . g. "workers in the uranium mining industry sustain 'the same risk' of
38
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry".
Furth ermo re, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resultin g from location,
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in workin g with radio a ctive
material are now known in advance of choice of such a n occupation: with where
one al re ady lives things are very different.
The uranium mine r's choice of
occup ation can be compared with the airline pilot's choice, whe r eas t he Pacific
Islander ' s "fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue o f arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportuni ti es and often a t l east ease peo ple
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, i s not an i ssue newly produced by nuclear associated occupa tions .
31.
Other social and environm ental problems - though endemic where large-sca le
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalita rian and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more imtimatel y linked with the nucle ar power
cycle.
Though pollu tion is a common and generally undesirab le component of
large-sca le industria l operation , radioacti ve pollution , such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especiall y a legacy of nuclear developme nt, and a
specially undesirab le one , as enormous rectifica tion estimates for de ad radioactive lands and waterways reveal .
Though sabotage is a threat t o many large
industrie s , so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentra tion
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequen ces, of a different order of magnitude from most industria l sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown) . Though theft of material from more
dubious enterpris es such as munitions works can pose threa ts to populatio ns at
large and can assist terrorism , no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterp rises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionab le material . No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabricatio n into such
massive explosive s.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerabl e on so
many fronts.
In part to reduce it, vulnerab ility, in part because of its long and
continuin g associati on with military activitie s, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourage s, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies , crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of associati on and of expressio n, and free access to
informati on . These practices include secrecy , restricti on of infonnati on,
formation of speci al police and guard forces, espionage , curtailme nt of civil
lib e rties.
Already operators of nuclear installat ions are given extraordi nary
powers, in vetting employees , to investiga t e the backgroun d and
activitie s not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installati ons themselve s
become armed camps, which especiall y offends British sensibili ties.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constable s) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installat ions and made it
answerabl e ..• to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority . 39
These developme nts in the United Kingdom, and worse in West Germany, presage
along with nuclear developme nt increasin gly authorita rian and anti-demo cratic
societies . That nuclear developme nt a ppears to force such political consequen ces
tells heavily against it.
32.
Nuclear developme nt is further indicted political ly by the dire ct
connectio n of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is fortunate ly true that
e thical questions concernin g nuclear war - for example, whether a nucle ar war
is justified , or just, under any circumsta nces , and if so what circums tances are distingui shable from those concernin g nuclear power. Undoubted ly , however,
t he spread of nuclear powe r is substanti ally increasin g the technical me ans
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportuni ty for , and
chances of, nuclear engagemen t.
Since nuclear wars are neve r account able
positive goods , but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirab le .
The spread
of nuclear power according ly
expands the opportuni ty for, and chances of, highly undesirab le consequen ces.
Finally the la tt e r, so increasin g thes e chances and opportun ities, is itself
undesirab le, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear developme n t, is also
undesirab le .
The details and considera tions that fill out this argume nt,
from nuclea r war against nuclear developme n t, are many. They are fir stly
technical , that it is a relativel y straightfo rward and inexpensi ve matte r to
make nuclear explosive s given access to a nuclear powe r plant, secondly political ,
that nuclear engagemen ts once institute d
likely to escalate and that those
who control (or different ly are likely to force access to) nuclear power plant s
do not shrink from nuclear confronta tion and are certainly prepared to toy with
nuclear engagemen t (up to "strategi c nuclear strikes" at least) , and thirdly
ethical, that wars invariabl y have immoral consequen ces, such as mas sive
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justifica tion is.
Nucl ea r wars are certain to be considera bly worse as regards damage inflicted
than any pr e vious wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars p ut together) , because of th e enormous destructi ve power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioacti ve effec ts, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversi bility of any such confronta tions .
The supportin g considera tions are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
a r e designed to show that the chances of such undesirab l e out comes is itself
und e sirable .
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborate d in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternativ e options is
a case of de ci sion making under uncertain ty , because in particula r of th e gross
uncertain ties involved in nuclear developme nt. In cases of this type the
ap propriate rational procedure is to compare worst cons equences of each
alternati ve, to reject those alternati ves with th e wor s t of these worst
consequen ces (this is a pretty uncontrov ersial part of th e maximin rule which
enjoins selection of the alternati ve with the best worst consequen ces) . The
nuclear alternati ve has, in particula r because of the r e al possibili ty of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequen ce~ and is according ly a particula rly undesirab le
alternati ve.
33.
VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS,AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
DEVELOPMENT. As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development , only one justificatory route r emains open, that of app e al to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed ,
the consigne r's action cannot be justifi ed by purely economistic argume nts,
such as that his profits would ris e , the firm or the village would be more
prosperous , or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitl ed to cre ate a serious
risk to othe rs for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
parti cular, applied to the nuclear case. For this r eason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under th e Old Paradi gm to promote
nuclear development - e .g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electri city
utilities, and the need otherwise fo r uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these econornistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristica lly derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vic e versa .
What do have to be considered are however moral confli ct arguments, that is
arguments to the effe ct that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alt e rnative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and will ensue . For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may a rgue that his action is justified becaus e unless it is take n his
village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others;
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcu t, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral confl i ct are based on competin f
commitments to present people, and others on competing obligatio ns to future people .
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impos e on the future
significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and e xhaustive set of
alternatives (or a t ].east practical alternatives ) and upon showing that the only
alterna tives to admittedly mo rally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in th e argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
to starvi ng or to the sendin g off of the parce l, name l y ea
rning a liv ing in some
other way - then the argum ent is defect ive and cannot r eadily
be patche d . Just
s uch a suppre ssion of practi cable altern atives has occurr ed
in the argum ent
design ed to show that the altern atives to the nuclea r option
are even worse than
the option itself , and that there are other factua l defect
s in thes e argum ents
as well. .In short, the argum ents depend essen tially on the
presen tation of
false dichot omies .
A first argum ent, the povert y argum ent , is that there is
an ove rridin g
ob li gation to the poor , both the poor of the third world
and the poor of
indus trialis ed countr ies . Failur e to develo p nuclea r energy
, it is often claime d,
would amoun t to denyin g them the oppor tunity to reach the
standa rd of afflue nce
we curren tly enjoy and would create unemp loymen t and povert
y in th e indus triali s e d
n a tions.
The unemp loymen t and povert y argume nt does not stand up to
exami nati on
eithe r for t he poor of th e indus trial countr ies or for thos
e of th e thir d world.
The re is good eviden ce that large- scale nuclea r energy will
help to increa se
unemp loymen t and povert y in the indus trial world, throug h
the divers i on of very
much availa ble capita l into an indust ry which is not only
an excep tional ly
poo r provi der of di rect employ ment , but also helps to reduce
availa bl e jobs throug h
encour aging substi tution o f energy use for labour use. 40
The argume n t that nuclea r
ene rgy is needed for the third world is even less convin cing.
Nuclea r energy is
both politi cally and econom ically inapp ropria te for th e third
world, since it
requir es massiv e amoun ts of capita l , requir es numbe rs of
import ed sci en tists
and engine ers, but create s neglig ible local employ ment, and
depend s for its
feasib ility upon, what is largel y lackin g , establ ished electr
icity transm ission
system s and back-u p facili ties and suffic ient electr ical
applia nce s to plug into
the system . Politi cally it increa ses foreig n depend ence,
adds to ce ntrali sed
entren ched power and reduc es the chance for change in the
oppres sive politi cal
struct ures which are a large part of the proble m . 41 The
fa c t that nuclea r energy
is not in the intere sts of the people of t he third world
does not of course
mean that it is not in the intere sts of, and wanted by, their
rulers , the
wester nised and often milita ry elites in whose intere sts
the econom ies of thes e
countr ies are usuall y organi sed, and wanted often for milita
ry purpos es . It
is not patern alistic to examin e critic ally the demand s these
ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
35 .
The po verty argume nt is then a fraud. Nuclear ene r gy will not be used t o
help th e poor. Both for the third world and for the industr ialised co untrie
s
there are well-kno wn energy-c onservin g alternat ives and the practi cal option
of
developi ng oth e r energy sources, alternat ives some of which offer f a r bette r
prospec ts for helping the poor .
It can no longer be pretende d that there is no alt e rnative to nuclear
de velopme nt: indeed nuclear de velopme nt is itself but a bridging , or stop-gap
,
procedu re on route to solar or perhap s fusion deve lopment . And there a r e various
alternat ives : coal and other fossil fuels, geotherm al, and a range of solar
op tions (includi ng as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
each po ss ibly in combina tion with cons e rvation measures ~ 2 Despit e the availab
ility
of alterna tives, it may still be pre t e nde d that nuclea r deve lopment is ne cess
ary
fo r affluenc e (what will emerge is that it is advantag eous for the power and
aff luence of ce rtain select groups ) . Such an assumpt ion really und erlies part
o f t he pover ty argumen t, which thus amounts to an elabora tion of th e trickledown argumen t (much f avoured within the Old Paradigm se tting) . For the a rgument
runs : - Nuc l ea r developm ent is necessar y for (continu ing an d in c r eas in g)
affluenc e.
Affluenc e inevitab ly tr i ckl es down to th e poor. Th e r e for e nuclear
developm ent benefits the poor . First, the argumen t does not on i ts own sh ow
a nything specific about nuclear power : for it works equally well if ' ene r gy '
is substitu ted f or ' nuclear ' .
It has also to be shown , what the next major
argumen t will try to claim, that nuclear developm ent is unique among e ne rgy
alternat ives in increasi ng affluenc e . The second assumpt ion , that affluenc e
inevitab ly trickles down, has now been roundly refuted , both by r ecent historic
al
da ta, which show increasi ng affluenc e ( e .g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
co upled with increasi ng poverty in several countrie s, both developi ng and
de veloped , and th r ough economic models which reveal how "affluen ce" can increase
withou t r e dist ribution occur ring .
Another maj o r argumen t a dvanced to show moral conflic t app eals to a set
of suppos e dly ove rr iding and competin g obligati ons to future people . We have,
it is said , a du ty to pass on the immense ly valuable things and institut ions
which our culture has develope d .
Unless our high-tec hnology , high ene r gy
industr ial society is continue d and fo s tered, our valuab l e institut ion s and
tra ditions will fall into de cay or be swept away. The ar gument is essentia lly
th a t without nuclear powe r, withou t th e conti n ued level of materia l wealth
43
it alone is assumed to make possible , the li gh ts of our civiliza ti on wil l go
out.
Fut ure people will be th e los e rs.
36,
The lights-goin g-out argument doe s rais e quest ions as to what is valuable
in o ur society, and of what characteris tics are necess ary for a good society .
But for the most part th ese large questions, which deserve much full e r
ex amination , can be avoided .
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
un critical position with re spe ct to present high-techno logy societi es , apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable . It assumes that technologi c
society is unmodifiabl e , that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conse rvation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse. It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of ene rgy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is a ll eged t o furnish ar e essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
The assumption that technologic al
so c ie ty's energy patterns are unmodifiabl e is especially so - after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have r equired major social and technologic a
r es tructuring and consumption modificatio n. If western society ' s demands for energy
a re totally unmodifiabl e without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction , but one might ask what use its culture co uld
be to future people who would very likely , as a consequence of this destruction ,
lack the resource base which th e argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporar y society.
There is also difficulty with th e assumption of uniform valuablene ss;
but if this is rejected the question be comes not: what is necessary to maintain
exis ting high-techno logical society and its political institution s, but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and th e political
institution s which are needed to maintain those valuable things . While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to a rgu e that it
is e ssential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a du ty to pass .on to the fut ure.
The evidence, for instan ce from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
The re is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But e ve n
if a radical change in these di rec tions is independent ly desirable, as we should
arg ue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-goin g-out a rgument a re wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-b e ing is required to consume less energy than at
37.
present , and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
consumption which is assumed in the usu al economic case for nucl ear energy . 44
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to preven t the
lights going out in west e rn civilisation , but to enable th e lights to go on
burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
th e Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high e nergy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, es pecially if e nergy
is obtained by nuclear fission means , be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an ext remely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susce ptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source , whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people's lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably t e nd to become
autho ritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
things, of its response to the threat pos ed by dissident groups in the nuclea r
.
.
situation.
45
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of th e worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valua ble
asp e cts, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
p ersonal and collective autonomy which exist , would be lost or diminish e d:
political freedom , for example, is a high price to pay for consume ri sm and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technologynuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rath e r, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argumen t, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
38 .
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
appeal to fut urity, closed.
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scal e nuclear developmen t i s a crime agains t
the future is inevitable .
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other ar_guments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future .
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The arg ument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has r elied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for examp l e,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounte d (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of marketcentred economic theory ), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the cas e, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice .
Large-scale nucl ear developme nt is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy .
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alt ernatives to given economic
ends.
Admi t tedly so much capital has already been invested in nucle ar fission
research and development, in marka:l. contrast to other newer rival sources of
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs.
The reasons can be
divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
(ou t) , and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, pub l icly
eco nomic (in that they are app roved for public consumption), and th e r ea l
r ea s ons , which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social
control.
39.
The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going -out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
valuable!): - Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e . g. to increas e the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistributi on problems, and connected social
unr e st, e tc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is
part of US energy policy, 46 and the second premiss is supplied by standard
economics textbooks . But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmen tal costs carried by unqualified
47
economi c growth .
More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rath e r an appropriate and less
vulne rabl e restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards. For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alt e rnatives .
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of th e premiss
Nuc lear power is the economicall y best way to sustain economic growth, 'economicall y
best' being filled out as ' most efficient', 'cheapest ' , 'having most favourable
benefit-cos t ratio', etc.
Unfortunate ly for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively, unless
a goo d deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done. Much data, beginning with
th e cancellatio n of nuclear plant orders, can't be assembled to show as much. Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to b e permitted at all, and evidently true
premisses
if the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public ( governmenta l)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments . Virtually all available data
concen1s the USA; in EuroZS, West and East, true cos ts of uniformly "publicly=
controlled" nuclear power
are generally not divulged.
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants .
Komanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26 % in 1985. 49 And
capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell rather decisively
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants . Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators . Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the elect ricit y th ey were
designed to produ ce , and that when Atomic Energy Commis sion estimates of relative
costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both opera t ed at 80% of design
capacity , were adjusted accordingly , nuclear generated power proved to be far more
40.
.
h
.
d 50
expensive
tan
estimate.
The discrepancy between actual and estimated
capacity
is especially important because a plant with an ac tual capacity factor of 55 %
produced electricity at a cost about 25% high e r than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers' projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
The low reliability
of nuclear plants (p e r kilowatt output) as compared with the superior
r e liability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
grounds of ef ficienc y and product production costs , against nuclear powe r .
Thes e unfavourable assessments are from a privat e (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account .
The main subsidies are through research and development , by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
51
Act ), in en richme n 4 and in waste management . It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nucl ea r power by at least 25% ( and probably much more) .
Wh en official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is f ound that they inadmissibly omit seve ral of the public
costs i nvolve d in producing nuclear power .
For example, the analyses igno re
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known curren tly
wha t t he costs involved are .
But even using actual waste handling cos t s (while
wastes await s torage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuc l ear . 52
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage , are dul y taken into account, the balance is swung stil l further i n
favo ur of al te rnatives to nuclear and
aga i nst nuclear power .
In short , eve n on
proper Old Par a digm accounting, the nu c l ear alte rn at iv e s hould be rejected.
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly se ems ; it has b een
kept going n~ through its clear economic v iability, but by massive pub li c
s ubsidization , of s e vera l types .
In USA, to take a main examp le where
information is available , nuclear developme nt is publicly supported through
heavily subsidized or somet i mes free research and development , thro ugh the
Price-Anderson Act, which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i . e . wh ich in ef fe ct p rovided t he insurance subsidy making corporat e nuclear
development e conomicall y f e asibl e, and through government ag r eement to handle all
r adioactive wastes .
While the Old Paradigm str ictly construed c annot sup port un economical
developments, cont empo rary liberalisation of the Paradigm do e s allow fo r
un economi c projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
soc ial welfare.
Duly admitting s ocial welfare and some
equity
pr i nciples
41,
i n th e dist ribut ion of wealt h (not necessa rily of pol l ution) l e ads the modern
version of the Old Paradigm , called the Mo dified Old Paradigm .
The main
changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of
economic facto rs, e . g . individual self-he lp is down- played , wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g . through t:axation , market forces are re gulated
or disp la ced (not in principle eliminat e d, as with stat e s ocialism).
Now it
has been cont ended - outrageous though it should now se e m - that nuclear powe r
is i n the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example ,
apart from those already mentioned suc h as energy fo r growth and che ap
e l ect ricity, and such as plantiful powe r f or heating and cooking a nd app lian ce
use , avoidan ce of shortages , rat ioning ,
brown-outs and the like .
Since
alternative power sources, such as coal, could s e rve some ends given power was
supplied with suitable extravagance, the
argumen t has aga in to show that t he
cho ice of nucle ar power over other a lterna tives is best in the requ isite
respects, in s erving the public interes t.
Such a n ar gumen t is a matter for
decision theory, unde r which head cost -bene f i t analyse s which rank alternatives
a l so fall as special cases .
Decision theory purports to cover th eo r e tically the field of choice
b e tween alte rnatives; it is present ed as the theory which ' dea l s with t he
.
pro bl em o f c h oosing
one cours e o f acti. on among s e vera 1 poss1'bl. e cou r ses 1 . 53
Th us the choice of alt e rnati~ modes of energy pro duc ti on, t he ene r gy choice
problem, be comes an exercise
in decision theory; and the nucl ea r choice is
often ''.justi f ied" in Old Paradigm terms t h rough app e al to decision t heo ry.
But though decision theory is in principle comp rehens ive , as soon as it is put
to work in such practi cal cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronte d with is a
depauperate
theory drastically
pruned down to confo r m with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream e conomic
theory .
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comp a ring , to take one
imp ortant example , a general optimisation model for decision (wh ere
uncertainty is not gross) with comparab le decision the ory methods, such as th e
expe cted uti lity model.
The general model for best choice among alte rnatives
specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constrain ts, which may
include
et hical constraints ex clud ing cert a in alt e rnati ves under gi ven
cond itions .
Expected utility
models dEmote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference prop e rt ies t hat may not obtain, and elimina te
constraints altoget her (absorbing what is fo rbidden, fo r examp le , as having a
hi gh dis u tili ty, but one that can be compensate d for none th eless ).
Thus , in
42.
particula r,
e thical constrain ts against nuclear developme nt are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensat ion for damage
sustained . Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled , so no longer at issue are the defective (nee-clas sical)
economic assumptio ns made in the theory, for example as to the assessmen t of
everythin g t o be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms : everythin g worth accountin g has a price), and as to the legitimac y
of transferr ing with limited compensat ion risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework , a case of decision under uncertain ty . It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicabl e),
be cause some possible outcomes are so unce rtain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective ) quantifia ble probabil ities can be assigned to them.
It ems that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core me ltdown
of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear de velopment : 54
widesprea d radioactive pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain .
The correct rule for decision under uncertain ty is, in the case of energy
ch oice , maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended .
In fact, on ce again, it is unnecessa ry for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected .
Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same rejection s for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergen ce in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected . All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option .
A further convergen ce can be effected
also , because the best possible (economic ) outcomes of such leading options as
coal and a hydroelec tric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elabo rated). Unde r these
condition s complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Hor wicz rule) which take
account of both best possible and most possible outcomes under each option
reduce to the maximin
rule .
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximum rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options
where worst outcomes are
substanti ally better
than that of the nuclear
option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare , not th e nuclear
dream, is realised) . Further applicati on of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predomin antly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effe cts
on the earth 's climate from burning massive quantitie s of such fuels .
43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with maximin
position several rivals to maximin
proposed,
each
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
Some of these
rules , such as the risk- added reasonin g criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
which 'assesses
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
risk it adds to those pre-existin g in the status quo, rather than in te rms of
th e absolute value of the risk associated with the policy' are decidedly
dubious,
and rather than offering a
rational
decision procedure appears t o
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
~~at will be argued, or rather
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival
rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option .
For example , the keep -options-op en or allow-for-r eversibility
(not an entirely unquestiona ble rule
rule
'of strictly limited applicabili ty')
e xcludes the nuclear option because 'nuclear plants and their by-products have
an air of irreversibi lity ... " One cannot simply abandon
a nuclear reactor
the way one can abandon
a coal-fired plant"' (p.506). The compare-the alt e rnatives rule, in ordinary application , leads back to th e cost -b e nefit
assessments , which, as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-s ustainable-b enefits rule,
which ' directs us to opt for th e policy producing the highest level of net
b enefits which can be sustained indefinitel y', 'decisively favours r e newable
sources ', ruling out the nuclear option.
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
further from the Old Paradigm framework,
harm-avoida nce and protecting- thevulnerable als o yields th e same nuclear-exc luding results. Harm-avoida nce,
in particular, points
1
decisively in favour of "alt ernative" and "renewable "
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy cons ervation'
(p.442) .
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
the result is the same, a nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
standards . Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefi t analyses,wi th
probabiliti es duly multiplied in, and the
conclusion
is as before from
cost-b enefit co nsideration s, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut : nor does its Modificatio n. The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached. It is, in any case,
sufficientl y evident that contemporar y e conomic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with nee-classic al economic
....
44.
th eory nor, to consider the main modification , with social democratic
th eory .
There are , firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one :
corporations so committed are understandably
ke en to realise returns on capital already invested .
There are also typical
self-interest reasons fo r commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in politica l
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others , and so on .
The r e are
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by t e chnocratic-entrepre nial elite, a belief
in socl al control from above , control which nuclear powe r o f f ers f a r mo r e tlwn
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter th e power bas e , a f a ith
in th e unlimitedness of t e chnological enterprise, and nuclear in particular ,
so that any real probl ems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such b e li e f s are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
gove rning and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
thes e sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
thos e whos e types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear developme nt
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs .
It is then, contemporary corporate capitalsim, along with its state
e n t erprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure , corporate
capitalism , which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in we stern
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
t ype such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice .
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis.
split into two main cases, the notional
US
This diagnosis can be
development of nuclear power in the
and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible .
By comparison with the West, nuc lear power production i n
th e
small
Eastern bloc is
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
which had in 19 77 only about
nuclear plants .
one -sixth the wattage output of
US
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported elsewhere to any great extent .
American technology has .
45,
The 60s were, because of the growth in electrici ty demand, a period of
great expansion of the elec trical utilities in the US . These companies we re
e ncouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlle d or influence d reasons:- Firs tly, owing to
governme ntal regulatio n procedure s the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one. Secondly ,
the US governmen t arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation ,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies , actively
encourage d a nuclear choice and nuclea r deve lopment. In particula r, state
limitatio n of liability and shoulderi n g of part o f insurance for nu clear
accidents and state arrangeme nts to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profit able private utility operation appear feasibl e and r esulting in nuclea r
investmen t.
In the 70s, though the state subsidiza tion continued , the private
pict ur e changed : 'high costs of construct ion combine d with low capacity
factors and poor r eli ability have wiped out the last advantage that nuclear power '
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in th e US is con trolled by a few
co rpor ations , so the world mark et is dominated by a few countries , predomina ntly
and first of all the US, which through its two leadi ng nuclear companies ,
We stinghous e and Gen e ral Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
technolog y. 55 These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequen tly world markets by US foreign policies, ba sically th e " Ato ms for
Peace" program supplemen ted by bilateral agreement s providing for US technolog y ,
r e search, enri ched uranium and financial capital. ' The US offered a [ s tat e
s ub si dize d ] nuclear package that Europe could not refus e and with whi ch the
British could not compete'.
In the 70s the picture of US dominatio n of Common
Market nuclear technolog y had given way to subtler influence : American companies
held (actually dealing with relevant governmen ts) substanti al interests in Europ ean
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technolog y which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
ag re ements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries , for
example, Argentina , Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia , Iran, Ire l and, Israel ,
Pakistan, Philippin es, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa, Spa in,
Taiwan, Turk ey , Venezuela , South Vi etnam.
The US proceeded ,
in this way, to ship
nuclear technolog y and nuclear materials in gre at quantitie s round th e world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear t echnology t hrough th e Internati onal Atomic
Ene rgy Agency , originall y de si gne d to control and saf eg uard nuclear ope rati ons,
but most of whos e ~udget and activitie s • .. have gone to promote nu c l ear
activitie s' .
46.
A main reason for th e promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
markets for reactors. Less developed countries
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safe t y regulations
are loose and enforcement rar e , where public opposition
is not pennitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
easy sales.
[Forj
..• the US has considerabl e leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
expe rience that many of the worst dictatorshi ps in the planet
would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support .
Many of those same regimes
are now
pursuing
the
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons. 56
It is e v ident from this sketch of the ways and means of r eactor
proliferatio n that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and the social Modificatio n, but that the practices (of
corp orate capitalism and associated third world imperialism ) involve much
that is eth ically unacceptabl e, whether
by olde r, modif ied, or alternative
57
percepts;
for principles such as those
and self-d e termination are grossly vio late d.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES . The futur e energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable . For it
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associ ated
phe nomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to ment ion the
despoliatio n caused by extensive strip mining , all of which result from its us e
in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbenefic iaries for some concentrate d benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
58
and replacement .
To these conventiona l main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologie s, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroele ctricity . The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technologic al but social , and involves both
conservatio n measures and the restruct urin g of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumerist ic
and nonconsume ristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternative s , conventiona l t echnologica lly-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of de ciding in which way to meet
4 7.
give n and unexamine d goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but als o a matter
of examining the goals. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technolog ies or substitut e ways of meeting some fi xed or give n
demand or level of consumpti on, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with s oft rather than hard technolog ies; we are also fac e d, and pr i ma rily, with th e
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society t hat creates
them . It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to mee t these
alleged needs conceived of as inevitabl e and unchangea ble . (Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessa ry trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.) Na turally this is not to deny that th e se softer options are
sup e rior because of the ethically unaccepta ble features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technolog y, howe ver benign in principle , will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expect e d to meet
unbounded and uncontrol led energy consumpti on and demands. Even the more benign
technolog ies such as solar technolog y could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriora ted world being hand e d
on to them . Consider, for example, the effect on the world's forest s , which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for productio n of methanol or o f
e lectricit y by woodchipp ing (as already planned by forest authoriti es and
contempla ted by many other energy organisat ions) . While few would object to t he
use of genui ne waste material for energy productio n, the unrestric ted exploi t ation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of " solar energy" or not. - to meet
e ver increasin g energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's
already hard-pres sed natural forests.
The effects of such additiona l demands on the maintenan ce of the
forests are often dismissed , even by soft technolo gicalists, by the simpl e
expedient of waving around the label 'renewabl e resources '. Many forests are
in principle renewable , it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitat ion , but in fact there are now very few forestry operation s anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completel y renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values. 59 In many regions too the rate of
e xploitatio n which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced . It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainfores t types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciat ion
of the conduct of contempor ary forestry operation s, who i s also concerned with
long-t erm conservat ion of the forests and remaining natural communiti e s, must
regard with alarm. The result of massive deforesta tion for energy purposes,
48,
r esemb li n g the deforesta tion of England at the beginning of th e Industrial
Revolution, again for ene rgy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in s t eeper lands and trop i cal are as , dese rtification in more a rid
r egions, possib le climatic change, and massive impoverishm en t of na tural
ecosystems .
Some of us do not wa nt to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a de fores ted world to the future, any more than we want t o pass on on e
poisone d by nuclear products or polluted by coal p roduct s . In sh or t, a mere
swi t ch t o a more benign t e chnology - important though this i s - wi th out any
more bas ic structural and social change is inadequate .
Nor is such a simple technolo gi cal swi. tch likely to be achieved. It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuc lear
program (and that of the countrie s it influences, much of the world), in the
way pressure appeared
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplishe d, it is ve ry un likely
give n th e inte gration of political powe rholders with those sponsoring nuclear
de velopment . 60
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism , consumption far beyo nd genuine needs, a nd
a n e conomic s tructure which en coura ge s increasing use of highly energy-inte nsive
mode s of prod uc tion. This means, for instance, trying to change a social
stru c ture in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work f o rce
are cogs i n a production machine over which they have ve ry little r eal cont r ol
an d in which most people do unpleasant or boring work fro m which they derive
very 1i t tle real satisfactio n in orde r to obta i n the r eward of consume r goo ds
and services . A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
prod ucts rather than proc es s e s, fro m consumption , rath e r than from satisfac tion
in work an d in social r e lations and oth er activities , is virtually bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unn e cessary consumption . (A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but fo r created and nongenuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce . ) Consumption frequently
be comes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the large r set of
adjustments involved in s ocially implementin g the New Paradigm , the move away
f rom consumerism is for examp le part of th e more ge ner al shift from ma t eri al ism
and ma terialist values .
The social change option tends to be obscured in mos t dis cussions o f
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it do e s
que stion unde rlying values of current social arrangemen ts . The conventiona l
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
61
n ee ds
) as unchall e ngeable, and th e iss ue to be on e of which t ech nology can
49.
be most profi tably employed to meet th em.
This e ffectiv e ly pre s en ts a f a l se
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand a s lacking a s ocial
contex t so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
take n as unchallengeable and unchangeable .
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argue d by representat i ves
of such industries as trans!X)rtation and petroleum, as for exampl e by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
powe r boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent th em from satisfying
th e se wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such nee ds and wants arise or are produced.
To point to th e de t e rmination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach a ccording to which they are entirely de t ermined at the framewo rk level
( e .g. by indu s trial organisation) and th e r e is no such thing as indivi dual
ch oic e or de termination at all.
It is to s ee the soci a l framework as a major
f a c t o r i n de t e rmining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel ,
a n d t o see ap pare ntly individual choices made in such matte rs as being channelle d
a nd dire cte d by a social framework de t e rmined l argely i n th e inte r es t s o f
corporat e an d private pro f it and advantage .
The so cial change option is a hard option - at l e ast it wil l b e difficult
to obtain pol itically - but it is the only way , so it has been argued , of a voidin g
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of r easons t han
suc h ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective 62 , a perspective integ ral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingl y requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and pol i tical adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative require s will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option repre sents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surp r ising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misre pres enting and often
ob scuring i t .
But difficult though a change will be , es pec ially one with s uch
f a r - r eaching e ffects on th e prevailing power struc tur e , is to obt ai n, it is
imp e rative t o try: we are al l on the n uclear train.
FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts , Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e . g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-settin g matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater ) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least a s important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
to the first, see references cited in Goodin , p . 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cot grove and Duff, and some of the references
As
given therein.
3.
Cot grove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34 .
5.
compare also
See, e.g ., Gyorgy , pp . 357- 8.
6.
For one illustration , see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty 's
Stationery Office , London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff , p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another .
One can argue both from one's own position against the other, and in the
other's own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nucle ar establishme nt, since they (those of th e
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualificatio ns) can release what, and only
what , suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmenta l inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear deve lopment; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclus ion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see , e . g.,
2
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11 .
Se e the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428.
lla.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclea r radi ation , unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
exampl e , can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the convent ional
(Old Paradigm) way.
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
13.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
power.
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recent l y nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology.
[ability to manage technology repr esent s the past]
14 .
On such l imitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and vot ing "p aradoxes" on the
other.
Other different limitation resu1 ts are presented in Routley 81 .
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
n e cessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
th e Dominant Western Worldview,
the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p . 34) .
15.
See Lovins and Price .
15a .
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
'What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed' (Barry, p. 24 3).
Therefor e ~ a nuclear f utur e contrav enes r equirements of justice .
3
16.
For examples , and for some details of the history of philosoph e rs'
positions on obligatio ns to the future, see Routley (a).
17 .
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore' s position is ambivalen t and , to
all appearanc es, inconsist ent. It is considere d in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls ' position.
18.
For related criticism s of the e conomists ' arguments for discounti ng,
a nd for citation of the often eminent economist s who sponsor them, see
Goodin , pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborate d here) are that the propertie s are different
e . g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings , being only partial orderings , do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfact ory fashion . What he claims is tha t we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expe ct ed util ity maximiza tion
presuppos es, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedure s. But
outstandi ng alternativ es can always be comprehen ded logically , at worst by
saying "all the rest" (e.g. "'P covers everythin g except p). For example ,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehen ded along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error". Furthermo re the different
more app ropriate rules Goodin subsequen tly considers also requir e listing of
"possible " outcomes .
Goodin's point can be alternati vely stated however.
There
are really two points.
The first trouble is that such ragbag alternati v es
cannot in general be assigned required quantitat ive probabil ities, and it is
at that point that applicati ons of the models breaks dovm. The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertain ty from decision making
under risk. Secondly, many influenti al applicatio ns of decision theory methods,
the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitim ately, delete possible
alternati ves from their modelling s.
21 .
Discount, or bank, rates in the economis ts' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson , Economics , 7th Edition, McGraw-H ill,
New York , 1967, p.351.
22 .
Thus the rates have little moral relevance .
A real possibili ty is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate . A real possibili ty requires producibl e evidence for its
considera tion . The contrast is with mere logical possibili ty.
23.
4
24.
Such a princip le is explici t both in classica l utilitar iani s m (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414) , and in a range of contrac t and other theories from Kant and
Rousseau to Rawl s (p.293).
How the princip le is argu ed for will depe nd
heavily , however, on the underlyi ng theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend he avily on particu lar ethical theories .
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especia lly, the
Poverty argumen t.
26 .
SF, p. 27.
Shrader -Freche tte is herself somewha t critical of the
carte blanche adoption of these methods , suggesti ng that ' whoever aff irms or
den ies the desirab ility of ... [such] standard s is, to some degree,
symboll ically assentin g to a number of American value patterns and cu l tural
norms' (p. 28 ).
27.
The examp le paralle ls the sorts of countere xamp les often advance d to
utilitar ianism, e.g. the admissi ble lynching of an innocen t person because
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
against utilitar ianism, see ...
For the more general case
28 .
US Atomic Energy Commissi on , Compara tive Risk-Co st-B en ef it Study of
Alterna tive sources of Electric al Energy (WASH-1224), US Governm ent Printing
Office , Washing ton, D.C., Decembe r 1974 , p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
29 .
As SF points out, p.37-44 ., in some detail. As she remarks,
... since standard s need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclea r Regulato ry commiss ion] judges that the
licence shows 'a reasonab le effort' at meetin g them,
current policy allows governm ent regulato rs to trade
human health and welfare for the [apparen t ] good
intentio ns of the promo tors of technolo gy. [Such]
good intentio ns have never been known to be sufficie nt
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulati on, even where the standard s are as mostl y not very
demandin g, and the alliance of regulato rs with those th ey a re s upposed t o be
r eg ulating, are conspicu ous features of modern environm ental control, not just
of (nuclear ) pollutio n control.
30 .
31 .
The figures are thos e from the origin al Bro okhaven Report: ' Theo r e
t ical
possib ilities and consequ ences of major accide nts in large nuclea
r plants ',
USAEC Report WASH-740, Governm ent Printin g Office , Washin gton , D. C.,
1957.
This r e port was r eques ted in the first place because the Commis sion
on Atomic Energy
wanted pos i tive safe t y conc l usions "to r eass ure th e
private insuran ce compan ies" so that they would pr ovid e
coverag e for th e nuclea r indust ry. Since even th e
cons e rvative statist ics of the r eport we r e alannin g it
was supp r essed and its data we r e not made public until.
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brough t as a r esult of
the Freedom of Inform ation Act (Shrad er-Frec hette, pp. 78-9).
32 .
Atomic Energy Commis sion, Re actor Safe ty Study: An Ass e ssment of
Acc ident Risks in US Comme rcial Nuclea r Power Plants , Governm ent
Printin g Offi ce ,
Washin gton, D.C., 1975 . This report, the only alleged ly comple te
study ,
conclud ed that fission reactor s presen ted only a minima l health risk
t o the
public .
Early in 1979, th e Nuclea r Regula tory Commis sion (th e r elevan t
organ isation that superse ded the trouble d Atomic Energy Commis sion)
withdre
w
i ts suppor t for the report, with the result that there is now no
compreh ensive
analys is of nuclea r power approve d by the US Governm ent.
32a .
Most presen t and planned r eactors are of this type: see Gyo r gy .
33 .
34 .
Even then relevan t environ ment factors may have been neglec t ed .
35.
There are variati ons on (i) and (ii) which multip ly costs agains t
number s such as probab ilities. In this way risks, constru ed as probab
le
cos ts, can be taken into accoun t in the assessm ent.
(Alt e rnative ly, risks may
be assesse d through such familia r method s as insuran ce.)
A princip le varying (ii), and fonnula ted as follows :
(ii ) a is ethica lly accepta ble if (for some b) a include s no more
risks than b
and b is sociall y acce pted. was the basic ethica l princip le in terms
of which
the Cluff Lak e Board of Inquiry recentl y decided that nuclea r power
de velo pme nt
1
in Saskat chewan is ethically acceptable :
s e e Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final
Report, Departme nt of Environment , Government of Saskatchewa n, 1978, p. 305 and
p . 288 . In this report, a is nuclear power and bis either a ctiviti e s clearl y
accepted by society as alternative power sources.
In other application s b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietna m War(!)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii'). The principles are certainly ethically substantive , since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissibl e conventiona l character. For l ook at the origin of b: b may be
socia lly accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibili ty is no longer so cle arcut and it would not have been socially
accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. 'What
is required in (ii'), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing
is then 'ethically acceptable' rather than 'socially accepted'. But even with
th e amendments the principles are invalid , for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcertin g that thes e arguments do not work . It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the exper ts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the tr oubl e with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian , and like utilitariani sm they neglect distributio nal features ,
involve na tu ralistic fallacies, et c.
Really they try to treat as an uncon-
straine d optimisatio n what is a deontically constraine d optimisatio n :
V. Routley 'An expensive repair kit for utilitarian ism'.
s ee R. and
37.
Ap parent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistr i bution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be i f taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population .
Example s such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexam ples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p. 15, where references are also cited.
39 .
Goodin, p. 433.
40 .
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
Energy , Environment a lists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiat ing th e interesting case of Commoner
[7 ] . On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well [18], p. 23 . On th e employment issues, see too H. E. Daly in [ 9], p. 149.
7
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Ene rgy and Equality , Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly th e opp osite of
what the poor need.
41 .
For much more deta il on the inappropria teness see E.F . Schumacher,
Sma ll is Beauti ful, Blond and Briggs, London, 1973. As to the capital and
o ther requirement s, see [2] , p. 48 , and also [7] and [9] .
For an illuminatin g l ook at the sort of d evelopmen t high - energy
t e chnolo gy will t end to promote in the so-called unde rdeveloped countri es see
the pap e r of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Envfr•onment (edited
J . H. Wins l ow), Au s tr a l ian National University Press, Canb e rr a, 1977.
42 .
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins , Energy Strategy : The Road Not
Taken , Fr iends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Fo 1°eign Affair•s ,
Oc tob e r 1976); s ee also [ 17], [6 ] , [ 7], [14] , p . 233 ff, and Schumacher, op . cit .
43 .
An argument like this is suggested in Passmo re, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument
for the ove rriding importance of passing on contemporar y culture is underpinn e d
by what appears to be a future-dire cted ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed he
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good interventio n is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of t he present and immediate future. The argument has all
t he defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
44.
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p . 191, and also Commoner .
45 .
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been a dvanced by civ il
liberties groups and others in a number of countri e s: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White , Nuclear Pr ospects. A comment on the individual , the State
and Nuclear Power , Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties , London, 1976.
46.
' US energy policy, for example , since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act , has been that nuclear powe r is necessary to provide "an e conomical
and reliable basis"
n eed ed "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p . 111, and
r efe rences there cit e d) .
47.
There are now a great many criticism s of the second premiss in th e
literat ure . For our criticism , and a r e formulati on of the premiss in terms
of selec tive economic growth (which would exclude nu clear developm ent), see
Routley (b) , and also Berkley and Seckler.
To simple-mi ndedly contrast e conomic growth with no-growth , in the fa shion
of some discussio ns of nuclear power, c . f . Elster, is to leave out
crucial
alte rnatives ; the contracti on of course much simplifie s the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear developme nt is explicitl y in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the governmen t has very s ubstantia l
interests in main nuclear involved companies . Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
it is difficult to obtain comprehen sive data.
Estimates of cost very dramtical ly according to the
sample of plants chosen and the assumptio ns made
concernin g the measureme nt of plant performan ce
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49 .
See Kalmanoff , p .
50.
See Corney.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF on argument
from ignorance etc.
53 .
These e . g. Elster, p. 377.
On deci sion theory see also,
54 .
A recent theme in much economic literatur e is that Bayesian dec ision
theory and risk analysis can be universal ly applied . The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines. In any case , even
within these confines there is no consensus at all on, a nd few (and
widely diverging ) figures for the probabili ty of a reactor core meltdown,
an d no reliable estimates as to the likelihoo d of a nuclear confronta t i on.
Thus Goodin argue s (in 78) that 'such uncertain ties plague energy theories'
as to 'rend er expected utility calculati ons impossibl e '.
55 .
For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff ., from which presentat ion of the
internati onal story is adapted.
1
56.
Gyo rgy, p . 307, and p. 308.
points, see Chomsky
For elaborati on of some of th e important
and Hermann.
57.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principle s underlyin g the Old
Paradigm or its Modificat ion - and they do form a coherent set th at many
people can
respect - these are not the principle s unde rlying contempor ary
corporate capitalism and associate d third-wor ld i.mperialis m.
58.
Certainly practical transitio nal programs may involve tempo rary and
limited us e of unaccepta ble long t erm commoditi es such as coal, but in
presentin g su ch practical details one should not lose sigh t of the more basic
social and structura l changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitio nal strategie s should make use of such
measures as en vironment al (or replaceme nt) pricing of energy i . e . so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of r e placing it by an
equivalen t unit taking account of environm ental cost of productio n. Other
(sometime s coopU.ve) s trategies towards more satisfact ory alternativ es should
a lso, of course , be adopted, in particula r the removal of institutio nal barriers
to energy conservat ion and alternati ve technolog y (e . g. local governmen t
regulatio ns blocking these), and the removal of state assistanc e to fuel and
power industrie s.
59.
Symptoma tic of the fact that it is not treated as r enewable is that
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewabi lity - if th ey did
the losses and deficits on forestry operation s would be much more s triking tha n
t hey already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermo re, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully r e newable operation if net energy productio n is to be worthwhil e; see, e.g .
the argument in L. R.B . Mann 'Some difficult ies with energy farming for portable
fuels', and add in the costs of e cosystem maintenan ce.
60.
For an outline and explanati on of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also Woodmansee .
61 .
The requisite distinctio n is made in several places , e . g . Routley (b),
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literatur e), Baran and
Sw eezy .
62 .
The distinctio n between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasise d
by Naess. For its environm en tal i mpo rtance see Routl ey (c) (wher e
further reference s are cited) .
•
REFERENCES .
In o rde r to contai n refe r e n ces to a modes t length, r efrre ncc to
primary sources has often been replaced by referen ce through secondary sources .
Generally the reader can easily trace the primary sour ces . For those parts of
the text that ove rlap Routley (a), fuller references wil l be found by
consulting the latter article.
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, 'Environmen talism, middle-clas s radicalism an d
politics', Sociologica l Review 28 (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E . Goodin, 'No moral nukes ', Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends , No Nukes: everyone's guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Ato mic Energy, Outb ack Press , Melbourn e ,
1977.
R. a nd V. Routley, 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future', Inquiry
21 ( 1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Repo rt: Ranger Uranium Environmen tal I nquiry First Report , Australian
Go vernmen t Publishing Service, Canberra , 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Fr echet te, Nu clea r Power and Publi c Policy, Reidel, Do rdrecht,
1980 (refe rred to as SF).
W. R. Cat ton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, 'A new ecol ogical paradigm for post - ex uber an t
sociology', Ame rican Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47 .
Unite d States Interagency Review group on Nuclea r Waste Managemen t, Repo rt
to the President, Wash i ngton. (Dept. of Energy) 1979. (Ref. No . El. 28 . TID29442) (cited as US(a)) .
A.B . Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuc lear Futures : The Case for an Eth ical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth Internation al, San Fran cisco , 1975.
R. Routley , 'On the impossibili ty of an ortho dox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmen tal problems', Logique et Analyse,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routl ey , 'Necessa r y limits for knowledge: unknowable tru ths', in Es says in
honour of Paul Wei nga rtner,
(ed. E. Norscher ), Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore , Man's Responsibi lity for Nature, Du ckworth , London, 1974 .
,,,.
.-2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Editi on, RSSS, Austra lian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J . Rawls , A Theory of Justice, Harvard Unive rsit y Press, Cambridge , Mass.,
19 71.
P . hl . Berkl ey a nd D.W . Seckler, Economic Gr owth and Environment a l Dec ay,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch , New York, 1972 .
J . Elster, 'Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power' , Soci al Science Information
18 (3) (1979) 371-400.
J. Robinson , Economic Heresi e s, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
B. Barry, 'Circumstan ces of Justice and future generat i ons ' in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. R.I. Sikora and B. Barry), Templ e Universit y Press,
Philadelphi a, 1978.
H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics , Macmillan, London , 1962 (r e issue ).
B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power , Knopf, New York, 1975.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Right s , 2 vols., Black
Rose Books, Montreal, 1979 .
J. Woodmans ee , The World of a Giant Corporation , North Coun tr y Pr es s , Seattle ,
Washing ton, 1975.
P . A. B~r a n and P . Sweezy, Monopoly Capita l, Penguin, 1967.
A. Naess, ' The shallow and the deep, long range eco l ogy movement.
A summary ', Inquiry 16 (1973) 95-100.
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Box 59: Nuclear
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Text
1875
�/IN/J , AJuncl)L
NUCLEAR POWER
•
-
ETHICA L,a& SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
---.. Compet ing paradig fus and · the nuclea r debate .
~
J C/l/'I
One hardly 1ieeds ini t.. i ation into the dark myster ies of nuclea r physic
s
to contrib ute useful ly to the debate now widely raging over nuclea r
power. While many import ant empiri cal questio ns are still
unreso lved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controv ersy.
Instead , it is a debate about values ...
\
many of the questio ~which arise are social and ethica l ones. 1
•.:tSociol ogica) investi gation s have confirm ed fJ £ a t~
I pa,i I 11g , I a1:a1Hiliit e:f! the
,!
01\.C!..
debate l=!S:&!!!!t'!~ primar ily over what is w.9rth having
or pursuin g and over what we are
'tli.a,., /i.,we 4ho cc,-.+·,r,.,../),l fl..,,/ it,, J;,'/.wh :1 ;•,l~:,~-11
.entitle d to do to others .~,] ii pelaFi oatienA
along the lines of compet ing
paradig ms. 2 Accord ing to the entrenc hed paradig vtldisc erned, that constel
lation. a'
of values , attitud es and beliefs often called the nomina nt Social
Paradig m
(herea fter
I ena ipsoiac to u hl:ttan f!nD
--)
I
r/
I
riteria become the benchm ark by which a v.;id..e/ range of
individ ual and social action is J IA"{'J4.l
and evalua ted.
AW'\d
belief in the market and market mechan isms is
quite centra l.
Clv'.:ite...<il"\<J
around this col'"e belief is the
convic tion that enterp rise flouris hes best in a system of
risks and r ew~ rds, that differe ntials are necess ary ..• , and in
the necess ity for some form of divisio n of labour , and a itfl1rar chy
of skills and expert ise. In particu lar, there is a belief in
the compet ence of ~xpert s in genera l and of scient ists in
particu lar , m More thau this, scient: ifie knowle dge aftd t:he scient ific
speei:r~:'i~/,;2··::.,,./
method enjoy a
-ef knowiftg , • , , A:Re
3
S = ~ : . . _ 4"--
quanti f ica.tion .
.status as
super, '(P'
::::j there 1s an emphas is on
~~,3
The rival world view, sometim es called the Altern ative Environ mental
Paradig m
( the ~ Paradig m) differs on almost every point, and, accord ing to
sociol ogists ,
in ways su~mar i~ din the followi ng table 4":Nature hostile/ne utral
Environm ent controllable
---·. ,csourccs limited
Nature benign
Nature clclicatdy balanced
\.
\
�EDGE
.,.
Confidence in science
and technology
~ation:ility of means~}
Limits to science
~ationality of ends
•
S.t-~te socialism, as practiced in most of the "EasteI11 bloc", differs from the
01/ PaLl.digm really only as to economic organisation, the market in particular
l\ ffl~'
being replaced by central planning (a market system by a command system).
/
o-Y
,r,~t)tlt
But
since there is virtually no debate over a nuclear future within the confines of
·
h
· 1·ism, 5 tat
variant on the Old Paradigm need not be delineated here.
minor
s t a t e socia
,,.... 1
Nctl.cu,t
.WailiaA the competing paradigm picture is a trifle s i m p l e ~ instead
~
a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadi gms, a cluster of not very well
out rositions that diverge from the cluster marked out as the
wo,•k~
Jfl01+,;.,./'cr-hJ,
)/o,ie,/{~(J
Old Paradigm~ i t is empirically investigable, and.I\ it enables the nuclear debate
be focussed.
Large-scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of
the world ,
counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of
the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the
assessment of nuclear power, instead of
~,..
olt-0u'-,
merely economic
1in addition to
jJa9.,-.d
..
u(_, \-"-..
factors such as cost and efficiency, isAto move somewhat
received paradigm.
g.gl; .. i le
the
For under the Old Paradig~, strictly construed, the nuclear
debate is confined to the terms of the narrow ut1litarianism upon which contemporary
economic practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to
assumed economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details
whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irratfonal. I
/;,(4.(11,-,'1"4-J J~clear development receives its support from adherents of the Old
Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set within the
assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these assumptions the
t:o
fails. But in
· and ultimately fails
fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm is itself broken-backedj)
case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
unless the free enterprise economic assumptions are replaced
by the ethically
unacceptable assumptions of advanced (corporate) capitalism. r->~~~tt--en--e--a:nm~m-t~
7
�The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm ) to be structur ed. There are two
main part~JJ :It is argued, firstly, from
the Old Paradigm , that nuclear
J&tfSe
developm ent is
ethicall y
unjusti fiable;
A
but that, secondly , even from within
e·th,t" I~ ,;,{,.l,fo "1
the framewo rk of the,\Old Paradigm , such developm ent is unaccep table, since signific
ant
features of nuclear developm ent conflic t with indispe nsible features of the Paradigm
(e.g. costs of project developm ent and state :s ... lPs ,l ,J"--f:,,;, •., with market
independ ence and criteria for project selectio n). It has _?~E_~ d accepta ble
from
within the claminan t paradigm only because )rfo,,Js
do not square with practice , only
because the assumpt ions of the Old Paradigm are but very ~A~~ty
applied in
contemp orary politica l practice the place of i ru.<<I!.(~., "'1( td)
,v
capitali sm having been usurped by corpora te capitali sm. It is because the nuclear
debate <:<1.vi bL.
carried on within the framewo rk
of the Old Paradigm that the
debate - although it is a debate about values, because of the conflict ingvalu
es
of the
<c.,..,.,fL-f;;"1
paradigm s - is not just a debate about values; it is also a
debate within a paradigm as to means to already assumed (ec:.on0" 1istid
ends, and
-:=:-
of rationa l choice as to energy option.5 within
(~
~ 0 1""Q;i1f
2'n this corner ~
0<,f/e,,..Jj4 ft!1ho',. "JllD I
most !i F I Im. decision
1
a predeter mined framewo rk of values.
tlrp~
theory argumen ts,often conside red
"
as encompa ssing
all the nuclear debate is ethicall y about, I\best util.i t~rian
means to predeter mined ends..,) be l : ~ For another leading charact eristic of the
nuclear debate is the attempt , under the dominan t par_adigyn, to r~c'1~ it from
t/•IIW 1f
the ethical and
social sphere) and to turR ; t into spec,iali st issues ef'
#"
whether over minutia? .and conting encies A present technolo gy or overme&lw,,/
~legal or
~)
mathem atical ,,' upeciaJ J y de, rs r 011 tbentetf c: and Stat Is Lica:1:, or amdie&t details.,8
/
£'
;or
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems nuclear
.
developm ent poses.
There are 7any
A inter~e lated problems and -fl. t.- OAJ'""'"cd
· , is further
,)
I\
/_,flW4r
structur ed in terms of these.
For in the advancem ent and promotio n of nuclear ~
we encount er a remarka ble combina tion of factors, never before assemble d
establis hment,
on a massive scale, of an industry which involves at each stage of its process
ing
serious risks and at some stages of product ion possible catastro phe, which delivers
as a by-prod uct radioac tive wastes which require up to a million years' storage
but for which no sound and economi c storage methods are known, which gr~w up as
part of the war industry and which is easily $""h v,e..,rld to deliver nuclear weapons
,
which require s for its
operatio nconsid erable secrecy , limitati ons on the flow of
informa tion and restrict ions on civil libertie s, which depends for its economi
cs,
and in
order
to generate expected private profits, on Sl.\bs-i.4.,,/..,~/
state
subsidi zation, support , and interven tion. It is, in short, a very high technol
ogical
developm ent,
ba~«-f.
with problem s.
first importa nt problem .which serves also
to exempli fy ethical issues and princip les involved in other nuclear power questio
ns,
is the unresolv ed matter of disposa l of nuclear wastes.
A
�.------------- ------------ ------------ -------~--- ---.
f
5.
t
annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb.
of this waste is extremely toxic.
)
Much
For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium
part of the waste material
of even a
is enough to induce a lung
Wastes will include the reactors themselves,
...contamination
which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
and which, some have estimated, may require l½ million years to reach safe levels
of radioactivity.
P,,.tcAF
A~astes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire
For fission products the required storage period averages a
active lifetime.
thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there
is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen
with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the
comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years. ~ Shortterm methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer
term methods are subject to both human interference and risk of leakage through
non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
ti
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formation s or in salt mines, are largely speculative and
relatively untested1 and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts
made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for
the result in
first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and enca/ulating
,i
multilayered metal containers before rock
radioactive material may not remain
deposit 1 si~ulation models reveal that
11.
.
, 'II isolated from human environments.
S'k,t.<\t1
f~4.
In short, the best present ~iapeoel proposals carry very real possibilities of
.J... /Id
•
//
I
lZ..t-u ~~~ •
irradiating future people- (V',i,,l.
Given the
c<c,,,~'7
I
Atu.lflf
.QA:Q;pQfiQWB
costs which could be involved for the future, and given
0
the known ~~mits of technology, it is £i?la:h:tw methodol@gi cal.ly unsound amt to bet,• as
nuclear
Mlin,-J
~
A
t~a.
have,• on the discovery of safe procedures for 1tis.pr19i,j of wastes.
Any
new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on present
proposals, and subjecJto the same inadequacies.
methods for safe
l
storage
For instance, none of the proposed
X "'t.H
has been properly tested, and they mayAprove to involve
ell :sorts o:fi unforseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into
practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee
�,
I
I
09
when set in this context.
t,/wo/!
are not so ruf'I
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses
when the consigner, again~ "responsible" businessman, puts
).
his workers' health or other peoples' welfare at risk.
~
THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE1~IN PARABLE .
II.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded
carries both passengers and freight.
journey
The train which is
At an early stop in the
someone consigns as freight , to a far distant destination, a package
which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
container which> as the consigner
ii ava..r4- 1
Jii' l 'J I ems
This is packaged in a very thin
may~ not contain the gas for the
~ full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the interior
of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere
try; to steal some
1e t 11 r 5ffi'1jhQ~
ot
eliherately
~
the freight~
inadvertent!
Ml
tX,lA4'rcd,.
have happened on some previous journeys.
All
iii,.
~
with
fU:
ft,1-h ~
fCJ Laps
Conf• ;;bi.c, ;_,,,
of these tie:! cg ,..
,\
If the container should
"'
break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the
train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or incur serious diseases .
..,.,
Most of us would Aoundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain that
the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world
needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not
responsible for the train or the people on it.
These sorts of excuses however
1$
would normally be s een as ludicrous~
a11rlo'1er1
(~~up~~he says that it is hisgownA pressing needs which justify his action.
The ~ h e
0!111!!6,
,\
which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial
A
straits, and could•
n.,r
,. afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to
r~..../'441' ~ ,1/r
make one.
If t h e ~
§?PB
ersl~~, he and his family will suffer, his employees
r~L'~~
will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the who}eA
1~,~,
through
loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
()It,/ rl.A~"/t ~ "
.fo-...
The ppor of t'he ¥.j)Jag_P,whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will
,1
suffer especially. ::,
,1r.,i/Q
G ew people would accept~ story1 even if correct, as justification. Even
where there are serious risks and costs to oneseLf or some group for whom one is
(o
concerned one is usually
m,""kM,l
ii,b. w;gil1'UA not
hacc.u_y
to be entitled to simply transfer the,4 burden
of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise
1
()r
1
CI U J
1
/JIZMJ' J )
from one's own.< chosefi Iife-style.ca:nd the t~nsfer af cos.ts creates a risk of
,ae-r ious harm t:e G - t ~ r
-----
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resem\1le
the train (i4.tqatiaeu
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plant~ that will be spread around the world as large/9
scale nuclear development goes ahead. ' The waste problem will be much more serious
than thut generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, withx'each one of the
2000 or so r actors envisaged by
,IJ
,f/4.
J.IYl/4w
l#i7 l,Q. ~~'4~ ,i·
dfi) flp,J4v{-
...,_,
jj{'. ,
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cue end of the century producing, on average,
A
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•
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/7
__
/ L_:~-..':~. . :~=====================
==---___,tl~===~l_____i_~
~----
------,_,.........----------~---_......._
----:,..........,__..
�6. {
of safety over th e s torage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt , would be
acceptable.
It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given
concerning either the geological or future human factors.
But even if an
economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method
could
be devised,
there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably
.
. as
The assumption that it would be{ especially if,
~
used.
-
likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the f uture which has not previously been e~counter~in
human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
1
.
Again,
unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage sites
through perhaps a million years of possible future human ac t ivity, weapons-grade
radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year storage period,
to any pa rt y who is in a position to retrieve it.
nonetheless be found 1 before 2000,
(no longer a mere disposal pfioblem)
s accordingly not t"~t,cnA '(
which gets around the waste storage problem
. like ma~v assumptions ?~ifH~s, It is an assumption supplied by the
based, but is ratne ~ ~an artitle or
The assumption that a way will
/!
Old Paradigm,
1
Cit M limitations assumption , that there are really no (development)
-
·
-.
problems that cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion
always immediately ·· economically feasible).
part in development plans and practice..
technological optimism (not to say
what humans can accomplish,
The assumption
that is
has played an important
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
t3 -h(A.J,,.,·::, -____
);
that there are no limits to
;~;:14.
i<. through science ; it has led
to the em~rcation on
projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved
t,r
a solution is
tNll.~ i n sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led , not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe limits
on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the form of
'"'
limitation theorems,~ and in addition there are human limitations which modern
technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk analysis of the
·
, llliu:,,olll( lido-wliklihood of reac t or accidents is a relevant exampll). The original nuclear
technology dream
..fj 1>S1.l»-'I
was that nuclear
'clean unlimited supply of power').
apparently remains a net
will be but a quite
X
That dream soon shattered .
cons &-1>t1~
"!)hc..-l::-tM1<1
would provide unlimited energy (a
The nuclear industry
of power, and nuclear
..flt~, ;o,,..
s upplier of power/>
The risks :l.mposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
then , significant.
are,
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for a
million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an energy
source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy problems of the
people of the distant future whose lj_ves could be seriously affected by the wastes.
�I
pt,..."'tl.Mt..
It is for such reasons that the train aua]og; cannot be turned around
.p, .. ~,.,,,/(._
. s.
to work in favour of nuclear power, w1.·th .:e::g:.-"1 t, h e nuc 1 ear train b r1.n1.ng
I
4
relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only) by nuclear power.
7.
~
~~----Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use
I.I f»l~)'r•jloiT,,j.,.
d
r{4.
of onlyAlO generations.
l''°/'k o.f
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the ene~gy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that
in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of
energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably,
again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it ~
For
they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in which,
if the nuclear proponents' dream~of global industrial:lsation are realised, more
and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy
consumption and associated technology and heavy resource use and will have lost or
reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world
which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable
resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which will have to form
4
a very important part of the basis of life, are in a run·-down condition.
Such
pointf~~ll against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries
of nuclear fission energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The "solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary
indu st rial society proposes, in order to get itself out of _a
mess arising from its
chfik
Q,W:fl
life style - the creation of economies dependent on an
abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs
and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits.
.
The ''solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes~n the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner's action
avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate surroundings, but at the
expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties, whose opportunity
to
/eJ J.Q.c~nt /,vu
Afli1J
may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under e~ch paradigm, so it will be argued clear alternatives
(YJ>o~-t~
1
cf i patterns
~
w
to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
c~mpet,Nil,iJo.l'J ~
of consumption and protect the interest of those,\who benefit
from them.
I r~ pcrca.,t1cd,
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
1
principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps often not in fact) in the
contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development
firTr-/S~
inv61ves injustice
~
/:T4- •
with respect to the future 1,0
.I\
li
g s111l s n 1J e> . The.re appear to be
only two plausible moves that might enable the avoidance
of
such a conclusion.
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i
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First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply
f{,_
because the recipients of...- nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
!eject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course to
1
~
that there are
circumstances in which such an action might ~,.;s i];Jj'
no
be justifiable 1 or at least where the
the nuclear case.
f,t,,J/,e,,
~
is less clearcut.
It is the same with
Just as in the case of the consigner of the package there
is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether
(on(l,/e,r-
We ~urfl now to the first oA these possible escape
they apply in the present case.
h,1',.,. ,¼ ,,;I,11.
,~ 1V,r,q
routes for the proponent of nuclear developmen~, A~
the
~ ~ a i e::u,
question of
our obligations to the future.@
III
The especially problematic area
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
is that of the distant (i.e.
~
,-inun({..!',l j ate) future,
11(
the future with
which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
&,I"
In fact the question of
future gives fe~ problems for most ethical theories.
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
( tl~eu,lf;"i,
a;iff.
ill}~-?~
•
•
1-t,u,· fe,!, 0 "! 1-ope:ram,o_rLJ
fail to pass, and also
o'Ji(~)
tlo
.-u-r ~ t/JM_
the adequacy of accepted;/ institutions which leave
future pe pl.c.
in political philosophy cen:e!r .. in:g
01:1~
<YP
of account~ the interests of
ll'd"-lvx~,
;>?Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future
people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other philosophers
have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge obligations to the
future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those
who deny or who are committed by their
general moral position to denying that there
are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight
of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political
pcr/1t,,/IJ
institutions,that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond ~those
f@raap,s to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained, there
are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the effect
of our actions on future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or whose views
imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, who have
opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view on accouna
of moral obligation which are builh. on relations which presuppose some ckiguhl uf
\
�9.
temporal or spatial contiguit y.
Thus moral obligatio n is seen as grounded on
or as presuppos ing various relations which could not hold between people widely
separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligatio n is seen
as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also nontransitiv e. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligatio n, or
requireme nts on moral obligatio n, which would rule out obligatio ns to the non.immediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligatio n is held be able to claim his rights or
entitleme nt.
People in the distant future will not be able t'b-claim rights and
en«fw11.
entitleme nts as aga:inst us, and of course they can do nothingAt o enforce any
claims they might have for their rights against us. Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligatio ns on social or legal conventio n, for example
a conventio n which would require punishmen t of offenders or at least some kind
of social enforceme nt. But plainly these and other conventio ns will not hold
invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventio ns and so will
not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders , and there could be no guarantee that any
contempo rary institutio n would do it for them.
~ Both the view that moral obligatio n requ{es the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractu ally based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligatio n as they not only require a
commonal ity or some sort of common basis which cannot be guarantee d in the case of
the distant future, but also a possibili ty of interchan ge or reciproci ty of action
which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligatio n is seen
as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside because they
cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract. The
exclusion of moral obligatio ns to the distant future also follows from those
views which attempt to ground moral obligatio ns in non-tran sitive relations of
short duration such as sympathy and love. As well there are difficult ies about
love and sympathy for (non-exis tent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characte ristics one must know very little and who may well
Ji/fa,,,,be committed to a life-styl e for which one has no sympathy. On the current
1
showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to conclude that
contempo rary society lacks both love and sympathy for future people; and it would
appear to follow fr om this that contempor ary people had no obligatio ns concernin g
future people and could damage them as it suited them.
(
�10.
j
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
\b 5
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empffathy).
{ t:#11/
Because obligation therefore
fOt1'0i7'1 )
c,4/t..,&,./.h.
become\conditional, features usually"' thought to characterise ia;~such as
universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) ate
lost,~special.ly where there is a choice whether or not to do the thing required
to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria
for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them,
Mt
is Ahowever
Jurn.mi).(/e.
,fl
·•=~
aH:llLalt one te ~t113ta1A J
Irr
Consider, elm example , a
a scientific
group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device
designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No
presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affecte.d,
but the population ofY the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
The unconstrained position clearly
direct and predictabl~ result of the action.
implie s that this is an acceptable moral enterpris e, that whatever else we might
legitimately criticize in the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being overexpensive or badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally
J,,)rc'y:
acceptable the following sorts of linEOfflf':les:- A firm discovers it can make a
will do to future people.
handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material
which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate
descendents, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which
will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at
that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its
own interests, without any consideration for the harm i .t does
,ren,,~
future
people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
0...
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it i s ~ clear
impli cation of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well
as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the unconstrained
position have not considered such examples,
-, /J/(l.
by their position.
despite their being clearly implied
w ..ld cuh..117 ~o/1'1 Md;{ -
We suspect thatAwhen it is brought out that the unconstrained
position admits such counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other
things being free to inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for
�11.
the unconstrained position would want to assert that it was not what they
intende.d.
I
What many of those who have put forward the unconstrained position
seem to have had in mind in denying moral obligation is rather that future
people can look after themselves, that we are not reponsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a
future causally independent of the present.
But it is not.
It is not as if,
r:--
in the counter/
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being
.....:.,...,
left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and
in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as
they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the
obligation to take account in what they do of people affected and their interests,
to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of
the chance of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acqu.ired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one .is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some course
of act.ion of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired or
assumed obligations toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or assumption
is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which require, for
example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which
no act of acquisition is required.
and kind of responsibility involved.
There is a considerable difference in the level
In the first case one must do something or be
something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent
who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, and thus
does not have to be especially acquired or assumed.
Thus there is no problem about
how the latter class, moral constraints, can apply to the distant future in cases
where it may be difficult or impossible for acquisition or assumption conditions to
be satisfied.
They apply as a result of the ability to produce causal effects on the
distant future of a reasonably predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can
apply to what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not
p{jf-lrr
(yet) exist. While it may~be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must
make speci.al sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
�12.
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
from harming them.
argue in justification of hi.s action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsfbility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to
take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self- sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self- sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner
is resorting to heroic self- sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package 6n the train.
- 1~ ,-;.,,.
The conf~ of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral obligation' both to
signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something which
t?t-. con.Pl~"'
has to be assumed or acquired. a .~is encouraged by reductionist positions which,
in attempting to account for obligation in genera~mistakenly endeavour to collapse
all obligations into acquired obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
{),nu,,WUI
of the unconstrained position, of theAbelief that there are no moral constraints
concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve
the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to our immediate
successors in a better condtion, and that is all; il,/7
there are irferactice
no obligations to the distant future.
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through the
�chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which each
generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the succeeding
-
generation.
/hftfe..
'U'L P..t (t A.,t
~ . A three objections to this chain account.
First, it is
inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future as if they applied only
between generations, as if there were no question of constraints on individuals
opposed to whole generations, since individuals can create causal effects, e.g.
harm, on the future in a way which may create individual
responsibility, and
which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire generation.
Secondly, such chains,
since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as examples again
show.
For the picture is unable to explain several of the cases that have to be
dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which show that we can have a
direct effect on the distant future without affecting the next generation, who
may not even be able to influence matters.
VThirdly, improvements for immediate
successors may be achieved at the expense oflcfi\advantages to people of the more
distant future.
Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible with ,
and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less
immediate successors.
examples
Such cases can hardly be written off as "never-never land"
since many cases of environmental exploitation might be seen as of
just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of nonrenewable resources and the long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils
t.($l.
and forests through over crttl
If then such obvious injustices to future
W•
people arising from the favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors
are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way
fairly distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV.
ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATI_ONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONOMISTIC
r.\
Ul\tERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While
there are grave
difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible
. , ~ ,;.
position.
According to thej qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future .
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
�( 'tJ
c./,~
14.
c,,...,.,,..7
e-.Al'I r~e/ ,,_0 /1//4,r.4'---/o/_/,._
costs and benefits (and so of future inter~s) is obtained by application over
time of a ! ~ discount rateJ l The attempt to apply eco~omics as
a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to
the qualified position.
J
What is objectionable in such an approach is that
rl..ooA.cl
economics~ operate within the bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just
A
as in practice it operates within legal constraints, not determine what those
There are moreover alternative economic theories and simply
constraints are.
to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future is to beg
~.rn.<)~
t=t.m questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future 1 the most threadbare is based ~n the assumption that future generations
J'{
than present ones > and so better placed to handle the waste
off
willj€:tter
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations may well UQ_l=
problem.
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter, no argujJnent
can carry Much
discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
For it depends qf
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argujtnent.
weight.
~
1 ~.<f_.: ~
assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
(ullRJ_td/., h-n.a-hc '"/ J
richer successors in foregoing such,i de.f5elopments as nuclear power. Tl,q•f ;1 1
il-.la/Jt,,,.1U
H:O::f t f ~ a ~ I
cl:e..vi?1tiprirn~
M
th. f:>.I~,. .Ly rcdr.lul
-Be:t,\ the sacrifice
{(J/0..)
lias , 1r cad, li @an
~
~
hi¥/~
-tl,e.,
on
sacrifices to
f or
8'1. Qto @h es.
t"/!"4;/
"r: toJ/IJ-f,444
the future
'i1:m:1 for the waste disposal problem to be
~
argument . Iii\ ""1
legitimately
generations, it would have to be shown, what recent
economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be, not just better
U 11.,t
J1' 011!.. C u.;,,;/,/e_.
off, but so much better offAthat they can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is d.i rectly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued_, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so f~r efficient allocation of
resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of
'r/'~/,·s-.-l,~.....
of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to cawii:a. to
71....r
a few pennies set
now than later. ~
costs much less_
economically
,1ov.)Q/"
--
,......
aside (e.g. in a trust fund)Ain the future, if need bev, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any
v,c. t,w>.f
of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, in surmountable pract1cal _
_
difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that
�15 .
applied generally, the argument presupposes , what is false, that compensatio n,
like value, can always be converted into monetary equivalents , that people ~ncluding
I
those outside market frameworks) can be monetarily compensated for a variety of
damages, including cancer and loss of life. There is no compensatin g a dead man,
or for a lost species.
In fact the argument presupposes
neither part of which can succeed
be represented
,
at all adequately
it is not just
/</
a double reduction
that value cannot in general
, -fa'
/J,'K~~
monetarily, but (as against utilitariani sm)
,t
-LJ..,.t
constraints and obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value. It
i s also presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear
choic e s,'!_--- - -~
are bound ~o apply discounting . This is far from so :
indeed
A
Goodi~ argues that, on the
do not allow discounting , and discounting only works in practice with expected
utility rules (such as underlie cost-benef it and benefit-ris k analyses), which
,r,//
are, he contends strictly inapplicabl e for nuclear choices (since aJncrt
1 pnl'>Si],1 f3
{,/,11.{f al f<j''1. a,t /'.,~,,/,/;#b J
outcomes can
be duly determirte1, in the way that application of the rules
1-0
requir es).
1/
contrary, more appropriate decision £~1¢s
,,
As the f~e.ceid;nJ . arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrain ed position. If, for instance, we consider the cancer
i
example and reduce costs to payable compensatio n, it is evident that over a
sufficientl y long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclus ion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints . I n short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bi a s against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current e conomic horizons of no more than about
15 years~2/ and appli.cation of such rates would
simply beg the question against
the interests a nd rights of fu t ure people.
Where there is certain future damage
of a mo rally f o rbidden t ype, f or example, the whole method of discounting is simply
inappl.icabl e, and its use would violate moral constraint s.~
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from ca ses of c ert a in d a mage, comes from probability considerati ons. The distant
future, it is a rgued, is much more uncertain than
the present and immediate future,
so that probabiliti es are consequentl y lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding
with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.•
But then if we take
account of probabiliti es in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against
costs and benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people; except in
cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
much) less than those of present and
must count for (very
neighbourin g people where (much) higher
probabj_lities are attached.
So in the case of conflict between the present and the
future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the
present and the immediate f(Jture against a much lower probability of indetermina te
�16.
costs to an indeterminate number of distant future people, the issue would normally
be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits
were involved.
But of course it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a
question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
in order to obtain am:±E doubtful fU" t, i :b4. benefits for some present people, in
f11(,i11i.1,~ c,HJcn.A,;;,. l';-of,Y~;l,7 or le
the shape of the opportunity to). continue unnecessarily high energy use. And even
if the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted ,)<such an argument would
be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action
is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing
significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large.
or l"isl.~JwiolilSuch a cost-benefitAapproach to moral and decision problems, with or without
the probability frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned
or to deal with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
it would follow on such principles that it is permissible
For example,
for a firm to injure,
or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm stands to make a
sufficiently large gain from it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not
transferable in any s1mple or general way from one party to another.
Transfers of
this kind, of costs and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral
issues - e.g. is
x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on
y -
whi.ch are not susceptible to, a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted
J~
J,!01-Ult;,...
•F enenza, of nuclear energy, ltho attefl@J':=::f::fl=di-smiss the costs to future
,~~
#
"41'-
.
~'?f1¥=;ll,,
d?,,-,ipQ/i,,.
people~with the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as
benefHs.
The limitations
of transfei:_ point is enough to invalidate the
comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
--
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity
-3.
are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and
risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear
energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but
also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporaJ.ly removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related to a
person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
{happiness) sums as a way ~f solvini moral. conflict between diff_e_r ent parties, and the
.
.
-
1J.1
,,.
u/i'th:urty,-
~IJ-UJI--.
NJ/t.J1
~
O-?
'Hf/t• """~ aP/2~.i.-1-;-
1ntroduct1on of probabi.lity cons1derations.-l does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis.
One might further object to the probability
argument that piobabilities involving distant future situations are not always less
than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes, and
~
�17.
that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
f
probability anyway.
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
I
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on
high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our actions on the
distant future.
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of sep-
aration, but frequently tangled up.
priori
Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a
grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument is a
generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to the
exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain
-ft1Z'L:J
about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreli.able,wootl; and highly
A
speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the present
which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the
X
uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
crudely:
More formally and
One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reli.able information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace 'obligations' by 'knowledge'
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the
present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the
basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect
to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between
the present and immediate future on the one hand and the
distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any
such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future
and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are
normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly do act on the basis
of such "unreliable" information, as the sceptic as regards the future conveniently
labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic-proof certainty is rarely, or never, available
with respect to much of the present and immediate future. In moral situations in
the present, action often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low
probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for
certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order
for us to condemn the consigner's action.
It is enough that there is a significant
�18 .
in this sort of case.
risk of harnt
J
It does not matter if the decreased
well-being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
But if we do not require
of the so-called "speculative " and "unreliable".
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should
we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should we
require for the future, episte.m ic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can
be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard.
But such a~ epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests, in
fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it already
presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each class, which
difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our
obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
theoretical
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is
gross
where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
this way:-
If moral principles are, like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if
every (action) x" ,
x
has character
h
then
x
is wrong, for
then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever
obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach
the antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obt.ain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action of the "It is wrong
to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument
be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is impossible
to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of present action
will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future people, then
moral
principles, although they may apply theoretically to the future, will in practice not
be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant
future will impose no practical moral constraints on action.
However the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain
or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning
the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the
�~~
--t9-.
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
I
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
-f/,u.'fN-r I
in a hundred years i n ~ names o r ~ footwear, or what praod1
of ice
•
•
.._A'.~
cream people will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe,
especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a
hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from t h e ~ earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present
makes it such a rich and interesting place.
Ill
uncertainty argument should be rejected.
For this sort of reason, the second
The case of nuclear waste storage,
and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where
uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral
constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties at least
probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for the
application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially where
spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as~• eac. ~
eu,~
~ ··from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
{
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the def ects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
0~1,.(t_
write off probable~ harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves emv
,< .loy both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people
because we cannot be sure that they will
exist or that their tastes and wants
will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the~hings that would c,.ffect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for
the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that
some disaster will not overtake those we are mora.lly committed to. Again we may
�be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts
on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other
machines.
Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual
standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such
arguments as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn't looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as oppo s ed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its
resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities.
Another argument which may consider
a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is acceptable
to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future people, is
often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that future
people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not ~ffect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this app ears to be a
~
live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make
the action of the firm
tu
..c
tbeaa-:&-xam~ aiscussed
earlier
of producing a
substance likely to cause cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact
that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these sorts were admissible only if what was required for
inadmissibility was certainty of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such
cases before such actions could be considered admissible what would ?e required is
22
far more than a possibility, real or not
- it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for
achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be
to protect themselves.
~tpected to apply
�~/l,.. a..,,.L- a«'if
The strategy of /tnost af rbes9 uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
I
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or some
lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they may all
change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train may crash
killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak. These
are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe that
liC/t2-
they are any more than that, that is they are n o t ~ possibilities.
~k-
The
;\,
strategy is to stress such bH~sid& possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the contai.ner will break should be treated in the same way as these
mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great as to
preclude the consigners' takin~ account of the passengers' welfare and the real
possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A related
strategy is to stress a real vossibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and
thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints. This
move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty of
harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws attention
to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the application
of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future. In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
,:J$
'<>A,
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is SloM!-d, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised
particularly by pr,Pblems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
-fu,-- Q ~11.,,y,.La.. ..,, I,
and future people," wherf the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such
problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
f
)
of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved byVignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and representative a cl'ass of moral
problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest.
can be conceded that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of
It
�the future will make co~flicts
very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble -
J
a realistic ethical theory will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will
equally be other conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder
resolution of the issue, e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular, there will bi~ many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers,
numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most
general probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then: are there any features of
future people which would disqualify them fro~ral consideration or reduce their
claims to such below those of present people?
Prima facie,
The answer is :
in principle None.
,.
moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability
of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are capable of deali.ng
satisfactorily with the present;
in other words, a theory that did not allow
properly for the future would be found to have defects as regards the present, to
deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people, e.g. those remotely located.
those outside some select subgroup, such as (white-skinned) humans, etc.
candidates
The only
for characteristics that would fairly rule out future people are the
logical features we have been looking at, such as uncertainty and indeterminacy; ht1 1l, ,
. ~ we have argued 1 p: ai-Oia) it would be far too sweeping to see these features as
affecting
the moral claims of future people in a general way.
These special features
only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or
practical
course of action given only present information).
In particular/ they
do not affect cases of the sort being considered, nuclear development, where highly
determinate. or certain information about the numbers and characteristics of the class
likely to be harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required:
it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot af feet his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration ;i Zfj
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
universalizahility, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the
present;
and thus there is the same ooligation to take account of them and their
interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the
probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage,
and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of
what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy
tf,1'1 Q.v. a.
do not/\:krt: u s ~ of these obligations. If in a closely comparable case concerning
the present
the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as
immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of
�I
harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V.
Problems of safe nuclear operation:
reactor emissions, and core meltdown.
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in spa ce, or a particular gqsgraphical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
e,,- ,.q/Jjel'J
another state's or region's yard?
,(
When that region receives no due compensation
(whatever that would amount to, in such a case~ and the people do not agree
(though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the arguments under-
pinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing to the tentative
conc.lusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive wastes upon future
people.
But the cases are not exactly the same:
USA and Japan cannot endeavour
fl'I- cf
to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose to drop~ their
,a,ltdi;~ pollution in quite the way they can discount people of two centuries hence.
(But
what this consideration really reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that e ntitlement to just treatment can be discounted over time.)
!
�'
~
'· i
Eth~· c 1 i ssues of distr i bu tive j ustice, • as to equityI
/
,:,J
~ J.._ /,
,tJ
tc..id~,,..__
v J{
~iv9ly=~=in ~ , also arise elsewhere in the assessment of nuclear development ;
in particular, a s regards t h e treatment of those in the neighbour of reactors, and,
tud rorb
differently, as r~gards the distribution of (alleged) b~nefits Afrom nuclear power
across ~ ~5' (The la t ter ques tion is t aken up
,\
a~ s ~~~ ,
especja] Jy , tb s Pev etty argument . ) ~
Weople livin g or working in the vicinity
special costs and risks:
f
~w{ffitrrf oslde, al ll rn
;i" a
nuclear reactor are subject to
firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact tha t
reactors discharge radioactive ma terials into the air and water near the plant ,
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such a:; {steam) explosion of a reactor. ~ ,I/;.._
~ question is whether such cos t s and risks can be imposed, with any ethical legi-
timacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in their imposition,
and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding the "risk/benefit
--
tradeoffs" of nuclea r _technology. -:::)__
( That they are so imposed, without local participation, indeed often without
local input or awareness as with local opposition, reveals one part of the
antidemocratic face of nuclear development, a part that nuclear development
shares however with other large-scale polluting industry, where local
participation and questions, fundamental to a genuine democracy/ of regional
determination and popular sovereignty, are commonly ignored or avoided.
.-:-,,,
The "normal" ei 1ssion , during plant operation1 of low level rad~ ation
carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, there r mains
/,id,,
substantial disagreement over theAnumber of cancers and precise extent of genetic
damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegltimotely ) permits free transfer of costs
and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised is said to
be: what extent of c~5cer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for
the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions?
m
Under the Old Parad
the issue is then translated into decision-theor etic questions, such as to 'ho · to
e mploy risk/benefit analysis as a prelude to government regulation' and 'how t o
....1.
�25.
determine what is an acceptable level of risk/safety for the pub lic'
.:ii
}
3/
The Old Paradigm a t titude, ref~ted in the public policy o f s ome count r ie s
that have such policies, i s t ha t the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations , which rely~ what appeal
they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a pity about
Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it's nice to have this air conditioner working in
summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits, which may be
obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way compensate for
the (a;~nf Y, of cance~
'----
The point is that the costs to one party
27
are not justifie~
'-.:,.
especially when such benefits to other parties can be alternatively obtained
a,-,{,...~
without such ~
awful costs.:.
People, minorities, whose
,;.~;(a_,
.Jro/
~
within 50 miles of a nuclear plant.
p().~M...11£;
,1711~,
position isA compromised are thos\/ who live
(Ehildren, for example, are in aAparticularly
vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer
through exposure than normal adults.)
In USA, such people bear a risk of cancer
and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at l arge.
~i
A notinegl 11ble percentage (in excess of 3% of those exposed for 30 years) o f ~
qJ'~c~
R@r~ t a? s&&-eh:e people 1 in the area will di~j for the sake of the majority who are
111,(.ctaii-J"
'I
aailat.'@ffl benefitted byApower producti~n . ~e~~a
ft~elear.
Whatever charm t he
argument from overriding benefits had, even under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once
it is seen that there are alternative, and in several respects less expensive ~
ways/ of delivering the real benefits involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of radiation
t:Jt/~ or
on minorities, most of whom havei\ no genuine voice in the location of reactors in
their environment and cannot move away without serious losses, is quite (morally)
acceptable.
l~
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US Atomic Energy Corrnnission,
is to
suppose that it is permissible to double, through nuclear technology, the level of
(natural) rqdiation that a population have received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being
"natural" level) is also likely to have negligible consequences.
equivalent to the
The increased
amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted
normal,
and,
f<-,f- i, l(e,,... c-ltt<..,cd.
of course,,\ what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects,
whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person's well-being;
and while
the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will,
under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal, e.g . two
murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiat i on emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards wou'ld disclose.
Furthermore , the
�~------- -------- ----~-- -------- -------- -------- ---monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely di.sinterested parties. Public policy is determined not so as
to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a 'public pacifier' while
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered~
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an 'extraordinary nuclear occurrence'. But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island) Y-Q
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
1flore acto rs, then the core melts and 'containment failure' is likely, with ~he result
that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated. In the
event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in
the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least
100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17
billion and an area H,e size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear
reactors are abo ut five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative
US government figures are giveti' : the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly b~Y~~eater still.
The consigner in ri sking the lifes, well-being and property of the passengers
on the train has acted i_nadmissibly. Does a government or govern~t-spon sored
private utility act in tay that is anything other than much less responsible in
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the community train. The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners' action is, as we would ordinarily suppose, inadmissible and irresponsible. The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical ar€/1
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
It has been contended , firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the
'11-
influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself. These
assumptions li ke the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very cil:ose
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear reactors,
it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of technological
limitations and human error, of waste leak.age and reactor incidents and quite
possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed .from the actual, a technological
�27.
(
dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear catastrophe.
In such an ideal n ucle a r wo r ld , where waste disposal were fool-proof and reac tors
were accident-proof , things wo uld no doubt be morally different. But we do no t
live in such a world.
""
According to the Ra\ussen
report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodological ly sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under-
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability
as
estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude .-1 "not credible"
,>Difl~;l,,9'?~ ~
possibilities or as branches t;o:1:t!il fl Ellffl "not significant" that are real
.m:d" may well
b'1. rt:i./f,04,(
~1cq1pen1 in the real world.
\
It i.s the eliminations that are otherworldly. Infact
the methodology and data of the report has been soundly and decisively criticized .Ji
And it has been shown that there is a real possibili.ty, a notjpegligibJ.e probability,
of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible probability
of a reactor accident, still ibis acceptable, being of no greater order than
risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here we encounter again
that insidious engineering approach to morality built into models of an economic
cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc. Risk
assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to
provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options,
e.g. energy options,which settles their ethical status. The following lines of
argument are encountered in risk assessment a.s applied to energy options:
(i) if option a imposes costs on fewe.r people thq.n option b then option a is
preferable to optic+;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
therefore option a is acceptable. 3
f
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
1,r 1'-i l'Jp.,( ,-c.c.,',l.ci...fs
~
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, which jjB accepted: so nuclear pqwer
A
stations are acceptable. A little refle c tion reveals that this sort of risk
assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy as ll!l!it transaction modek.
It is far too simple--minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant
aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical assessment we should need
a much fuller picture and we should need to know at least these things:- do the
costs and benefits go to the same parties;
and
i1·he
person who undertakes the
risks also the person who receives the benefits or primarily, as in driving or
cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on ot e parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties a r e the same in the case of the options compared, and
there are no such distributional problems, that a comparison on such a basis would
be valid.i '})This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments
�Secondly, does the person incur the risk as a result of an
of energy options.
28.
activ.Lty which be knowingly unclcttakes in a situationw-iere he has a reasonable
choice, knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in proportion
to the level6f the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking? Thirdly, for what
/
reason is the risk imposed: is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
risk that is ethically acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically
acceptable for a tr:Lvial reason. Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often
A
employed in trying to justify nuclear power.
The second argument (ii) involves
the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that of forgetting
that the health risks in the nuclear sense are cumulative, and ) 'n bhw ey ;i s g f:"
P'J;ct'.) pce i,1 e~ already
'°fc'
not A oo high.16
high if ~
1
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing
and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some
of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted
d/' l).,c-~ ~ flJ,;<d ,;k~4 .~ vr4..a)
I fl/rotl,7 ~~ kr 1/1
/ moc.tal plfinci'ple,\ that one' is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
I
r7n
of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other
This
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries~
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
iq;lude an effect on life or ~ealth or a ,risk thereof, a~d where the benefit to
j<2,c-(kUt , «J,•1
,r ·~ ,k
,-,1,-.r.:.. ,riz.._~,
t.4,/,:K/~7',-,t ~ ~ q:.:rLc-1- .
the benefit ting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature,.,\ { Thus ,tone is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
CIA.en(~
Suppose, forA example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an i.ndustrial process by which it lives, a nox~us waste material which
is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
oneself. f
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
,Oil ·/J..0- ~ )
service Ato the next village. The inhabitants of this village are then forced
to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal
or ol,e_ i'1M,).; 1(4. e1/Tl~L. ~ ~ Cdt'-/.:/4r,h .
process or of sustaining risks to their own lives and healthA Most of us would
see this kind of transfer of costs as.
morally unacceptable.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use. Included in the scope of this
/trl" gA'-,
condition are future people /§.~~~~ B ~eeiji~ a ~~~~m~aE~:iic=;m ;;~~i;E~~
1
The distribution of
-hut rd~ future generations (those of the next villages~;
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. o~to non-benef
is one of its most
of certain widespread and serious fonns of
objectionable moraL£eatures- ;-- - -
/4' ..;~<fi'nt ~ ,u/4.v
tfi/1_
,.,c,,r
r«-,,.4/ .......,,_,,
f"u<H;f I
l4'(!,,r)
\
iaries is a characteristic
=&,
7''7, ~ ,;_ ~
__../4;,,
-
7:.(,/,_.., ~
v /
__
- •_
__
�·~-~---- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ---~
,.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantial ly worse shape than we received it - the transmissio n
principle. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independen tly argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories.)
eJpoc,"ct lly ru,clc>u- //)CL-;
•
Other social and environmen tal risks and costs of nuclear development ;~ The
problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmen tal, health and safety
VI.
risks and costs in or arising from the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle
includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste
disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation , reprocessing spent fuel, and transportat ion of materials. Several of these stages
involve hazards. Unlike the special risks in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of
plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferati on of
nuclear armaments - these hazards have p~rallels, if not exact equivalents , in
other very polluting methods of generating power, e.g. 'workers in the uranium
mining industry sustain 'the same risk' of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers
in the coal industry 1 1'f Furthennore , the various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sector of uranium fabrication should be differently
viewed from those resulting from location, for instance from already living where
a reactor is built or wastes are dumped. For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupationa l relocation) , and many types of hazards incurred
fr/working with radioactive material are now known in advance of choice of such an
with where one already lives things are very different. The uranium
miner's choice of occupation can be compared with the airline pilot's choice,
whereas the Pacific Islander's 11 fact" of location cannot be. The social issue
occupation:
of arrangement s that contract occupationa l choices and opportuniti es and often
at least· ease people into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal
mining (where the risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly
compensated ), while very important, :i.s not an issue newly produced by nuclear
associated occupations .
Other social and environmen tal problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitari an and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of largescale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining for
instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear developmen t, and a specially
C-,t.o ,,._.......,
eef, :i.i.lef
undesirable one, as~ rectificatio n eosb~ for dead radioactive lands and waterways
reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, so that modern
factory complexes are often guarded like concentrati on camps (but from us on the
�dire conse quen ces, of a diffe rent
outs ide), sabot age o a nuc ear react or can have
(cons ider again the effec ts of
orde r of magn itude from most indu stria l sabot age
more dubio us enter prise s such as
core meltd own) . Though theft of mate rial from
at large and can assis t terro rism ,
muni tions works can pose threa ts to popu latio ns
probl ems of the same orde r as
no theft s for alleg edly peac eful enter prise s pose
produ ces mate rials which so
theft of fissi onab le mate rial. No othe r indu stry
explo sives . No othe r indu stry is,
read ily perm it of fabri catio n into such mass ive
to sum it up, so vulne rable on so many front s.
, in part becau se of its long and
In part to ~ ; ; , . ; ; : ; ~ ~ ~ ~ r a b i l i t y
, the nucle ar indu stry is subje ct
conti nu ing asso ciati on with milit ary activ ities
ainly given their scale ) run
to, and enco urage s, seve ral prac tices which (cert
tiesy Th ese ~e secre cy,
coun ter to basic featu res of free and open socie
ial polic e and guard force s,
restr ictio n of infor mati on, form ation of spec
espio nage , curta ilme nt of civil liber ties.
/
'l
given extra ordin ary
Alrea dy ope rator s of nucle ar insta llati ons are
backg round and
the
te
stiga
powe rs, in vetti ng empl oyees , to inve
fami lies and
their
of
activ ities not only of emplo yees but also
them selve s
ons
llati
some times even of their frien ds. The insta
sens ibili ties.
sh
become armed camp~ which espe ciall y offen ds Briti
creat e d a
1976
of
The U.K. Atom ic Energ y (Spe cial Cons table s) Act
it
made
ons and
spec ial armed force to guard nucle ar insta llati
ority 1'
answ erabl e ... to the U.K. Atom ic Energ y Auth
If\ th,_ µ.• ;-fud K~~~fh
ar
worse in West Germ any, presa ge along with nucle
These devel opme nts, and
,-\
anti- demo crati c soci eties . That
devel opme nt .i ncrea singl y auth orita rian and litiui/
:conse quen ces tells heav ily again st it.
nucl ear devel opme nt appe ars to force such'
,/i.~tdi't-...
A conne ct1.on of
the
by
ly
tical
poli
:lslted
inia:i:
er
furth
is
Nucl ear devel opme nL
t ethic al ques ti?ns conc ernin g
nucle ar powe r with nucle ar war. It is ~&te -',tha
4 Of'}'4ff';
. unde r any
fiea,
justi
is
war
ar
nucle
a
nucle ar war - for exam ple, whet her
are disti ngui shab le from those
circu msta nces , and if so what circu msta nces er, the sprea d of nucle ar powe r is
conc ernin g nucle ar powe r. Undo ubted ly, howev
[tl~Jfc -,C,ltt
nucle ar war and so, to that exten t,
~inc re~i ng the techn ical means for engag ing in
,~ c.Aq,,,_ ceJ ef 1
Since nucle ar wars are ,fleJ de"') f'41' neve r
the oppo rtuni ty for 1 nuc1 ear engag emen t. e-;(4vry
J , / ~ a.r~«'../~ ~"'1 '~/e ..
,,t,uclo f¥ c.riu-1" CU'-11.
"
the"' lesse r of'm ajor evils ~Jhe eprea d
bes~
at
are
but
s,
good
tive
posi
le
acco untab
ty for / ~dc/a .-.,e,, -,
1
of nucle ar powe r acco rding ly expan ds the oppo rtuni
o/~
~ /Z/
7
r
;Z_ cbhJ,1
04-r/
u.--, ,..<. .M/~ ;
➔/~)
1~ a~(/
-- -- -- -- ! - - -- -- -,77,._, ~ ~
t,-m k~/e
~~~ LIIL :I'.,
~ 70-...___/-
1
/4tY'..-r ,,.
,,"/2._v ,,,_,,o,µ;..~&_
I'
~ll
~ <~~
'- / --/_ ~
I
-~
~~ / ~ 4--t'/o
~c../
C..IY'C-
I'-..,._ ~ ....w./
C1-j,
~
/
~~~ W-r
C-L- r•l~~ «./c; ,_
di../-<_
~ ........,,
~/., _
/
c-.b
To
~ ~,,
~
~
C.,-1,,, __-
r
;, ,
�30.1
many. They are firstly technical, that it is a relatively straightforw ard
and inexpensive matter to make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear
I
power plant, secondly political, that nuclear engagements on<~ inJf,ntf~u
likely to esculate and that those who control (or differently are likely to
force access to) nuclear power plants do not s.hrin k from nuclear confrontati on
and are certainly prepared to toy with nuclear engagement (up to " S'fr-c1.feeiic
v
"tla,ut
nuclear strikes; ), and thirdly ethical, that wats invariably have immoral
consequence s, such as massive damage to involved parties, however high sounding
their justificatio n is. Nuclear wars are certain to be considerabl y worse as
regards damage inflicted t har1 any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse
than all previous wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power
of nuclear weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects,
and because of the expected rapidity and irreversib ility of any such confrontati ons.
The supporting considerati ons are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
-----------are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itsclf
unde si i- able. The c or e arguement is in brief this (the W"J"~.wt will be
in section :m:I) :- Energy choice between alternative options is
a case of decision making under uncertainty , because in particular of the JN.If
Utt.UrffJt~fi'es involved in nuclear developmen t. In cases of this type the
1"rlt•c':-iov/
appropriate procedure is to compare worst consequence s of each alternative ,
e. /c.J,orP>lt>A
A
'
to r e_Je-cL . those alternative s with tht
~-,
--the bs~t (the roaxiro m rule) ,
f.llCl'tf:"
~
of these worst consequence e-nd select
J
II
The nuclear alternative has, in particular
because of the) p,.o ssibility of a nuclear war, the WotJC
and is according 1a particularl y unde$itable alternative .
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already observed, the consigner's action cannot be justified by purely economisti c
arguments , such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village woul
be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer Iffiinciple on which this assessment
was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a
serious risk to others
for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to
�f
31.
For this r eason t he economistic argumen t s whi ch are t hos e mo s t
commonly advance d under the Old Paradigm to promote nuclear develo pment - e . g .
ch apness, efficiency, profitabili ty for electricity unilities, and the need
the nuclear case .
otherwise for un comfortable chan ges such as restructurin g of employment, i nves t ment
and consumption - do not even begin to show that the nuclear alternative is an
Even if these economistic assumptions about benefits to present
people were correct - j_t will be contended that most of them are not - the arguments
) h as to
.
.- ;-,'d~er1.ves
· h it,\
~h ic
f rom w
.
.
·
(like t h e ut1· 1 1tar1an1sm
.
wou ld f a1· 1 b ecause economics
acceptable one .
operate within the framework of moral constraints , and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
/'~}
arguments to the effect that, unless the prim.a facie unacceptabr e~ alternative is
taken, some even more unacceptabl e alternatice is the only possible outcome; and
will ensue. For example, in the train parable, the consigner may argue that his
h,J
action is justified because unless it is taken~ village will starve. It is by
no means clear that even such a justificati on as this wou~ be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, as the case seems to become
one of transfer of costs and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would
no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action
taken in such circumstanc es.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing
~ present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
/\.
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arglllll.ents
crucially on the presentatio n of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternative s (or at least practical alternative s) and upon showing that the only
:is based
alternative s to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones. If some pratical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
"j 11~~
case it turns out that the -1ril1:agers have another option
e xample, if in the
t~:~~r:
)
~ to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living is some
othe r way - then the argwnent is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just .
such a suppression of practicable alternative s has occurred in the argument designed
to show that the alternative s to the nuclear option are even worse than the option
itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments as well. In
short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentatio n of false dichotomies .
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indusFailure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemploymen t and poverty in the industriali sed
trialised countries.
nations .
�1
32. J
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either
for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There
is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase unemployment
and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct
employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution
of energy use for labour use.~ "'°The argument that nuclear energy i1needed for the
third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy~ both politically and econom-
ically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of
capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, but creates
negligible local employment, and depends .for its feasibility upon, what is largely
lacking, established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities and
sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases
forei¾ dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
lt/,zc
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third
world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, ·
their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the
economies of these countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military
purposes.
It is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling
elites may make in the name of the poor.
The ooverty argument is then a fraud.
the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to help
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there
are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and t he practical option of developing
other energy sources~
alternatives
some of which offer far better prospects for
helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear development:
indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap, procedure
on route
1~1
to solar or1 £usion developme nt.
And there are various alternatives:
coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including
aAi<J.1fiM.r
) eti~L._01,i:/j,:,,-;._
as well as narrowly solar, wind, water ami tidal power)1
'
A
"
<t.,,(C:...uf~...
Despite the availabiity ~~
.
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence ~( what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups )-: ~
.)uch an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an
Q.la.bcn'~-l,;;,,.,,
trickle-down argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
argument runs:affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
For the
_si,,,}:,~-l-,{v1.t.d.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
anything specific about nuclear power2:
is
of the
Nuclear development is necessary for / continuing and increasing)
development benefits the poor.
for 'nuclear'.
. ~2
,,,,7t ~~4
for j_t works equally well if 'energy'
It has also to be shown, what the JI • rsnd M,<J(t
major argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
�33.
alternati ves in increasin g affluence .
The second assumptio n, that affluence
(
inevitabl y trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historica l
data, which show increasin g affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasin g poverty in several countries , both developin g and
developed , and through economic models_, which reveal how "affluenc e" can increase
Jt
without redistrib ution occurring -_J Another major argument advanced to show moral
conflict appeals to a set of supposedl y overridin g and competing obligatio ns to future
people . We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things
and institutio ns which our culture has developed . Unless our high-tech nology, high
energy industria l society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutio ns
and tradition s will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essential ly
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it
alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilizat ion will go out.4J
Future people will be the losers.
The lights-go ing-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characte ristics are necessary for a good
society. But for the most part these large questions , which deserve much fuller
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritica l position with respect to present high-tech nology societies , apparentl y
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. It assumes that technolog ical
examinati on, can be avoided.
society is unmodifia ble, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservat ion or alternati ve (perhaps high technolog y) energy sources without
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy -· such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to { ..._v-.,, •sf.t -
collapse.
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptio ns are hard to accept.
The assumptio n that technolog ical
society's energy patterns are unmodifia ble is especiall y so - after all it has .
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technolog ical
restructu ring and consumpti on modifica tion. If western society's demands for energy
are totally unmodifia ble without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
pro gram of i.ncreasin g destructi on, but one might ask what use its culture could be to
future people who would very likely, as a consequen ce of this destructi on, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contempo rary society.
There is also difficult y with the assumptio n of uniform valuablen ess;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-tech nological society and its political institutio ns , but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutio ns which are needed to maintain those valuable things. While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumpti on centrally controlle d is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to arguethat it
�....
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --~- ----34-.
(
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable .
There is good x·eason i~ fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even
if a radical chan1e in these directions is independen tly desirable , as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at leas;,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-goin g-out argument are wrong. No
enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less evergy than a \ present,
and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of asstili1ption
which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.~ What the nuc~ear
strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in
western civilisatio n, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to
maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganz a.
In fact there is good reason to think that, fa r from the high energy
society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society which
has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised , controlled and
cons 1.At'1f10"'
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-i ntensive ener gy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchmen t of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source , whether capitalist or bureaucrati c, can exert
enenormous powe r over the political system and over people's lives, even more
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritari an and increasingl y anti-democ ratic, as an outcome, among other things,
of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. ~
than they do at present.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism , alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritaria nism - while many valuable aspects, such as the
degre e of political freedom and those opportuniti es for personal and collective
autonomy whic h exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom, for example,
is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagenc e.
the status quo, but what is valuable in our society, presumabl
1,
But it is not
that we have some
obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternative s,
: l?a,#1-0.'t\..t...G--
alternative socia;Aand political choices, which do not involve such unacceptabl e
consequence s are available. The alternative to the high technology- nuclear option
1
Ii- c,/~e/4,,._ ~
/4 f
ettl..i,,- fl.a,. u/4jr/iP- "f- "- ~
is not a retturn to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but~ the development
of a'tlJ,ernative technologie s and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the
li).,j·
c-o,y(
/'IWQ.r rr '
~#a-r,
maintenance and further development of whAt . is valuable in our society than the
The lights-goin g-out argument, as a moral
highly centralised nuclear option. ~
�/;,.
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a fa l se dichoto-y.
r fJ.J,..,
I(
J:r._,._
Th us the Aescape route/, the appeal to moral conflict aua
to t he appeal t o
1
fu
ty, ~ closed. If then we a pply - as we have argued we s hould - t he s ame
l.
J
standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the presen t,
the conclusion that large~-~sca le nuclear development is a crime agains t the f uture
is inevitable.
1 from reactor
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes to other argumentst:IAtt Ji> <>'l ;'${1~
ma(/_ ~wn J
radiation emissions, Aetc:::::t
for · ~ / nuc ~
development
as morally unacceptabl e, for saying that it is not only a Acrime
against the distant future but also a ~
~rime against the present and immediate
future.
In sumJ nuclear development is morally unacceptabl e on several grounds.
A corn--o llary is that only political arrangement s that are morally unacceptabl e will ·
suppor_t th.e i(1!pending nuclear _future .
of future people
not tf'.I J ;,; I discounted (in contrast to the temporally - limited utilitariani sm
~"'of_
n,,ia,-k-4!.t - ~~economic theory)J and that serious costs and risk~ to health and
life.cannot admiss ~ ly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties ( h ~ I
/4- /4 ~1~
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will now be outlined whichAshow that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm,
choosing the nuclear future is not a rational choice .
..Jl:
Large-scale nuclear
on
&,<.
cc,,//,,,_.,,,;,, h-4111,
development is not just something that Mppens, it requires,.\ an immense input of
capital and energy. , J,.j ,:_ .~J.-..r~ ,,.,;_,R.J
.J""11 ~-.,,&./ 7'iN/ t>h- ?
~
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o//-,.;?.,/ ~ /;: ,J''"'e"' eccJnom,'c__
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been i nvested in nuclear
.fiH1on
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,r
~ -d'M.r
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Admittedly so much capital has already
research and development,
:i..n marked contra t
)I
to othe~rival sources of powes
that t hert is strong political incentive top
f1'7
- as distinct fromAreason s for further capital and energy inputs. ~
~
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�The main argume£~~~an economic growth
argument, upon which variat~S
, re played., is the following version of the lights-going-o ut argument (with economic
.
e~
/
growth duly standing in for ll'late•oal wealth, and Afor what is valuable!):Nuclear power is necessary to su.stai.n economic growth.
Economi c growth is
desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the
t:,'IU{ c·o,,,ae,cf,,l( /ocip,/ k/!Mff,
, , , ~ f()'f"
f'~
J
to-1 postpone reJistribution problems,/\ etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desira.ble ~
The first premiss is part of US energy policj~ and the second premiss is suppli ed
by standard economics textbooks.
Ja U>'t~
fr
C(,a<~ A/~{
1~!
M ~k.
t~
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But both premisses are
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7
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/ More to the
since the second premiss is an assumption of the dominant paradigm, the first
{tltK.
!t(J (IQ~/,,,
( or rather · an appropriate,{ restatement of it )
fails even on Old Paradigm
For of course nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps
e:=-1:.I,~
alternatives.
N-.e,./41"
elaboration of the
/)tPwt--Y
ptemiss
out as 'most efficient',
etc .
1',s
Je.feviltl
The premiss usually
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is s,ome
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growth, 'economically best' being filled
'cheapest', 'having most favourable
'cost' benefiti-ratio
~--_..,,
1
>
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear
po er is none of these things decisively , unless a good deal of economic cheating
(easi..4 to do) ~
I
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}
ground that it is not known
currently what the costs involved are.
But even using actual
waste handling costs (while wastes await storage) is enough
to show that
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37
//1.d'
The ~aradigm does not, it j/i«,f
7~r,) _sustain
the nuclear
jl.(ggernau~:l?The real _reasons for the continuing development program ~
commitment .,- -·-
A.~
the
r
--.. to the program have to be sought elsewhere,, outside the
Old Paradigm,
at leas-t as preached.® There are, firstly reaso?s of previous
1'ru,.J_
l e,iQAFa.-;~ , ~ PJ,/{/M.rfr,
,.J/.u
l;vf,f,,U_DN!;
commitJ!lent, when nuclear power \ looked a cheaper and safer• deal. corpouations
(;~.&? ~
.
A
,{
rd_,~
_A
ei/10
are ;\_ keer{ -t:o
,,e,,._(,:;<.,,
returns on capital,{ invested. There are lypical _,. ,
~~fl
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uc/~/"-7
s e l ~ reasons for commitment to the program, that
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~ i t s accrue to some, lil<e
' !}cr'o.-t,.J;'
~
in o__
liti
~ corporations, that are influent1·a1
c:--_ _r_
· _ca 1
·
.tr
Sf1n-~,
1
·
a ff_airs,
an d as a
profits <;1-ccrue to others, tV't/ Jc on ·..,
-·1c J ear eng1 nee.,r,:i ng, -etG-:- There
.
J,.cLa.-t
are A
ideological reasons ~ a belief in the control of both political and phys ical
~ b1Z,/,e..f1 IYJ ScC/4 I c.on-l •✓-ol -f'.-e,,,-n itho ,/2
power by technocratic-entreprenial elite,
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a faith in the unlimitedne ss at ' .
technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular, so that any real problems
that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially
conspicuous in the British scene, among the governing and technocratic classes.
/It ' ;,:. <=c<--,,../4-;:?-»'r~ ~~
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·these :;orts of reasons for nuclear development are,.\ linked, h
/, C-
C
i4t /-(!_.
• ~- t-h.,,
ret13f'lfl
tJ,tH those whose types of enterprise/
benefit
@8rf?lislit
O
n
,pi tq l i e
substantially
nuclear development are commonly those who hold the. requisite beliefs.
f;.C-A I <-0•1.:f°'7~1"U:I
.Lt is
ti _ corporate capitalism, , ~ its state enterprise image,
; / "''#.
Hu
· cm
t.min i;s;;;
pc e I if\~, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
corporate capitalism, which is the political · e
?t~r~,d
col'l.o,.,.._"/
v
To be sure,
largely thrust upon
us in ilr/es•-ern .11~ .sln e, is nnt ni>ce~sary fn:r a nuclear furur@; a totalitarian
state of the typ (~ such capitalism often supports in the third worl"d w.i ll suffice.
But, unlike a hypothetical state tl'tA--C. does conform to precepts of the Old
Paradigm, it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well
embarke d 4111 such a future -/
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'-~------------------------------~--"'
�~--v>~-e/f
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�_,,,""--'.___;:._;;_..::..::::.=-=-"-=:..::..:~;:_.:_~=-=...:.:...:::.;::_-=~-=-=L.:;;-=-~a~l~t~e~r~n~a~t~i~v~e~s=-=-.- The future energy
['cJ4¢-r
Y>tAlf't°' 0
ootion that is ttS11 a H-,A contrasted with nuclea~, namely coa¾, wMe
, _,., ,__,. I
/~u-
c/4u,,/f-r_a/'~k- t'a-- ~w.r
:>
/J / ~
the likelihood of .;r;.edty serious (air) pollution and associated phenUIII-•
s uch as acid rain and atmospheric heating 1 not to mention the despoliation caused
by extensive strip mining 1 all of which will result from its use in meeting very ttigh
projected consumption figures. Such an option would also fail, it seems, to meet the
'j?u.-,/e,.
necessary~ condition, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for
r
some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the
full costs of production and replacement..iS$J
.
f>t.l.t-,;,..
lo
'these a
r 112'
conventiona~ options .-- a third is often added which emphasizes
r,,,u{ .:, Alt<K/l..11A. Gc-l7L-., "-yd/otJ/,: J.riufy
A.
_,t.,,...a,
softel.-4 benign technologies, such as those of solar' energyA The deeper choice,
which '!Ven soflllfpaths tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves
r~11la/lJ4~ ~Ht-,-4,,?
6<'tl
bot~ the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses:
at a more
basic level there is a choice between consumeristjc and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between soci ,tl alternatives, conventicnal technologically
ol CA-V":fr ~fu~
oriented discussion At.ends to obscure. It is not just c. rr:.atter of deciding in ,;.,-hich
~
ytil•- Mr/
way to meerxt..:.nexam~nEd goals (as the Old Paradign ~ d
1·
of examining the goals.
14'
,
)t
J\..
Ml )' but alEC: a rr.atter
That is, we are not merely faced with the que.stion of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
a-
.
matter of examing those alleged needs and the cost o~ society that creates . them. It
is not just a question of devising less damaging wais to meet these alleged needs
conceived of us inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are solar ways of
producing unn~cessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to nuclear wayst al'
ber1.11ft o.f ~<1..
~ /J '1-tf--t'
~
A. ot(Ql.Se)'blie~s Hot uaat to deny that these softer optfons are superior • ethically
unacceptable features of the
'lltl
et :u ~ i b f
rt,~,
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principl~will
h
likely to leave a tolerable world for~ future ,., . p:l:i2: if it is expected to meet
�f
38 .
u,.',awo.d.
i ~mit lcss and uncontrolled e nergy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
them.
Consider, fo r exa mple, t he effect on t he world's forests, whic h are
commonly counted as a solar res ource, of use for production of methl•nol or of
electricity by woodchipping ( as already planned by f ~ist authorities
and contemplated by many other ener gy organisations) J\ f'ew would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, -b:ttt the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's
already hard- pressed natural fores t s.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
r?ftJfiW
forests are often dicem:1Ht@d, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
A-expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resources'. May forests are in
A
principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values . ~$, In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be immanent if not already well advanced. It certainly
has begun in( ~
n.--11>
regions, and for
U'-Plr,•0-:1:i!PJ~,;
~
which are,\ beifig 16st for the future.
that f o r ~
on top of ~
present
forest types (such ~s rainforest types)
amt "•i M11,f."5 /.~.t,.//4__
)!HtJ~
The addition of a major further ,\demand ee2rn:e,,,
J'f't!4J~
is one which anyone with a realistic
(o,t/<>,,./l_rl"~
.
appreciation of the conduct 6fAforestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard
with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes ~ resembling
the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again
for energy purposes, w ould be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands
and tropical ar eas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change,
and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on -
we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than
we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In
short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - i.mportant though this is - without any more basic structural and -locial change is inadequate.
f,,t,.,,IOJ1,",;/
Nor is such a simple.4 switch likely to be achieved.
~1&4-
It is no t as if
fc
political pressure could i -11st bene:,\ the US government,\ stop its nuclear
~ =
Ntn-G ( and
that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the way pressure appeared
to succeed in 11,-1.lting the Vietnam war.
could be accomplished, it is very
While without doubt it would be good if this
unlikely given the integration of political
powerholders with those spons r ring nuclear development .'°
�I
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
, ,om......,,.;.,. ,A.. h~JG".t j"-.:; ~ no.odr,
s tructure which promotes consumerismAand ah economic structure which encourages
increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production.
This means, for
instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough
to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have
very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work
from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward
of consumer goods and services.
A
society in which social rewards are obtained
primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from
rer~
satisfaction in work and in social re.lations and other activities, is.\ bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system
that produces goods not to meet ge~uine needs but for created and non-genuine needs
is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently becomes a substitute
for satisfaction in other areas .
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set
of adjustments involved in socially j_mplementing the New Paradigm, the move away
from
,:::6',t.SIArne<•S"Yl
is for example part of the more general shift from material ism
and materialist values. /
~
Th4
c
'
A=::O:f social change option tends to be obscured in most
ol
discussions of energy options andAhow to meet
.---.
@S
energy needs, in part because
question• underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional
6.,; ,.
nee~)
or
wants
with
conflo..W
(often
demand
alleged
taking
by
proceeds
discussion
as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most
profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and
is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the
social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable arid
unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated., It is commonly argued by representatives
of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of
the XS Consumption Co., that people ~deep ~ezers, air conditioners, power
boats, ... 1t would be authoritarian to ps:t:llp them satisfying these wants. ~ tl+c
A
argument conveniently ignores the soc:f.al framework in which such needs and wants
�To point to the determinati on of many such wants at t he
framework level is not however to accept a Marxist approach according to whic h
they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial
or are produced.
organisatio n) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determinati on at
all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain
kinds of choices , such as those for travel , Mle iafrastrtt~t u"v and to see apparently
individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and diLected by a
social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private prt,fit
and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only wa» so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future. And there are other sorts of reasons than
it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspectivef .2..-a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
such ethical ones for taking it:
paradigm.
tJa,,u#t;LJ J',;...,
The ethical , requirement defende.o<.,
I
social and political
d. -,
£
CUr{f?'?~{j
~~~
J
t<~
~~
-f7 ~
?t,(""f""e.u •
,uu1...l',1;1.ial
The socialAchan ges that the deeper alternative requires will be strongiy
r esisted because they mean changes in current social organisatio n and power structure •
..tt'ld<°f:o the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of presen t
political and economic arrangemen ts it is not surprising that official energy
option discussion proceeds by misrepresen ting and often obscuring it. But
i.,,·11 Jtz_
difficult though a change t,f t:icn~inant p: a @eigm, especially one with such ~rreaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is imperative
to try;
we are all on the nuclear train.
�V
(
• I
-
FOOTNOTES
~
1.
-
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Good in ., p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear .fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fal la cies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
~
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Gooij_in, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341; compare also
catton and Dtinlap, especially p. 34.
--
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy ~
e.nd$, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr. Justice
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry
Parker a~
Vol. 1. Her Majesty's
Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue
both from one's own position against the other, and in the
other's own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvltfls
....
favour the (proLnuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
�information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
.
them.
what, s
f)f1ts
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
The same conclusion has been reached in
details up to 1977 see Routley (a) .
L
/;..:i
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~t/ J
i I! rl. I e
·7.
[{CL
/i
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11.
eol
.
See the papers, and simulations, discuss :bal in GoodiA p. f-28.
/~
On the pollution and waste disposal ·r"ecoff'd of the n uclear industry,
, 12.
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price1 and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of e..f fective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
Back of this Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of
13.
replacing God.
power.
Man
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over- nature, then when
during the Englightenment
Man
replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
Science and technology were the tools which were to put '1an into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology.
[ability to
14.
manage technology represents the past]
On such limitation fhe.o~UJ?l, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow
.,-----------.....-
fk
d.n · o ther ·
.I\
~
see, e.g. Routley 80. ,j Other different
are presented in Routley 81.
'
l,,;,.;l-etht>,..,,
te1t1/tf
It follows that there are many problems that have
no solution and much that is necessarily
lJ/lkA•N4'/4. .
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
t he history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem there
is a solution, and thUf progress need never cease (C cttto,i and
p.34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
,1
OS (a,:.J
Amore recent official reports, ft n r, <t:etieHlar
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For examples. and for some details of the history of philosophe~
16.
positions 4 n obligations to the future. see Routley (a).
Passmore, p. 91.
17.
Passmore's position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
as also is
Rciw/s ,
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
position.
For related criticisms of the economists' arguments for
18.
discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
. ,,
Good11, , pp 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a
linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin/ however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfactory fashion.
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
prefi, poses, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest" (e.g.
"'P
covers everything except
Cll#l-
p) .
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listedJ aMI be comprehended along such lines
>.
as "plant breakdown through human error".
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Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, Economics , 7th Edition, McGrawHill, New York, 1967, p.351.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
The contrast is with me re logical possibility.
�Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitaria nism (e.g.
'lf.
J.H'.1,A'"
Sidgwick
p.414), and in a range of contract and other theories
How the principle is
from Kant and Rousseau to Rawls (J8(A" p.293).
argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlyin g theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particula r ethical
theories.
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�Even then relev ant envi ronm ental facto rs may have
been
negl ected .
,
1
Ther e are vari ation s on (i) and (ii) whic h mult
iply cost s
agai nst numb ers such as prob abil ities . In this
wav risk s,
cons trued as prob able cost s, can be taken into
' acco unt in
the asses smen t. (Alt erna tivel y, risks may be asse
ssed throu gh
such fami liar meth ods as insu ranc e).
'
A prin ciple vary
ing (ii), and form ulate d as follo ws:
(ii') a is ethi cally acce ptab le if (for some b)
a inclu des
no more risk s than band bis soci ally acce pted
.
was the basi c ethi cal prin ciple in term s of whic
Lake Boar d of Inqu iry rece ntly decid ed that nuclh the Cluf f
ear powe r
deve lopm ent in Sask atche wan
is ethi cally acce ptab le:
see Cluf f Lake Boar d of Inqu iry Fina l Repo rt, Depa
rtmen t of
Envi ronm ent, Gove rnme nt of Sask atche wan,
1978 , p.305 and
p.28 8.
In this repo rt, a is nucl ear powe r and bis eithe
r
acti vitie s clea rly acce pted by soci ety as alter
nativ e powe r
sour ces.
In othe r appl icati ons b has been taken as ciga rette
smok ing, moto ring, minin g and even the Vietn am
war( !)
The poin ts made in the text do not exha ust the
obje ction s to
prin ciple s (i)- (ii') . The prin ciple s are certa
inly
ethi cally
subs tanti ve, sinc e an ethi cal cons eque nce cann
ot be dedu ced fro m
none thica l prem isses , but they have an inad miss
char acte r. For look at the orig in of b: b may ible conv entio nal
be
acce pted thoug h it is no long er soci ally acce ptab soci ally
le,
or
thoug
h
its soci al acce ptib ility is no long er so clea rcut
and it woul d
not have been soci ally acce pted if as much as is
now
know n had
been know n when it was intro duce d. What is requ
ired
in (ii') ,
for insta nce, for the argum ent to begi n to look
conv incin g is
then 'ethi call y acce ptab le' rath er than 'soc ially
acce pted '.
But even with the amen dmen ts the prin ciple s are
inva
lid,f or the
reaso ns give n in the text .
It is not disc once rting that these argum ents do
not work .
It
woul d be sad to see yet anot her area lost to the
expe
rt~
name
Jy
ethic s to actu aries .
-
A main part of the trou ble with the mode ls_is
that
narro wly utili taria n, and like utili tari~ ni~m they they are
distr ibut iona l featu res, invo lve natu ralis tic fa~l~ n~gl ect
Real ly they try to trea t as an unco nstra ined optim cie~ , etc.
isati on what
is a deon tical ly cons train ed optim isati on: see
R. and V. Rout ley
'An expe nsive repa ir kit for utili taria nsim '.
I.-"\
Appa rent exce ption s to the prin ciple su~h as taxa
redi strib utio n of incom e gene rally ) vani sh when tion (~nd
weal th is
cons trued (as it has to be if taxa tion is to be
P:ope
r,J_y
justi fied ) as at leas t part ly a so~i al asse t unfa
irly mono polised by a mino rity of the popu latio n. -:)
·
~ Exam ples such as that of moto ring dang er~u sly
coun terex ampl es to the prin ciple ; for one is not do not cons t~tu t~
mora lly entit lcu
to so moto r.
�f,
;o».
,> /;o cfobs and
On all these points see R. Grossm an and G. Daneke r , t7w· L
E'nergy, Environ men 1:a]jsts for Fu.11 Employ ment, W;:ishington
DC, 1977,
ting
pp.1-7 , and also the details supplie d in substa ntiatin g the interes
case of Commoner · [7].
nuclea r indust ry,
On the absorp tion of availab le capita l by the
see as well [18], p.23.
On the employm ent issues ,
the
see too H.E. Daly in [9], p.149.X A more fundam ental challen ge to
poverty argume nt appear s in 1. I 11 i.rli
Energy a:nd Equal·i ty, Cal den and
Boyars , London 1974, where it is atgued that the sort of develop ment
need.
nuclea r energy represe nts is exactly the opposi te of what the poor
Small
For much more detail on the inappr opriate ness see E.F. Schuma cher,
is Beauti ful, Blond and Briggs , London , 1973.
As to the capita l and
other require ments, see [2], p.48, and also [7] and [9].
For an illumin ating look at the sort of develop ment high-en ergy
techno logy will tend to promot e in the so-cal led underd evelope d
countr ies see the paper .of Waiko and other papers in The Melane sian
Environ ment (edited J.H. Winslo w), Austra lian Nation al Univer sity Press,
Canber ra, 1977.
.-B9-..- -'.JT;lhHi~sHf§'..ia'!1ee,jtE---:1ii·ss-:1t.i·m;a:pE>cll-1.ic·e.eici~t±l:-;:v-r-4r:ee~c,QO'l:!g,i;ineii~s~e~0Hittrrr- [P.2f]~,:7p~.~5516J.
A use
Ta
1 survey is given in A. Lovins . Energy Strateg y:
The Road Not
n, Friend s of the Earth Austra lia, 1977 (reprin ted from Foreign
/
Af. airs, Octobe r 1976);
see also [17], [6], [7], [14], p.233 ff, and
Schum~ cher, op. cit.
//3·
An
argume nt like this is sugges ted in Passmo re
-f-fi, chapte rs 4 and 7,
with respec t to the questio n of saving resour ces.
In Passmo re this
argume nt for the overrid ing importa nce of passing on contem porary
l
culture is underp inned by what appear s to be a future -direct ed ethica
version of the Hidden Hand argume nt of econom ics -
that, by a coincid ence
care of
which if correc t would indeed be fortun ate, the best way t o take
the future (and perhap s even the only way to do so, since do-good
of
iRterv ention is almost certain to go wrong) is to take proper care
the presen t and immedi ate future.
The argume nt has all the defects
of the related Chain Argume nt discuss ed above and others .
�/1, IA;, u,./n er
Very persuasive argurn en t sAh ave b een
advanced by civil liberties groups and othe.rs in
· a number of countries:
C.$ee especia· 11y M.
· , Nuclear Prospects.
y·
Flood and R. Grove-White,
A Comment on the Individual., the State and Nuclear
Power, 'F riends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural.
England _a~d National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
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Certainly practical transitional programs may involve tempor ary
and limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such a s
coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not
lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and
the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use o f
such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of encn1y,
i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cosl
,.
------~--
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~
-1
footno te le continued.
of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking ac count
of environmental cost of production . Other (sometimes
strategies towards more s a tisfactory altercooptive)
natives should also, of course, be adopted, in particul a r
the removal of institutional barriers to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local g ove rnment
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state
assistance to fuel and power industries.
ff
Symptomatic of the fact that is it not treated a s rene wa ble
is that forest economics do not generally a llow for full
renewability - if they did the losses and de ficits on
forestry operations would be much more striking than they
already are often enough .
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of
f o rests can be a ! fully renewable operation if net energy
see, e.g. the argument in
production is to be worthwhile;
L.R.B. Mann 'Some difficulties with energy farmin g fo r
portable fuels', and add in the costs of ecosy stem mainte nance.
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1875
/IN/J , AJuncl)L
NUCLEAR POWER
•
-
ETHICA L,a& SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
---.. Compet ing paradig fus and · the nuclea r debate .
~
J C/l/'I
One hardly 1ieeds ini t.. i ation into the dark myster ies of nuclea r physic
s
to contrib ute useful ly to the debate now widely raging over nuclea r
power. While many import ant empiri cal questio ns are still
unreso lved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controv ersy.
Instead , it is a debate about values ...
\
many of the questio ~which arise are social and ethica l ones. 1
•.:tSociol ogica) investi gation s have confirm ed fJ £ a t~
I pa,i I 11g , I a1:a1Hiliit e:f! the
,!
01\.C!..
debate l=!S:&!!!!t'!~ primar ily over what is w.9rth having
or pursuin g and over what we are
'tli.a,., /i.,we 4ho cc,-.+·,r,.,../),l fl..,,/ it,, J;,'/.wh :1 ;•,l~:,~-11
.entitle d to do to others .~,] ii pelaFi oatienA
along the lines of compet ing
paradig ms. 2 Accord ing to the entrenc hed paradig vtldisc erned, that constel
lation. a'
of values , attitud es and beliefs often called the nomina nt Social
Paradig m
(herea fter
I ena ipsoiac to u hl:ttan f!nD
--)
I
r/
I
riteria become the benchm ark by which a v.;id..e/ range of
individ ual and social action is J IA"{'J4.l
and evalua ted.
AW'\d
belief in the market and market mechan isms is
quite centra l.
Clv'.:ite...<il"\<J
around this col'"e belief is the
convic tion that enterp rise flouris hes best in a system of
risks and r ew~ rds, that differe ntials are necess ary ..• , and in
the necess ity for some form of divisio n of labour , and a itfl1rar chy
of skills and expert ise. In particu lar, there is a belief in
the compet ence of ~xpert s in genera l and of scient ists in
particu lar , m More thau this, scient: ifie knowle dge aftd t:he scient ific
speei:r~:'i~/,;2··::.,,./
method enjoy a
-ef knowiftg , • , , A:Re
3
S = ~ : . . _ 4"--
quanti f ica.tion .
.status as
super, '(P'
::::j there 1s an emphas is on
~~,3
The rival world view, sometim es called the Altern ative Environ mental
Paradig m
( the ~ Paradig m) differs on almost every point, and, accord ing to
sociol ogists ,
in ways su~mar i~ din the followi ng table 4":Nature hostile/ne utral
Environm ent controllable
---·. ,csourccs limited
Nature benign
Nature clclicatdy balanced
\.
\
EDGE
.,.
Confidence in science
and technology
~ation:ility of means~}
Limits to science
~ationality of ends
•
S.t-~te socialism, as practiced in most of the "EasteI11 bloc", differs from the
01/ PaLl.digm really only as to economic organisation, the market in particular
l\ ffl~'
being replaced by central planning (a market system by a command system).
/
o-Y
,r,~t)tlt
But
since there is virtually no debate over a nuclear future within the confines of
·
h
· 1·ism, 5 tat
variant on the Old Paradigm need not be delineated here.
minor
s t a t e socia
,,.... 1
Nctl.cu,t
.WailiaA the competing paradigm picture is a trifle s i m p l e ~ instead
~
a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadi gms, a cluster of not very well
out rositions that diverge from the cluster marked out as the
wo,•k~
Jfl01+,;.,./'cr-hJ,
)/o,ie,/{~(J
Old Paradigm~ i t is empirically investigable, and.I\ it enables the nuclear debate
be focussed.
Large-scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of
the world ,
counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of
the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the
assessment of nuclear power, instead of
~,..
olt-0u'-,
merely economic
1in addition to
jJa9.,-.d
..
u(_, \-"-..
factors such as cost and efficiency, isAto move somewhat
received paradigm.
g.gl; .. i le
the
For under the Old Paradig~, strictly construed, the nuclear
debate is confined to the terms of the narrow ut1litarianism upon which contemporary
economic practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to
assumed economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
instrumental details
whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irratfonal. I
/;,(4.(11,-,'1"4-J J~clear development receives its support from adherents of the Old
Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set within the
assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these assumptions the
t:o
fails. But in
· and ultimately fails
fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm is itself broken-backedj)
case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
unless the free enterprise economic assumptions are replaced
by the ethically
unacceptable assumptions of advanced (corporate) capitalism. r->~~~tt--en--e--a:nm~m-t~
7
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm ) to be structur ed. There are two
main part~JJ :It is argued, firstly, from
the Old Paradigm , that nuclear
J&tfSe
developm ent is
ethicall y
unjusti fiable;
A
but that, secondly , even from within
e·th,t" I~ ,;,{,.l,fo "1
the framewo rk of the,\Old Paradigm , such developm ent is unaccep table, since signific
ant
features of nuclear developm ent conflic t with indispe nsible features of the Paradigm
(e.g. costs of project developm ent and state :s ... lPs ,l ,J"--f:,,;, •., with market
independ ence and criteria for project selectio n). It has _?~E_~ d accepta ble
from
within the claminan t paradigm only because )rfo,,Js
do not square with practice , only
because the assumpt ions of the Old Paradigm are but very ~A~~ty
applied in
contemp orary politica l practice the place of i ru.<<I!.(~., "'1( td)
,v
capitali sm having been usurped by corpora te capitali sm. It is because the nuclear
debate <:<1.vi bL.
carried on within the framewo rk
of the Old Paradigm that the
debate - although it is a debate about values, because of the conflict ingvalu
es
of the
<c.,..,.,fL-f;;"1
paradigm s - is not just a debate about values; it is also a
debate within a paradigm as to means to already assumed (ec:.on0" 1istid
ends, and
-:=:-
of rationa l choice as to energy option.5 within
(~
~ 0 1""Q;i1f
2'n this corner ~
0<,f/e,,..Jj4 ft!1ho',. "JllD I
most !i F I Im. decision
1
a predeter mined framewo rk of values.
tlrp~
theory argumen ts,often conside red
"
as encompa ssing
all the nuclear debate is ethicall y about, I\best util.i t~rian
means to predeter mined ends..,) be l : ~ For another leading charact eristic of the
nuclear debate is the attempt , under the dominan t par_adigyn, to r~c'1~ it from
t/•IIW 1f
the ethical and
social sphere) and to turR ; t into spec,iali st issues ef'
#"
whether over minutia? .and conting encies A present technolo gy or overme&lw,,/
~legal or
~)
mathem atical ,,' upeciaJ J y de, rs r 011 tbentetf c: and Stat Is Lica:1:, or amdie&t details.,8
/
£'
;or
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems nuclear
.
developm ent poses.
There are 7any
A inter~e lated problems and -fl. t.- OAJ'""'"cd
· , is further
,)
I\
/_,flW4r
structur ed in terms of these.
For in the advancem ent and promotio n of nuclear ~
we encount er a remarka ble combina tion of factors, never before assemble d
establis hment,
on a massive scale, of an industry which involves at each stage of its process
ing
serious risks and at some stages of product ion possible catastro phe, which delivers
as a by-prod uct radioac tive wastes which require up to a million years' storage
but for which no sound and economi c storage methods are known, which gr~w up as
part of the war industry and which is easily $""h v,e..,rld to deliver nuclear weapons
,
which require s for its
operatio nconsid erable secrecy , limitati ons on the flow of
informa tion and restrict ions on civil libertie s, which depends for its economi
cs,
and in
order
to generate expected private profits, on Sl.\bs-i.4.,,/..,~/
state
subsidi zation, support , and interven tion. It is, in short, a very high technol
ogical
developm ent,
ba~«-f.
with problem s.
first importa nt problem .which serves also
to exempli fy ethical issues and princip les involved in other nuclear power questio
ns,
is the unresolv ed matter of disposa l of nuclear wastes.
A
.------------- ------------ ------------ -------~--- ---.
f
5.
t
annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb.
of this waste is extremely toxic.
)
Much
For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium
part of the waste material
of even a
is enough to induce a lung
Wastes will include the reactors themselves,
...contamination
which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
and which, some have estimated, may require l½ million years to reach safe levels
of radioactivity.
P,,.tcAF
A~astes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire
For fission products the required storage period averages a
active lifetime.
thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there
is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen
with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the
comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years. ~ Shortterm methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer
term methods are subject to both human interference and risk of leakage through
non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
ti
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formation s or in salt mines, are largely speculative and
relatively untested1 and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts
made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for
the result in
first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and enca/ulating
,i
multilayered metal containers before rock
radioactive material may not remain
deposit 1 si~ulation models reveal that
11.
.
, 'II isolated from human environments.
S'k,t.<\t1
f~4.
In short, the best present ~iapeoel proposals carry very real possibilities of
.J... /Id
•
//
I
lZ..t-u ~~~ •
irradiating future people- (V',i,,l.
Given the
c<c,,,~'7
I
Atu.lflf
.QA:Q;pQfiQWB
costs which could be involved for the future, and given
0
the known ~~mits of technology, it is £i?la:h:tw methodol@gi cal.ly unsound amt to bet,• as
nuclear
Mlin,-J
~
A
t~a.
have,• on the discovery of safe procedures for 1tis.pr19i,j of wastes.
Any
new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on present
proposals, and subjecJto the same inadequacies.
methods for safe
l
storage
For instance, none of the proposed
X "'t.H
has been properly tested, and they mayAprove to involve
ell :sorts o:fi unforseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into
practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee
,
I
I
09
when set in this context.
t,/wo/!
are not so ruf'I
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses
when the consigner, again~ "responsible" businessman, puts
).
his workers' health or other peoples' welfare at risk.
~
THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE1~IN PARABLE .
II.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded
carries both passengers and freight.
journey
The train which is
At an early stop in the
someone consigns as freight , to a far distant destination, a package
which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
container which> as the consigner
ii ava..r4- 1
Jii' l 'J I ems
This is packaged in a very thin
may~ not contain the gas for the
~ full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the interior
of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere
try; to steal some
1e t 11 r 5ffi'1jhQ~
ot
eliherately
~
the freight~
inadvertent!
Ml
tX,lA4'rcd,.
have happened on some previous journeys.
All
iii,.
~
with
fU:
ft,1-h ~
fCJ Laps
Conf• ;;bi.c, ;_,,,
of these tie:! cg ,..
,\
If the container should
"'
break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the
train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or incur serious diseases .
..,.,
Most of us would Aoundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain that
the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world
needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not
responsible for the train or the people on it.
These sorts of excuses however
1$
would normally be s een as ludicrous~
a11rlo'1er1
(~~up~~he says that it is hisgownA pressing needs which justify his action.
The ~ h e
0!111!!6,
,\
which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial
A
straits, and could•
n.,r
,. afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to
r~..../'441' ~ ,1/r
make one.
If t h e ~
§?PB
ersl~~, he and his family will suffer, his employees
r~L'~~
will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the who}eA
1~,~,
through
loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
()It,/ rl.A~"/t ~ "
.fo-...
The ppor of t'he ¥.j)Jag_P,whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will
,1
suffer especially. ::,
,1r.,i/Q
G ew people would accept~ story1 even if correct, as justification. Even
where there are serious risks and costs to oneseLf or some group for whom one is
(o
concerned one is usually
m,""kM,l
ii,b. w;gil1'UA not
hacc.u_y
to be entitled to simply transfer the,4 burden
of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise
1
()r
1
CI U J
1
/JIZMJ' J )
from one's own.< chosefi Iife-style.ca:nd the t~nsfer af cos.ts creates a risk of
,ae-r ious harm t:e G - t ~ r
-----
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resem\1le
the train (i4.tqatiaeu
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plant~ that will be spread around the world as large/9
scale nuclear development goes ahead. ' The waste problem will be much more serious
than thut generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, withx'each one of the
2000 or so r actors envisaged by
,IJ
,f/4.
J.IYl/4w
l#i7 l,Q. ~~'4~ ,i·
dfi) flp,J4v{-
...,_,
jj{'. ,
,~IL
cue end of the century producing, on average,
A
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•
s/4
/7
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----:,..........,__..
6. {
of safety over th e s torage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt , would be
acceptable.
It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given
concerning either the geological or future human factors.
But even if an
economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method
could
be devised,
there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably
.
. as
The assumption that it would be{ especially if,
~
used.
-
likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the f uture which has not previously been e~counter~in
human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
1
.
Again,
unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage sites
through perhaps a million years of possible future human ac t ivity, weapons-grade
radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year storage period,
to any pa rt y who is in a position to retrieve it.
nonetheless be found 1 before 2000,
(no longer a mere disposal pfioblem)
s accordingly not t"~t,cnA '(
which gets around the waste storage problem
. like ma~v assumptions ?~ifH~s, It is an assumption supplied by the
based, but is ratne ~ ~an artitle or
The assumption that a way will
/!
Old Paradigm,
1
Cit M limitations assumption , that there are really no (development)
-
·
-.
problems that cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion
always immediately ·· economically feasible).
part in development plans and practice..
technological optimism (not to say
what humans can accomplish,
The assumption
that is
has played an important
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
t3 -h(A.J,,.,·::, -____
);
that there are no limits to
;~;:14.
i<. through science ; it has led
to the em~rcation on
projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved
t,r
a solution is
tNll.~ i n sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led , not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe limits
on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the form of
'"'
limitation theorems,~ and in addition there are human limitations which modern
technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk analysis of the
·
, llliu:,,olll( lido-wliklihood of reac t or accidents is a relevant exampll). The original nuclear
technology dream
..fj 1>S1.l»-'I
was that nuclear
'clean unlimited supply of power').
apparently remains a net
will be but a quite
X
That dream soon shattered .
cons &-1>t1~
"!)hc..-l::-tM1<1
would provide unlimited energy (a
The nuclear industry
of power, and nuclear
..flt~, ;o,,..
s upplier of power/>
The risks :l.mposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
then , significant.
are,
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for a
million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an energy
source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy problems of the
people of the distant future whose lj_ves could be seriously affected by the wastes.
I
pt,..."'tl.Mt..
It is for such reasons that the train aua]og; cannot be turned around
.p, .. ~,.,,,/(._
. s.
to work in favour of nuclear power, w1.·th .:e::g:.-"1 t, h e nuc 1 ear train b r1.n1.ng
I
4
relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only) by nuclear power.
7.
~
~~----Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use
I.I f»l~)'r•jloiT,,j.,.
d
r{4.
of onlyAlO generations.
l''°/'k o.f
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the ene~gy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that
in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of
energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably,
again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it ~
For
they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in which,
if the nuclear proponents' dream~of global industrial:lsation are realised, more
and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy
consumption and associated technology and heavy resource use and will have lost or
reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world
which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable
resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which will have to form
4
a very important part of the basis of life, are in a run·-down condition.
Such
pointf~~ll against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries
of nuclear fission energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The "solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary
indu st rial society proposes, in order to get itself out of _a
mess arising from its
chfik
Q,W:fl
life style - the creation of economies dependent on an
abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs
and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits.
.
The ''solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes~n the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner's action
avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate surroundings, but at the
expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties, whose opportunity
to
/eJ J.Q.c~nt /,vu
Afli1J
may be seriously jeopardised.
Industrial society has - under e~ch paradigm, so it will be argued clear alternatives
(YJ>o~-t~
1
cf i patterns
~
w
to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
c~mpet,Nil,iJo.l'J ~
of consumption and protect the interest of those,\who benefit
from them.
I r~ pcrca.,t1cd,
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
1
principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps often not in fact) in the
contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development
firTr-/S~
inv61ves injustice
~
/:T4- •
with respect to the future 1,0
.I\
li
g s111l s n 1J e> . The.re appear to be
only two plausible moves that might enable the avoidance
of
such a conclusion.
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8.
I
i
I
First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply
f{,_
because the recipients of...- nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
!eject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course to
1
~
that there are
circumstances in which such an action might ~,.;s i];Jj'
no
be justifiable 1 or at least where the
the nuclear case.
f,t,,J/,e,,
~
is less clearcut.
It is the same with
Just as in the case of the consigner of the package there
is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether
(on(l,/e,r-
We ~urfl now to the first oA these possible escape
they apply in the present case.
h,1',.,. ,¼ ,,;I,11.
,~ 1V,r,q
routes for the proponent of nuclear developmen~, A~
the
~ ~ a i e::u,
question of
our obligations to the future.@
III
The especially problematic area
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
is that of the distant (i.e.
~
,-inun({..!',l j ate) future,
11(
the future with
which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
&,I"
In fact the question of
future gives fe~ problems for most ethical theories.
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
( tl~eu,lf;"i,
a;iff.
ill}~-?~
•
•
1-t,u,· fe,!, 0 "! 1-ope:ram,o_rLJ
fail to pass, and also
o'Ji(~)
tlo
.-u-r ~ t/JM_
the adequacy of accepted;/ institutions which leave
future pe pl.c.
in political philosophy cen:e!r .. in:g
01:1~
<YP
of account~ the interests of
ll'd"-lvx~,
;>?Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future
people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other philosophers
have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge obligations to the
future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those
who deny or who are committed by their
general moral position to denying that there
are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight
of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political
pcr/1t,,/IJ
institutions,that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond ~those
f@raap,s to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained, there
are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the effect
of our actions on future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or whose views
imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, who have
opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view on accouna
of moral obligation which are builh. on relations which presuppose some ckiguhl uf
\
9.
temporal or spatial contiguit y.
Thus moral obligatio n is seen as grounded on
or as presuppos ing various relations which could not hold between people widely
separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligatio n is seen
as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also nontransitiv e. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligatio n, or
requireme nts on moral obligatio n, which would rule out obligatio ns to the non.immediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligatio n is held be able to claim his rights or
entitleme nt.
People in the distant future will not be able t'b-claim rights and
en«fw11.
entitleme nts as aga:inst us, and of course they can do nothingAt o enforce any
claims they might have for their rights against us. Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligatio ns on social or legal conventio n, for example
a conventio n which would require punishmen t of offenders or at least some kind
of social enforceme nt. But plainly these and other conventio ns will not hold
invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventio ns and so will
not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders , and there could be no guarantee that any
contempo rary institutio n would do it for them.
~ Both the view that moral obligatio n requ{es the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractu ally based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligatio n as they not only require a
commonal ity or some sort of common basis which cannot be guarantee d in the case of
the distant future, but also a possibili ty of interchan ge or reciproci ty of action
which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligatio n is seen
as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside because they
cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract. The
exclusion of moral obligatio ns to the distant future also follows from those
views which attempt to ground moral obligatio ns in non-tran sitive relations of
short duration such as sympathy and love. As well there are difficult ies about
love and sympathy for (non-exis tent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characte ristics one must know very little and who may well
Ji/fa,,,,be committed to a life-styl e for which one has no sympathy. On the current
1
showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to conclude that
contempo rary society lacks both love and sympathy for future people; and it would
appear to follow fr om this that contempor ary people had no obligatio ns concernin g
future people and could damage them as it suited them.
(
10.
j
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
\b 5
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empffathy).
{ t:#11/
Because obligation therefore
fOt1'0i7'1 )
c,4/t..,&,./.h.
become\conditional, features usually"' thought to characterise ia;~such as
universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) ate
lost,~special.ly where there is a choice whether or not to do the thing required
to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria
for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them,
Mt
is Ahowever
Jurn.mi).(/e.
,fl
·•=~
aH:llLalt one te ~t113ta1A J
Irr
Consider, elm example , a
a scientific
group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device
designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No
presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affecte.d,
but the population ofY the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
The unconstrained position clearly
direct and predictabl~ result of the action.
implie s that this is an acceptable moral enterpris e, that whatever else we might
legitimately criticize in the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being overexpensive or badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally
J,,)rc'y:
acceptable the following sorts of linEOfflf':les:- A firm discovers it can make a
will do to future people.
handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material
which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate
descendents, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which
will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at
that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its
own interests, without any consideration for the harm i .t does
,ren,,~
future
people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
0...
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it i s ~ clear
impli cation of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well
as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the unconstrained
position have not considered such examples,
-, /J/(l.
by their position.
despite their being clearly implied
w ..ld cuh..117 ~o/1'1 Md;{ -
We suspect thatAwhen it is brought out that the unconstrained
position admits such counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other
things being free to inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for
11.
the unconstrained position would want to assert that it was not what they
intende.d.
I
What many of those who have put forward the unconstrained position
seem to have had in mind in denying moral obligation is rather that future
people can look after themselves, that we are not reponsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a
future causally independent of the present.
But it is not.
It is not as if,
r:--
in the counter/
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being
.....:.,...,
left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and
in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as
they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the
obligation to take account in what they do of people affected and their interests,
to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of
the chance of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acqu.ired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one .is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some course
of act.ion of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired or
assumed obligations toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or assumption
is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which require, for
example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which
no act of acquisition is required.
and kind of responsibility involved.
There is a considerable difference in the level
In the first case one must do something or be
something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be contracted.
In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent
who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, and thus
does not have to be especially acquired or assumed.
Thus there is no problem about
how the latter class, moral constraints, can apply to the distant future in cases
where it may be difficult or impossible for acquisition or assumption conditions to
be satisfied.
They apply as a result of the ability to produce causal effects on the
distant future of a reasonably predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can
apply to what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not
p{jf-lrr
(yet) exist. While it may~be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must
make speci.al sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
12.
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
from harming them.
argue in justification of hi.s action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsfbility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to
take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self- sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self- sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner
is resorting to heroic self- sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package 6n the train.
- 1~ ,-;.,,.
The conf~ of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral obligation' both to
signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something which
t?t-. con.Pl~"'
has to be assumed or acquired. a .~is encouraged by reductionist positions which,
in attempting to account for obligation in genera~mistakenly endeavour to collapse
all obligations into acquired obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
{),nu,,WUI
of the unconstrained position, of theAbelief that there are no moral constraints
concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve
the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to our immediate
successors in a better condtion, and that is all; il,/7
there are irferactice
no obligations to the distant future.
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through the
chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which each
generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the succeeding
-
generation.
/hftfe..
'U'L P..t (t A.,t
~ . A three objections to this chain account.
First, it is
inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future as if they applied only
between generations, as if there were no question of constraints on individuals
opposed to whole generations, since individuals can create causal effects, e.g.
harm, on the future in a way which may create individual
responsibility, and
which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire generation.
Secondly, such chains,
since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as examples again
show.
For the picture is unable to explain several of the cases that have to be
dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which show that we can have a
direct effect on the distant future without affecting the next generation, who
may not even be able to influence matters.
VThirdly, improvements for immediate
successors may be achieved at the expense oflcfi\advantages to people of the more
distant future.
Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible with ,
and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less
immediate successors.
examples
Such cases can hardly be written off as "never-never land"
since many cases of environmental exploitation might be seen as of
just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of nonrenewable resources and the long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils
t.($l.
and forests through over crttl
If then such obvious injustices to future
W•
people arising from the favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors
are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way
fairly distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV.
ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATI_ONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONOMISTIC
r.\
Ul\tERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While
there are grave
difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible
. , ~ ,;.
position.
According to thej qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future .
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
( 'tJ
c./,~
14.
c,,...,.,,..7
e-.Al'I r~e/ ,,_0 /1//4,r.4'---/o/_/,._
costs and benefits (and so of future inter~s) is obtained by application over
time of a ! ~ discount rateJ l The attempt to apply eco~omics as
a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to
the qualified position.
J
What is objectionable in such an approach is that
rl..ooA.cl
economics~ operate within the bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just
A
as in practice it operates within legal constraints, not determine what those
There are moreover alternative economic theories and simply
constraints are.
to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future is to beg
~.rn.<)~
t=t.m questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future 1 the most threadbare is based ~n the assumption that future generations
J'{
than present ones > and so better placed to handle the waste
off
willj€:tter
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations may well UQ_l=
problem.
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter, no argujJnent
can carry Much
discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
For it depends qf
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argujtnent.
weight.
~
1 ~.<f_.: ~
assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
(ullRJ_td/., h-n.a-hc '"/ J
richer successors in foregoing such,i de.f5elopments as nuclear power. Tl,q•f ;1 1
il-.la/Jt,,,.1U
H:O::f t f ~ a ~ I
cl:e..vi?1tiprirn~
M
th. f:>.I~,. .Ly rcdr.lul
-Be:t,\ the sacrifice
{(J/0..)
lias , 1r cad, li @an
~
~
hi¥/~
-tl,e.,
on
sacrifices to
f or
8'1. Qto @h es.
t"/!"4;/
"r: toJ/IJ-f,444
the future
'i1:m:1 for the waste disposal problem to be
~
argument . Iii\ ""1
legitimately
generations, it would have to be shown, what recent
economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be, not just better
U 11.,t
J1' 011!.. C u.;,,;/,/e_.
off, but so much better offAthat they can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is d.i rectly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued_, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so f~r efficient allocation of
resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of
'r/'~/,·s-.-l,~.....
of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to cawii:a. to
71....r
a few pennies set
now than later. ~
costs much less_
economically
,1ov.)Q/"
--
,......
aside (e.g. in a trust fund)Ain the future, if need bev, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any
v,c. t,w>.f
of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, in surmountable pract1cal _
_
difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that
15 .
applied generally, the argument presupposes , what is false, that compensatio n,
like value, can always be converted into monetary equivalents , that people ~ncluding
I
those outside market frameworks) can be monetarily compensated for a variety of
damages, including cancer and loss of life. There is no compensatin g a dead man,
or for a lost species.
In fact the argument presupposes
neither part of which can succeed
be represented
,
at all adequately
it is not just
/</
a double reduction
that value cannot in general
, -fa'
/J,'K~~
monetarily, but (as against utilitariani sm)
,t
-LJ..,.t
constraints and obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value. It
i s also presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear
choic e s,'!_--- - -~
are bound ~o apply discounting . This is far from so :
indeed
A
Goodi~ argues that, on the
do not allow discounting , and discounting only works in practice with expected
utility rules (such as underlie cost-benef it and benefit-ris k analyses), which
,r,//
are, he contends strictly inapplicabl e for nuclear choices (since aJncrt
1 pnl'>Si],1 f3
{,/,11.{f al f<j''1. a,t /'.,~,,/,/;#b J
outcomes can
be duly determirte1, in the way that application of the rules
1-0
requir es).
1/
contrary, more appropriate decision £~1¢s
,,
As the f~e.ceid;nJ . arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrain ed position. If, for instance, we consider the cancer
i
example and reduce costs to payable compensatio n, it is evident that over a
sufficientl y long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclus ion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints . I n short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bi a s against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current e conomic horizons of no more than about
15 years~2/ and appli.cation of such rates would
simply beg the question against
the interests a nd rights of fu t ure people.
Where there is certain future damage
of a mo rally f o rbidden t ype, f or example, the whole method of discounting is simply
inappl.icabl e, and its use would violate moral constraint s.~
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from ca ses of c ert a in d a mage, comes from probability considerati ons. The distant
future, it is a rgued, is much more uncertain than
the present and immediate future,
so that probabiliti es are consequentl y lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding
with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.•
But then if we take
account of probabiliti es in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against
costs and benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people; except in
cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
much) less than those of present and
must count for (very
neighbourin g people where (much) higher
probabj_lities are attached.
So in the case of conflict between the present and the
future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the
present and the immediate f(Jture against a much lower probability of indetermina te
16.
costs to an indeterminate number of distant future people, the issue would normally
be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits
were involved.
But of course it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a
question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
in order to obtain am:±E doubtful fU" t, i :b4. benefits for some present people, in
f11(,i11i.1,~ c,HJcn.A,;;,. l';-of,Y~;l,7 or le
the shape of the opportunity to). continue unnecessarily high energy use. And even
if the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted ,)<such an argument would
be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action
is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing
significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large.
or l"isl.~JwiolilSuch a cost-benefitAapproach to moral and decision problems, with or without
the probability frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned
or to deal with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
it would follow on such principles that it is permissible
For example,
for a firm to injure,
or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm stands to make a
sufficiently large gain from it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not
transferable in any s1mple or general way from one party to another.
Transfers of
this kind, of costs and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral
issues - e.g. is
x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on
y -
whi.ch are not susceptible to, a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted
J~
J,!01-Ult;,...
•F enenza, of nuclear energy, ltho attefl@J':=::f::fl=di-smiss the costs to future
,~~
#
"41'-
.
~'?f1¥=;ll,,
d?,,-,ipQ/i,,.
people~with the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as
benefHs.
The limitations
of transfei:_ point is enough to invalidate the
comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
--
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity
-3.
are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and
risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear
energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but
also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporaJ.ly removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related to a
person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
{happiness) sums as a way ~f solvini moral. conflict between diff_e_r ent parties, and the
.
.
-
1J.1
,,.
u/i'th:urty,-
~IJ-UJI--.
NJ/t.J1
~
O-?
'Hf/t• """~ aP/2~.i.-1-;-
1ntroduct1on of probabi.lity cons1derations.-l does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis.
One might further object to the probability
argument that piobabilities involving distant future situations are not always less
than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes, and
~
17.
that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
f
probability anyway.
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
I
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on
high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our actions on the
distant future.
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of sep-
aration, but frequently tangled up.
priori
Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a
grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument is a
generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to the
exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain
-ft1Z'L:J
about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreli.able,wootl; and highly
A
speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the present
which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the
X
uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
crudely:
More formally and
One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reli.able information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace 'obligations' by 'knowledge'
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the
present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the
basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect
to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between
the present and immediate future on the one hand and the
distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any
such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future
and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are
normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly do act on the basis
of such "unreliable" information, as the sceptic as regards the future conveniently
labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic-proof certainty is rarely, or never, available
with respect to much of the present and immediate future. In moral situations in
the present, action often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low
probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for
certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order
for us to condemn the consigner's action.
It is enough that there is a significant
18 .
in this sort of case.
risk of harnt
J
It does not matter if the decreased
well-being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
But if we do not require
of the so-called "speculative " and "unreliable".
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should
we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should we
require for the future, episte.m ic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can
be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard.
But such a~ epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests, in
fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it already
presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each class, which
difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our
obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
theoretical
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is
gross
where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
this way:-
If moral principles are, like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if
every (action) x" ,
x
has character
h
then
x
is wrong, for
then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever
obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach
the antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obt.ain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action of the "It is wrong
to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument
be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is impossible
to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of present action
will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future people, then
moral
principles, although they may apply theoretically to the future, will in practice not
be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant
future will impose no practical moral constraints on action.
However the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain
or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning
the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the
~~
--t9-.
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
I
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
Again there is considerable
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
-f/,u.'fN-r I
in a hundred years i n ~ names o r ~ footwear, or what praod1
of ice
•
•
.._A'.~
cream people will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe,
especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a
hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from t h e ~ earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present
makes it such a rich and interesting place.
Ill
uncertainty argument should be rejected.
For this sort of reason, the second
The case of nuclear waste storage,
and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where
uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral
constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties at least
probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for the
application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially where
spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as~• eac. ~
eu,~
~ ··from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
{
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the def ects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
0~1,.(t_
write off probable~ harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves emv
,< .loy both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people
because we cannot be sure that they will
exist or that their tastes and wants
will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the~hings that would c,.ffect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for
the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that
some disaster will not overtake those we are mora.lly committed to. Again we may
be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts
on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other
machines.
Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual
standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such
arguments as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn't looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as oppo s ed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its
resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities.
Another argument which may consider
a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is acceptable
to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future people, is
often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that future
people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not ~ffect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this app ears to be a
~
live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make
the action of the firm
tu
..c
tbeaa-:&-xam~ aiscussed
earlier
of producing a
substance likely to cause cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact
that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these sorts were admissible only if what was required for
inadmissibility was certainty of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such
cases before such actions could be considered admissible what would ?e required is
22
far more than a possibility, real or not
- it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for
achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be
to protect themselves.
~tpected to apply
~/l,.. a..,,.L- a«'if
The strategy of /tnost af rbes9 uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
I
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or some
lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they may all
change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train may crash
killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak. These
are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe that
liC/t2-
they are any more than that, that is they are n o t ~ possibilities.
~k-
The
;\,
strategy is to stress such bH~sid& possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the contai.ner will break should be treated in the same way as these
mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great as to
preclude the consigners' takin~ account of the passengers' welfare and the real
possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A related
strategy is to stress a real vossibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and
thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints. This
move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty of
harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws attention
to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the application
of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future. In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
,:J$
'<>A,
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is SloM!-d, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised
particularly by pr,Pblems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
-fu,-- Q ~11.,,y,.La.. ..,, I,
and future people," wherf the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such
problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
f
)
of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved byVignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and representative a cl'ass of moral
problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest.
can be conceded that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of
It
the future will make co~flicts
very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble -
J
a realistic ethical theory will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will
equally be other conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder
resolution of the issue, e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular, there will bi~ many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers,
numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most
general probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then: are there any features of
future people which would disqualify them fro~ral consideration or reduce their
claims to such below those of present people?
Prima facie,
The answer is :
in principle None.
,.
moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability
of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are capable of deali.ng
satisfactorily with the present;
in other words, a theory that did not allow
properly for the future would be found to have defects as regards the present, to
deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people, e.g. those remotely located.
those outside some select subgroup, such as (white-skinned) humans, etc.
candidates
The only
for characteristics that would fairly rule out future people are the
logical features we have been looking at, such as uncertainty and indeterminacy; ht1 1l, ,
. ~ we have argued 1 p: ai-Oia) it would be far too sweeping to see these features as
affecting
the moral claims of future people in a general way.
These special features
only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or
practical
course of action given only present information).
In particular/ they
do not affect cases of the sort being considered, nuclear development, where highly
determinate. or certain information about the numbers and characteristics of the class
likely to be harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required:
it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot af feet his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration ;i Zfj
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
universalizahility, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the
present;
and thus there is the same ooligation to take account of them and their
interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the
probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage,
and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of
what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy
tf,1'1 Q.v. a.
do not/\:krt: u s ~ of these obligations. If in a closely comparable case concerning
the present
the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as
immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of
I
harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V.
Problems of safe nuclear operation:
reactor emissions, and core meltdown.
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in spa ce, or a particular gqsgraphical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
e,,- ,.q/Jjel'J
another state's or region's yard?
,(
When that region receives no due compensation
(whatever that would amount to, in such a case~ and the people do not agree
(though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the arguments under-
pinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing to the tentative
conc.lusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive wastes upon future
people.
But the cases are not exactly the same:
USA and Japan cannot endeavour
fl'I- cf
to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose to drop~ their
,a,ltdi;~ pollution in quite the way they can discount people of two centuries hence.
(But
what this consideration really reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that e ntitlement to just treatment can be discounted over time.)
!
'
~
'· i
Eth~· c 1 i ssues of distr i bu tive j ustice, • as to equityI
/
,:,J
~ J.._ /,
,tJ
tc..id~,,..__
v J{
~iv9ly=~=in ~ , also arise elsewhere in the assessment of nuclear development ;
in particular, a s regards t h e treatment of those in the neighbour of reactors, and,
tud rorb
differently, as r~gards the distribution of (alleged) b~nefits Afrom nuclear power
across ~ ~5' (The la t ter ques tion is t aken up
,\
a~ s ~~~ ,
especja] Jy , tb s Pev etty argument . ) ~
Weople livin g or working in the vicinity
special costs and risks:
f
~w{ffitrrf oslde, al ll rn
;i" a
nuclear reactor are subject to
firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact tha t
reactors discharge radioactive ma terials into the air and water near the plant ,
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such a:; {steam) explosion of a reactor. ~ ,I/;.._
~ question is whether such cos t s and risks can be imposed, with any ethical legi-
timacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in their imposition,
and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding the "risk/benefit
--
tradeoffs" of nuclea r _technology. -:::)__
( That they are so imposed, without local participation, indeed often without
local input or awareness as with local opposition, reveals one part of the
antidemocratic face of nuclear development, a part that nuclear development
shares however with other large-scale polluting industry, where local
participation and questions, fundamental to a genuine democracy/ of regional
determination and popular sovereignty, are commonly ignored or avoided.
.-:-,,,
The "normal" ei 1ssion , during plant operation1 of low level rad~ ation
carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, there r mains
/,id,,
substantial disagreement over theAnumber of cancers and precise extent of genetic
damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegltimotely ) permits free transfer of costs
and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised is said to
be: what extent of c~5cer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for
the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions?
m
Under the Old Parad
the issue is then translated into decision-theor etic questions, such as to 'ho · to
e mploy risk/benefit analysis as a prelude to government regulation' and 'how t o
....1.
25.
determine what is an acceptable level of risk/safety for the pub lic'
.:ii
}
3/
The Old Paradigm a t titude, ref~ted in the public policy o f s ome count r ie s
that have such policies, i s t ha t the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations , which rely~ what appeal
they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a pity about
Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it's nice to have this air conditioner working in
summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits, which may be
obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way compensate for
the (a;~nf Y, of cance~
'----
The point is that the costs to one party
27
are not justifie~
'-.:,.
especially when such benefits to other parties can be alternatively obtained
a,-,{,...~
without such ~
awful costs.:.
People, minorities, whose
,;.~;(a_,
.Jro/
~
within 50 miles of a nuclear plant.
p().~M...11£;
,1711~,
position isA compromised are thos\/ who live
(Ehildren, for example, are in aAparticularly
vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer
through exposure than normal adults.)
In USA, such people bear a risk of cancer
and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at l arge.
~i
A notinegl 11ble percentage (in excess of 3% of those exposed for 30 years) o f ~
qJ'~c~
R@r~ t a? s&&-eh:e people 1 in the area will di~j for the sake of the majority who are
111,(.ctaii-J"
'I
aailat.'@ffl benefitted byApower producti~n . ~e~~a
ft~elear.
Whatever charm t he
argument from overriding benefits had, even under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once
it is seen that there are alternative, and in several respects less expensive ~
ways/ of delivering the real benefits involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of radiation
t:Jt/~ or
on minorities, most of whom havei\ no genuine voice in the location of reactors in
their environment and cannot move away without serious losses, is quite (morally)
acceptable.
l~
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US Atomic Energy Corrnnission,
is to
suppose that it is permissible to double, through nuclear technology, the level of
(natural) rqdiation that a population have received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being
"natural" level) is also likely to have negligible consequences.
equivalent to the
The increased
amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted
normal,
and,
f<-,f- i, l(e,,... c-ltt<..,cd.
of course,,\ what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects,
whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person's well-being;
and while
the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will,
under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal, e.g . two
murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiat i on emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards wou'ld disclose.
Furthermore , the
~------- -------- ----~-- -------- -------- -------- ---monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely di.sinterested parties. Public policy is determined not so as
to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a 'public pacifier' while
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered~
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an 'extraordinary nuclear occurrence'. But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island) Y-Q
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
1flore acto rs, then the core melts and 'containment failure' is likely, with ~he result
that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated. In the
event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in
the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least
100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17
billion and an area H,e size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear
reactors are abo ut five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative
US government figures are giveti' : the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly b~Y~~eater still.
The consigner in ri sking the lifes, well-being and property of the passengers
on the train has acted i_nadmissibly. Does a government or govern~t-spon sored
private utility act in tay that is anything other than much less responsible in
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the community train. The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners' action is, as we would ordinarily suppose, inadmissible and irresponsible. The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical ar€/1
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
It has been contended , firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the
'11-
influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself. These
assumptions li ke the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very cil:ose
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear reactors,
it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of technological
limitations and human error, of waste leak.age and reactor incidents and quite
possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed .from the actual, a technological
27.
(
dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear catastrophe.
In such an ideal n ucle a r wo r ld , where waste disposal were fool-proof and reac tors
were accident-proof , things wo uld no doubt be morally different. But we do no t
live in such a world.
""
According to the Ra\ussen
report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodological ly sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under-
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability
as
estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude .-1 "not credible"
,>Difl~;l,,9'?~ ~
possibilities or as branches t;o:1:t!il fl Ellffl "not significant" that are real
.m:d" may well
b'1. rt:i./f,04,(
~1cq1pen1 in the real world.
\
It i.s the eliminations that are otherworldly. Infact
the methodology and data of the report has been soundly and decisively criticized .Ji
And it has been shown that there is a real possibili.ty, a notjpegligibJ.e probability,
of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible probability
of a reactor accident, still ibis acceptable, being of no greater order than
risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here we encounter again
that insidious engineering approach to morality built into models of an economic
cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc. Risk
assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to
provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options,
e.g. energy options,which settles their ethical status. The following lines of
argument are encountered in risk assessment a.s applied to energy options:
(i) if option a imposes costs on fewe.r people thq.n option b then option a is
preferable to optic+;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
therefore option a is acceptable. 3
f
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
1,r 1'-i l'Jp.,( ,-c.c.,',l.ci...fs
~
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, which jjB accepted: so nuclear pqwer
A
stations are acceptable. A little refle c tion reveals that this sort of risk
assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy as ll!l!it transaction modek.
It is far too simple--minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant
aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical assessment we should need
a much fuller picture and we should need to know at least these things:- do the
costs and benefits go to the same parties;
and
i1·he
person who undertakes the
risks also the person who receives the benefits or primarily, as in driving or
cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on ot e parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties a r e the same in the case of the options compared, and
there are no such distributional problems, that a comparison on such a basis would
be valid.i '})This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments
Secondly, does the person incur the risk as a result of an
of energy options.
28.
activ.Lty which be knowingly unclcttakes in a situationw-iere he has a reasonable
choice, knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in proportion
to the level6f the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking? Thirdly, for what
/
reason is the risk imposed: is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
risk that is ethically acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically
acceptable for a tr:Lvial reason. Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often
A
employed in trying to justify nuclear power.
The second argument (ii) involves
the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that of forgetting
that the health risks in the nuclear sense are cumulative, and ) 'n bhw ey ;i s g f:"
P'J;ct'.) pce i,1 e~ already
'°fc'
not A oo high.16
high if ~
1
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing
and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some
of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted
d/' l).,c-~ ~ flJ,;<d ,;k~4 .~ vr4..a)
I fl/rotl,7 ~~ kr 1/1
/ moc.tal plfinci'ple,\ that one' is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
I
r7n
of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other
This
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries~
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
iq;lude an effect on life or ~ealth or a ,risk thereof, a~d where the benefit to
j<2,c-(kUt , «J,•1
,r ·~ ,k
,-,1,-.r.:.. ,riz.._~,
t.4,/,:K/~7',-,t ~ ~ q:.:rLc-1- .
the benefit ting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature,.,\ { Thus ,tone is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
CIA.en(~
Suppose, forA example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an i.ndustrial process by which it lives, a nox~us waste material which
is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
oneself. f
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
,Oil ·/J..0- ~ )
service Ato the next village. The inhabitants of this village are then forced
to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal
or ol,e_ i'1M,).; 1(4. e1/Tl~L. ~ ~ Cdt'-/.:/4r,h .
process or of sustaining risks to their own lives and healthA Most of us would
see this kind of transfer of costs as.
morally unacceptable.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use. Included in the scope of this
/trl" gA'-,
condition are future people /§.~~~~ B ~eeiji~ a ~~~~m~aE~:iic=;m ;;~~i;E~~
1
The distribution of
-hut rd~ future generations (those of the next villages~;
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. o~to non-benef
is one of its most
of certain widespread and serious fonns of
objectionable moraL£eatures- ;-- - -
/4' ..;~<fi'nt ~ ,u/4.v
tfi/1_
,.,c,,r
r«-,,.4/ .......,,_,,
f"u<H;f I
l4'(!,,r)
\
iaries is a characteristic
=&,
7''7, ~ ,;_ ~
__../4;,,
-
7:.(,/,_.., ~
v /
__
- •_
__
·~-~---- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ---~
,.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantial ly worse shape than we received it - the transmissio n
principle. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independen tly argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories.)
eJpoc,"ct lly ru,clc>u- //)CL-;
•
Other social and environmen tal risks and costs of nuclear development ;~ The
problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmen tal, health and safety
VI.
risks and costs in or arising from the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle
includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste
disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation , reprocessing spent fuel, and transportat ion of materials. Several of these stages
involve hazards. Unlike the special risks in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of
plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferati on of
nuclear armaments - these hazards have p~rallels, if not exact equivalents , in
other very polluting methods of generating power, e.g. 'workers in the uranium
mining industry sustain 'the same risk' of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers
in the coal industry 1 1'f Furthennore , the various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sector of uranium fabrication should be differently
viewed from those resulting from location, for instance from already living where
a reactor is built or wastes are dumped. For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupationa l relocation) , and many types of hazards incurred
fr/working with radioactive material are now known in advance of choice of such an
with where one already lives things are very different. The uranium
miner's choice of occupation can be compared with the airline pilot's choice,
whereas the Pacific Islander's 11 fact" of location cannot be. The social issue
occupation:
of arrangement s that contract occupationa l choices and opportuniti es and often
at least· ease people into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal
mining (where the risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly
compensated ), while very important, :i.s not an issue newly produced by nuclear
associated occupations .
Other social and environmen tal problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitari an and include sectors
that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of largescale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining for
instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear developmen t, and a specially
C-,t.o ,,._.......,
eef, :i.i.lef
undesirable one, as~ rectificatio n eosb~ for dead radioactive lands and waterways
reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, so that modern
factory complexes are often guarded like concentrati on camps (but from us on the
dire conse quen ces, of a diffe rent
outs ide), sabot age o a nuc ear react or can have
(cons ider again the effec ts of
orde r of magn itude from most indu stria l sabot age
more dubio us enter prise s such as
core meltd own) . Though theft of mate rial from
at large and can assis t terro rism ,
muni tions works can pose threa ts to popu latio ns
probl ems of the same orde r as
no theft s for alleg edly peac eful enter prise s pose
produ ces mate rials which so
theft of fissi onab le mate rial. No othe r indu stry
explo sives . No othe r indu stry is,
read ily perm it of fabri catio n into such mass ive
to sum it up, so vulne rable on so many front s.
, in part becau se of its long and
In part to ~ ; ; , . ; ; : ; ~ ~ ~ ~ r a b i l i t y
, the nucle ar indu stry is subje ct
conti nu ing asso ciati on with milit ary activ ities
ainly given their scale ) run
to, and enco urage s, seve ral prac tices which (cert
tiesy Th ese ~e secre cy,
coun ter to basic featu res of free and open socie
ial polic e and guard force s,
restr ictio n of infor mati on, form ation of spec
espio nage , curta ilme nt of civil liber ties.
/
'l
given extra ordin ary
Alrea dy ope rator s of nucle ar insta llati ons are
backg round and
the
te
stiga
powe rs, in vetti ng empl oyees , to inve
fami lies and
their
of
activ ities not only of emplo yees but also
them selve s
ons
llati
some times even of their frien ds. The insta
sens ibili ties.
sh
become armed camp~ which espe ciall y offen ds Briti
creat e d a
1976
of
The U.K. Atom ic Energ y (Spe cial Cons table s) Act
it
made
ons and
spec ial armed force to guard nucle ar insta llati
ority 1'
answ erabl e ... to the U.K. Atom ic Energ y Auth
If\ th,_ µ.• ;-fud K~~~fh
ar
worse in West Germ any, presa ge along with nucle
These devel opme nts, and
,-\
anti- demo crati c soci eties . That
devel opme nt .i ncrea singl y auth orita rian and litiui/
:conse quen ces tells heav ily again st it.
nucl ear devel opme nt appe ars to force such'
,/i.~tdi't-...
A conne ct1.on of
the
by
ly
tical
poli
:lslted
inia:i:
er
furth
is
Nucl ear devel opme nL
t ethic al ques ti?ns conc ernin g
nucle ar powe r with nucle ar war. It is ~&te -',tha
4 Of'}'4ff';
. unde r any
fiea,
justi
is
war
ar
nucle
a
nucle ar war - for exam ple, whet her
are disti ngui shab le from those
circu msta nces , and if so what circu msta nces er, the sprea d of nucle ar powe r is
conc ernin g nucle ar powe r. Undo ubted ly, howev
[tl~Jfc -,C,ltt
nucle ar war and so, to that exten t,
~inc re~i ng the techn ical means for engag ing in
,~ c.Aq,,,_ ceJ ef 1
Since nucle ar wars are ,fleJ de"') f'41' neve r
the oppo rtuni ty for 1 nuc1 ear engag emen t. e-;(4vry
J , / ~ a.r~«'../~ ~"'1 '~/e ..
,,t,uclo f¥ c.riu-1" CU'-11.
"
the"' lesse r of'm ajor evils ~Jhe eprea d
bes~
at
are
but
s,
good
tive
posi
le
acco untab
ty for / ~dc/a .-.,e,, -,
1
of nucle ar powe r acco rding ly expan ds the oppo rtuni
o/~
~ /Z/
7
r
;Z_ cbhJ,1
04-r/
u.--, ,..<. .M/~ ;
➔/~)
1~ a~(/
-- -- -- -- ! - - -- -- -,77,._, ~ ~
t,-m k~/e
~~~ LIIL :I'.,
~ 70-...___/-
1
/4tY'..-r ,,.
,,"/2._v ,,,_,,o,µ;..~&_
I'
~ll
~ <~~
'- / --/_ ~
I
-~
~~ / ~ 4--t'/o
~c../
C..IY'C-
I'-..,._ ~ ....w./
C1-j,
~
/
~~~ W-r
C-L- r•l~~ «./c; ,_
di../-<_
~ ........,,
~/., _
/
c-.b
To
~ ~,,
~
~
C.,-1,,, __-
r
;, ,
30.1
many. They are firstly technical, that it is a relatively straightforw ard
and inexpensive matter to make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear
I
power plant, secondly political, that nuclear engagements on<~ inJf,ntf~u
likely to esculate and that those who control (or differently are likely to
force access to) nuclear power plants do not s.hrin k from nuclear confrontati on
and are certainly prepared to toy with nuclear engagement (up to " S'fr-c1.feeiic
v
"tla,ut
nuclear strikes; ), and thirdly ethical, that wats invariably have immoral
consequence s, such as massive damage to involved parties, however high sounding
their justificatio n is. Nuclear wars are certain to be considerabl y worse as
regards damage inflicted t har1 any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse
than all previous wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power
of nuclear weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects,
and because of the expected rapidity and irreversib ility of any such confrontati ons.
The supporting considerati ons are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
-----------are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itsclf
unde si i- able. The c or e arguement is in brief this (the W"J"~.wt will be
in section :m:I) :- Energy choice between alternative options is
a case of decision making under uncertainty , because in particular of the JN.If
Utt.UrffJt~fi'es involved in nuclear developmen t. In cases of this type the
1"rlt•c':-iov/
appropriate procedure is to compare worst consequence s of each alternative ,
e. /c.J,orP>lt>A
A
'
to r e_Je-cL . those alternative s with tht
~-,
--the bs~t (the roaxiro m rule) ,
f.llCl'tf:"
~
of these worst consequence e-nd select
J
II
The nuclear alternative has, in particular
because of the) p,.o ssibility of a nuclear war, the WotJC
and is according 1a particularl y unde$itable alternative .
wo1"Jt
"'
.
( ~ ,i it
,'l, /4
/A-
4.//t'dJ'
(l,- (fAt_~; d/6;-,rf ~ ~
d,.'£1/ ~d~
.JIM,;,,_
1 d:L
6e-fC w_"o/- r,?t/7/UI~~).
«-/~~
/ n.:.__..
W✓ ~
I
tPI.Ccn/4.J~
:.::n:::.t.
:.
aee-=o-=-l~o.s;gi.::i:..:c::a:.:l::_.:b::..:a::.:s=-e=-"'=-c,_:::._o..::f_..::.n:::u:.::c:.:l::.!e:.::a~r~d~e=-v.!..e:::..:::.l::::.01::p!!:m~e
:, t=.,;h~e=--=I=
· _a_r_g_u_m_e_n__t_~,,.....a.:. :n.:. ;d:,4-i
~,-JV_I_I_.__C_o_n_f_l_i_c_t_
~ ~~
~)
r
Jct
,,MCkv ~ ~ ,
~
.~~
✓/4.- ~ ~ : ; ; ~
~
r' ~
7~ ,
v--0"~7
7
~~~/,
r
ou7,fdL{_ , ,,_,,.,,~/,,_
/-c,-?"" )
As
/.,,,_. /7~7
~
7
1
~
~
7Zr p-'&.-4,
7-/ ~
¼
A<L
~
'"-;fo-
.,_,~=-.:.__
~
already observed, the consigner's action cannot be justified by purely economisti c
arguments , such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village woul
be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer Iffiinciple on which this assessment
was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a
serious risk to others
for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to
f
31.
For this r eason t he economistic argumen t s whi ch are t hos e mo s t
commonly advance d under the Old Paradigm to promote nuclear develo pment - e . g .
ch apness, efficiency, profitabili ty for electricity unilities, and the need
the nuclear case .
otherwise for un comfortable chan ges such as restructurin g of employment, i nves t ment
and consumption - do not even begin to show that the nuclear alternative is an
Even if these economistic assumptions about benefits to present
people were correct - j_t will be contended that most of them are not - the arguments
) h as to
.
.- ;-,'d~er1.ves
· h it,\
~h ic
f rom w
.
.
·
(like t h e ut1· 1 1tar1an1sm
.
wou ld f a1· 1 b ecause economics
acceptable one .
operate within the framework of moral constraints , and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
/'~}
arguments to the effect that, unless the prim.a facie unacceptabr e~ alternative is
taken, some even more unacceptabl e alternatice is the only possible outcome; and
will ensue. For example, in the train parable, the consigner may argue that his
h,J
action is justified because unless it is taken~ village will starve. It is by
no means clear that even such a justificati on as this wou~ be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, as the case seems to become
one of transfer of costs and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would
no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action
taken in such circumstanc es.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing
~ present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
/\.
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arglllll.ents
crucially on the presentatio n of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternative s (or at least practical alternative s) and upon showing that the only
:is based
alternative s to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones. If some pratical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
"j 11~~
case it turns out that the -1ril1:agers have another option
e xample, if in the
t~:~~r:
)
~ to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living is some
othe r way - then the argwnent is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just .
such a suppression of practicable alternative s has occurred in the argument designed
to show that the alternative s to the nuclear option are even worse than the option
itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments as well. In
short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentatio n of false dichotomies .
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indusFailure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemploymen t and poverty in the industriali sed
trialised countries.
nations .
1
32. J
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either
for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There
is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase unemployment
and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct
employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution
of energy use for labour use.~ "'°The argument that nuclear energy i1needed for the
third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy~ both politically and econom-
ically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of
capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, but creates
negligible local employment, and depends .for its feasibility upon, what is largely
lacking, established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities and
sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases
forei¾ dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
lt/,zc
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third
world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, ·
their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the
economies of these countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military
purposes.
It is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling
elites may make in the name of the poor.
The ooverty argument is then a fraud.
the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to help
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there
are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and t he practical option of developing
other energy sources~
alternatives
some of which offer far better prospects for
helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear development:
indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap, procedure
on route
1~1
to solar or1 £usion developme nt.
And there are various alternatives:
coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including
aAi<J.1fiM.r
) eti~L._01,i:/j,:,,-;._
as well as narrowly solar, wind, water ami tidal power)1
'
A
"
<t.,,(C:...uf~...
Despite the availabiity ~~
.
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence ~( what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups )-: ~
.)uch an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an
Q.la.bcn'~-l,;;,,.,,
trickle-down argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
argument runs:affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
For the
_si,,,}:,~-l-,{v1.t.d.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
anything specific about nuclear power2:
is
of the
Nuclear development is necessary for / continuing and increasing)
development benefits the poor.
for 'nuclear'.
. ~2
,,,,7t ~~4
for j_t works equally well if 'energy'
It has also to be shown, what the JI • rsnd M,<J(t
major argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
33.
alternati ves in increasin g affluence .
The second assumptio n, that affluence
(
inevitabl y trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historica l
data, which show increasin g affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasin g poverty in several countries , both developin g and
developed , and through economic models_, which reveal how "affluenc e" can increase
Jt
without redistrib ution occurring -_J Another major argument advanced to show moral
conflict appeals to a set of supposedl y overridin g and competing obligatio ns to future
people . We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things
and institutio ns which our culture has developed . Unless our high-tech nology, high
energy industria l society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutio ns
and tradition s will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essential ly
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it
alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilizat ion will go out.4J
Future people will be the losers.
The lights-go ing-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characte ristics are necessary for a good
society. But for the most part these large questions , which deserve much fuller
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritica l position with respect to present high-tech nology societies , apparentl y
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. It assumes that technolog ical
examinati on, can be avoided.
society is unmodifia ble, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservat ion or alternati ve (perhaps high technolog y) energy sources without
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy -· such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to { ..._v-.,, •sf.t -
collapse.
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptio ns are hard to accept.
The assumptio n that technolog ical
society's energy patterns are unmodifia ble is especiall y so - after all it has .
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technolog ical
restructu ring and consumpti on modifica tion. If western society's demands for energy
are totally unmodifia ble without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
pro gram of i.ncreasin g destructi on, but one might ask what use its culture could be to
future people who would very likely, as a consequen ce of this destructi on, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contempo rary society.
There is also difficult y with the assumptio n of uniform valuablen ess;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-tech nological society and its political institutio ns , but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutio ns which are needed to maintain those valuable things. While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumpti on centrally controlle d is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to arguethat it
....
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --~- ----34-.
(
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable .
There is good x·eason i~ fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even
if a radical chan1e in these directions is independen tly desirable , as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at leas;,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-goin g-out argument are wrong. No
enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less evergy than a \ present,
and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of asstili1ption
which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.~ What the nuc~ear
strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in
western civilisatio n, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to
maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganz a.
In fact there is good reason to think that, fa r from the high energy
society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society which
has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised , controlled and
cons 1.At'1f10"'
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-i ntensive ener gy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchmen t of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source , whether capitalist or bureaucrati c, can exert
enenormous powe r over the political system and over people's lives, even more
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritari an and increasingl y anti-democ ratic, as an outcome, among other things,
of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. ~
than they do at present.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism , alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritaria nism - while many valuable aspects, such as the
degre e of political freedom and those opportuniti es for personal and collective
autonomy whic h exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom, for example,
is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagenc e.
the status quo, but what is valuable in our society, presumabl
1,
But it is not
that we have some
obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternative s,
: l?a,#1-0.'t\..t...G--
alternative socia;Aand political choices, which do not involve such unacceptabl e
consequence s are available. The alternative to the high technology- nuclear option
1
Ii- c,/~e/4,,._ ~
/4 f
ettl..i,,- fl.a,. u/4jr/iP- "f- "- ~
is not a retturn to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but~ the development
of a'tlJ,ernative technologie s and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the
li).,j·
c-o,y(
/'IWQ.r rr '
~#a-r,
maintenance and further development of whAt . is valuable in our society than the
The lights-goin g-out argument, as a moral
highly centralised nuclear option. ~
/;,.
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a fa l se dichoto-y.
r fJ.J,..,
I(
J:r._,._
Th us the Aescape route/, the appeal to moral conflict aua
to t he appeal t o
1
fu
ty, ~ closed. If then we a pply - as we have argued we s hould - t he s ame
l.
J
standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the presen t,
the conclusion that large~-~sca le nuclear development is a crime agains t the f uture
is inevitable.
1 from reactor
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes to other argumentst:IAtt Ji> <>'l ;'${1~
ma(/_ ~wn J
radiation emissions, Aetc:::::t
for · ~ / nuc ~
development
as morally unacceptabl e, for saying that it is not only a Acrime
against the distant future but also a ~
~rime against the present and immediate
future.
In sumJ nuclear development is morally unacceptabl e on several grounds.
A corn--o llary is that only political arrangement s that are morally unacceptabl e will ·
suppor_t th.e i(1!pending nuclear _future .
of future people
not tf'.I J ;,; I discounted (in contrast to the temporally - limited utilitariani sm
~"'of_
n,,ia,-k-4!.t - ~~economic theory)J and that serious costs and risk~ to health and
life.cannot admiss ~ ly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties ( h ~ I
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will now be outlined whichAshow that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm,
choosing the nuclear future is not a rational choice .
..Jl:
Large-scale nuclear
on
&,<.
cc,,//,,,_.,,,;,, h-4111,
development is not just something that Mppens, it requires,.\ an immense input of
capital and energy. , J,.j ,:_ .~J.-..r~ ,,.,;_,R.J
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been i nvested in nuclear
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Admittedly so much capital has already
research and development,
:i..n marked contra t
)I
to othe~rival sources of powes
that t hert is strong political incentive top
f1'7
- as distinct fromAreason s for further capital and energy inputs. ~
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The main argume£~~~an economic growth
argument, upon which variat~S
, re played., is the following version of the lights-going-o ut argument (with economic
.
e~
/
growth duly standing in for ll'late•oal wealth, and Afor what is valuable!):Nuclear power is necessary to su.stai.n economic growth.
Economi c growth is
desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the
t:,'IU{ c·o,,,ae,cf,,l( /ocip,/ k/!Mff,
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to-1 postpone reJistribution problems,/\ etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desira.ble ~
The first premiss is part of US energy policj~ and the second premiss is suppli ed
by standard economics textbooks.
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But both premisses are
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since the second premiss is an assumption of the dominant paradigm, the first
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( or rather · an appropriate,{ restatement of it )
fails even on Old Paradigm
For of course nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps
e:=-1:.I,~
alternatives.
N-.e,./41"
elaboration of the
/)tPwt--Y
ptemiss
out as 'most efficient',
etc .
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The premiss usually
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growth, 'economically best' being filled
'cheapest', 'having most favourable
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Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear
po er is none of these things decisively , unless a good deal of economic cheating
(easi..4 to do) ~
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37
//1.d'
The ~aradigm does not, it j/i«,f
7~r,) _sustain
the nuclear
jl.(ggernau~:l?The real _reasons for the continuing development program ~
commitment .,- -·-
A.~
the
r
--.. to the program have to be sought elsewhere,, outside the
Old Paradigm,
at leas-t as preached.® There are, firstly reaso?s of previous
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commitJ!lent, when nuclear power \ looked a cheaper and safer• deal. corpouations
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,{
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are ;\_ keer{ -t:o
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returns on capital,{ invested. There are lypical _,. ,
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s e l ~ reasons for commitment to the program, that
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a ff_airs,
an d as a
profits <;1-ccrue to others, tV't/ Jc on ·..,
-·1c J ear eng1 nee.,r,:i ng, -etG-:- There
.
J,.cLa.-t
are A
ideological reasons ~ a belief in the control of both political and phys ical
~ b1Z,/,e..f1 IYJ ScC/4 I c.on-l •✓-ol -f'.-e,,,-n itho ,/2
power by technocratic-entreprenial elite,
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a faith in the unlimitedne ss at ' .
technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular, so that any real problems
that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially
conspicuous in the British scene, among the governing and technocratic classes.
/It ' ;,:. <=c<--,,../4-;:?-»'r~ ~~
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·these :;orts of reasons for nuclear development are,.\ linked, h
/, C-
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i4t /-(!_.
• ~- t-h.,,
ret13f'lfl
tJ,tH those whose types of enterprise/
benefit
@8rf?lislit
O
n
,pi tq l i e
substantially
nuclear development are commonly those who hold the. requisite beliefs.
f;.C-A I <-0•1.:f°'7~1"U:I
.Lt is
ti _ corporate capitalism, , ~ its state enterprise image,
; / "''#.
Hu
· cm
t.min i;s;;;
pc e I if\~, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
corporate capitalism, which is the political · e
?t~r~,d
col'l.o,.,.._"/
v
To be sure,
largely thrust upon
us in ilr/es•-ern .11~ .sln e, is nnt ni>ce~sary fn:r a nuclear furur@; a totalitarian
state of the typ (~ such capitalism often supports in the third worl"d w.i ll suffice.
But, unlike a hypothetical state tl'tA--C. does conform to precepts of the Old
Paradigm, it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well
embarke d 4111 such a future -/
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'-~------------------------------~--"'
~--v>~-e/f
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_,,,""--'.___;:._;;_..::..::::.=-=-"-=:..::..:~;:_.:_~=-=...:.:...:::.;::_-=~-=-=L.:;;-=-~a~l~t~e~r~n~a~t~i~v~e~s=-=-.- The future energy
['cJ4¢-r
Y>tAlf't°' 0
ootion that is ttS11 a H-,A contrasted with nuclea~, namely coa¾, wMe
, _,., ,__,. I
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c/4u,,/f-r_a/'~k- t'a-- ~w.r
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the likelihood of .;r;.edty serious (air) pollution and associated phenUIII-•
s uch as acid rain and atmospheric heating 1 not to mention the despoliation caused
by extensive strip mining 1 all of which will result from its use in meeting very ttigh
projected consumption figures. Such an option would also fail, it seems, to meet the
'j?u.-,/e,.
necessary~ condition, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for
r
some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the
full costs of production and replacement..iS$J
.
f>t.l.t-,;,..
lo
'these a
r 112'
conventiona~ options .-- a third is often added which emphasizes
r,,,u{ .:, Alt<K/l..11A. Gc-l7L-., "-yd/otJ/,: J.riufy
A.
_,t.,,...a,
softel.-4 benign technologies, such as those of solar' energyA The deeper choice,
which '!Ven soflllfpaths tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves
r~11la/lJ4~ ~Ht-,-4,,?
6<'tl
bot~ the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses:
at a more
basic level there is a choice between consumeristjc and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between soci ,tl alternatives, conventicnal technologically
ol CA-V":fr ~fu~
oriented discussion At.ends to obscure. It is not just c. rr:.atter of deciding in ,;.,-hich
~
ytil•- Mr/
way to meerxt..:.nexam~nEd goals (as the Old Paradign ~ d
1·
of examining the goals.
14'
,
)t
J\..
Ml )' but alEC: a rr.atter
That is, we are not merely faced with the que.stion of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
a-
.
matter of examing those alleged needs and the cost o~ society that creates . them. It
is not just a question of devising less damaging wais to meet these alleged needs
conceived of us inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are solar ways of
producing unn~cessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to nuclear wayst al'
ber1.11ft o.f ~<1..
~ /J '1-tf--t'
~
A. ot(Ql.Se)'blie~s Hot uaat to deny that these softer optfons are superior • ethically
unacceptable features of the
'lltl
et :u ~ i b f
rt,~,
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principl~will
h
likely to leave a tolerable world for~ future ,., . p:l:i2: if it is expected to meet
f
38 .
u,.',awo.d.
i ~mit lcss and uncontrolled e nergy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
them.
Consider, fo r exa mple, t he effect on t he world's forests, whic h are
commonly counted as a solar res ource, of use for production of methl•nol or of
electricity by woodchipping ( as already planned by f ~ist authorities
and contemplated by many other ener gy organisations) J\ f'ew would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, -b:ttt the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's
already hard- pressed natural fores t s.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
r?ftJfiW
forests are often dicem:1Ht@d, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
A-expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resources'. May forests are in
A
principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
of the renewal of all their values . ~$, In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be immanent if not already well advanced. It certainly
has begun in( ~
n.--11>
regions, and for
U'-Plr,•0-:1:i!PJ~,;
~
which are,\ beifig 16st for the future.
that f o r ~
on top of ~
present
forest types (such ~s rainforest types)
amt "•i M11,f."5 /.~.t,.//4__
)!HtJ~
The addition of a major further ,\demand ee2rn:e,,,
J'f't!4J~
is one which anyone with a realistic
(o,t/<>,,./l_rl"~
.
appreciation of the conduct 6fAforestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard
with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes ~ resembling
the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again
for energy purposes, w ould be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands
and tropical ar eas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change,
and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on -
we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than
we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In
short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - i.mportant though this is - without any more basic structural and -locial change is inadequate.
f,,t,.,,IOJ1,",;/
Nor is such a simple.4 switch likely to be achieved.
~1&4-
It is no t as if
fc
political pressure could i -11st bene:,\ the US government,\ stop its nuclear
~ =
Ntn-G ( and
that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the way pressure appeared
to succeed in 11,-1.lting the Vietnam war.
could be accomplished, it is very
While without doubt it would be good if this
unlikely given the integration of political
powerholders with those spons r ring nuclear development .'°
I
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
, ,om......,,.;.,. ,A.. h~JG".t j"-.:; ~ no.odr,
s tructure which promotes consumerismAand ah economic structure which encourages
increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production.
This means, for
instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough
to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have
very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work
from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward
of consumer goods and services.
A
society in which social rewards are obtained
primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from
rer~
satisfaction in work and in social re.lations and other activities, is.\ bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system
that produces goods not to meet ge~uine needs but for created and non-genuine needs
is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently becomes a substitute
for satisfaction in other areas .
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set
of adjustments involved in socially j_mplementing the New Paradigm, the move away
from
,:::6',t.SIArne<•S"Yl
is for example part of the more general shift from material ism
and materialist values. /
~
Th4
c
'
A=::O:f social change option tends to be obscured in most
ol
discussions of energy options andAhow to meet
.---.
@S
energy needs, in part because
question• underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional
6.,; ,.
nee~)
or
wants
with
conflo..W
(often
demand
alleged
taking
by
proceeds
discussion
as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most
profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and
is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the
social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable arid
unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated., It is commonly argued by representatives
of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of
the XS Consumption Co., that people ~deep ~ezers, air conditioners, power
boats, ... 1t would be authoritarian to ps:t:llp them satisfying these wants. ~ tl+c
A
argument conveniently ignores the soc:f.al framework in which such needs and wants
To point to the determinati on of many such wants at t he
framework level is not however to accept a Marxist approach according to whic h
they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial
or are produced.
organisatio n) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determinati on at
all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain
kinds of choices , such as those for travel , Mle iafrastrtt~t u"v and to see apparently
individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and diLected by a
social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private prt,fit
and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only wa» so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future. And there are other sorts of reasons than
it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspectivef .2..-a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
such ethical ones for taking it:
paradigm.
tJa,,u#t;LJ J',;...,
The ethical , requirement defende.o<.,
I
social and political
d. -,
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t<~
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?t,(""f""e.u •
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The socialAchan ges that the deeper alternative requires will be strongiy
r esisted because they mean changes in current social organisatio n and power structure •
..tt'ld<°f:o the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of presen t
political and economic arrangemen ts it is not surprising that official energy
option discussion proceeds by misrepresen ting and often obscuring it. But
i.,,·11 Jtz_
difficult though a change t,f t:icn~inant p: a @eigm, especially one with such ~rreaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is imperative
to try;
we are all on the nuclear train.
V
(
• I
-
FOOTNOTES
~
1.
-
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Good in ., p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear .fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fal la cies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
~
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Gooij_in, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341; compare also
catton and Dtinlap, especially p. 34.
--
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy ~
e.nd$, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr. Justice
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry
Parker a~
Vol. 1. Her Majesty's
Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue
both from one's own position against the other, and in the
other's own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvltfls
....
favour the (proLnuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
.
them.
what, s
f)f1ts
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
The same conclusion has been reached in
details up to 1977 see Routley (a) .
L
/;..:i
/t,lrf
~t/ J
i I! rl. I e
·7.
[{CL
/i
10.
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11.
eol
.
See the papers, and simulations, discuss :bal in GoodiA p. f-28.
/~
On the pollution and waste disposal ·r"ecoff'd of the n uclear industry,
, 12.
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price1 and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of e..f fective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7.
Back of this Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of
13.
replacing God.
power.
Man
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over- nature, then when
during the Englightenment
Man
replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
Science and technology were the tools which were to put '1an into the
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology.
[ability to
14.
manage technology represents the past]
On such limitation fhe.o~UJ?l, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow
.,-----------.....-
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d.n · o ther ·
.I\
~
see, e.g. Routley 80. ,j Other different
are presented in Routley 81.
'
l,,;,.;l-etht>,..,,
te1t1/tf
It follows that there are many problems that have
no solution and much that is necessarily
lJ/lkA•N4'/4. .
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
t he history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem there
is a solution, and thUf progress need never cease (C cttto,i and
p.34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
,1
OS (a,:.J
Amore recent official reports, ft n r, <t:etieHlar
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I
For examples. and for some details of the history of philosophe~
16.
positions 4 n obligations to the future. see Routley (a).
Passmore, p. 91.
17.
Passmore's position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
as also is
Rciw/s ,
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
position.
For related criticisms of the economists' arguments for
18.
discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
. ,,
Good11, , pp 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a
linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin/ however puts his case against those rules in a less than
satisfactory fashion.
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
prefi, poses, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest" (e.g.
"'P
covers everything except
Cll#l-
p) .
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listedJ aMI be comprehended along such lines
>.
as "plant breakdown through human error".
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21
l-9!"
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,;W'L,_,,,;, .,
Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, Economics , 7th Edition, McGrawHill, New York, 1967, p.351.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
The contrast is with me re logical possibility.
Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitaria nism (e.g.
'lf.
J.H'.1,A'"
Sidgwick
p.414), and in a range of contract and other theories
How the principle is
from Kant and Rousseau to Rawls (J8(A" p.293).
argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlyin g theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particula r ethical
theories.
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Even then relev ant envi ronm ental facto rs may have
been
negl ected .
,
1
Ther e are vari ation s on (i) and (ii) whic h mult
iply cost s
agai nst numb ers such as prob abil ities . In this
wav risk s,
cons trued as prob able cost s, can be taken into
' acco unt in
the asses smen t. (Alt erna tivel y, risks may be asse
ssed throu gh
such fami liar meth ods as insu ranc e).
'
A prin ciple vary
ing (ii), and form ulate d as follo ws:
(ii') a is ethi cally acce ptab le if (for some b)
a inclu des
no more risk s than band bis soci ally acce pted
.
was the basi c ethi cal prin ciple in term s of whic
Lake Boar d of Inqu iry rece ntly decid ed that nuclh the Cluf f
ear powe r
deve lopm ent in Sask atche wan
is ethi cally acce ptab le:
see Cluf f Lake Boar d of Inqu iry Fina l Repo rt, Depa
rtmen t of
Envi ronm ent, Gove rnme nt of Sask atche wan,
1978 , p.305 and
p.28 8.
In this repo rt, a is nucl ear powe r and bis eithe
r
acti vitie s clea rly acce pted by soci ety as alter
nativ e powe r
sour ces.
In othe r appl icati ons b has been taken as ciga rette
smok ing, moto ring, minin g and even the Vietn am
war( !)
The poin ts made in the text do not exha ust the
obje ction s to
prin ciple s (i)- (ii') . The prin ciple s are certa
inly
ethi cally
subs tanti ve, sinc e an ethi cal cons eque nce cann
ot be dedu ced fro m
none thica l prem isses , but they have an inad miss
char acte r. For look at the orig in of b: b may ible conv entio nal
be
acce pted thoug h it is no long er soci ally acce ptab soci ally
le,
or
thoug
h
its soci al acce ptib ility is no long er so clea rcut
and it woul d
not have been soci ally acce pted if as much as is
now
know n had
been know n when it was intro duce d. What is requ
ired
in (ii') ,
for insta nce, for the argum ent to begi n to look
conv incin g is
then 'ethi call y acce ptab le' rath er than 'soc ially
acce pted '.
But even with the amen dmen ts the prin ciple s are
inva
lid,f or the
reaso ns give n in the text .
It is not disc once rting that these argum ents do
not work .
It
woul d be sad to see yet anot her area lost to the
expe
rt~
name
Jy
ethic s to actu aries .
-
A main part of the trou ble with the mode ls_is
that
narro wly utili taria n, and like utili tari~ ni~m they they are
distr ibut iona l featu res, invo lve natu ralis tic fa~l~ n~gl ect
Real ly they try to trea t as an unco nstra ined optim cie~ , etc.
isati on what
is a deon tical ly cons train ed optim isati on: see
R. and V. Rout ley
'An expe nsive repa ir kit for utili taria nsim '.
I.-"\
Appa rent exce ption s to the prin ciple su~h as taxa
redi strib utio n of incom e gene rally ) vani sh when tion (~nd
weal th is
cons trued (as it has to be if taxa tion is to be
P:ope
r,J_y
justi fied ) as at leas t part ly a so~i al asse t unfa
irly mono polised by a mino rity of the popu latio n. -:)
·
~ Exam ples such as that of moto ring dang er~u sly
coun terex ampl es to the prin ciple ; for one is not do not cons t~tu t~
mora lly entit lcu
to so moto r.
f,
;o».
,> /;o cfobs and
On all these points see R. Grossm an and G. Daneke r , t7w· L
E'nergy, Environ men 1:a]jsts for Fu.11 Employ ment, W;:ishington
DC, 1977,
ting
pp.1-7 , and also the details supplie d in substa ntiatin g the interes
case of Commoner · [7].
nuclea r indust ry,
On the absorp tion of availab le capita l by the
see as well [18], p.23.
On the employm ent issues ,
the
see too H.E. Daly in [9], p.149.X A more fundam ental challen ge to
poverty argume nt appear s in 1. I 11 i.rli
Energy a:nd Equal·i ty, Cal den and
Boyars , London 1974, where it is atgued that the sort of develop ment
need.
nuclea r energy represe nts is exactly the opposi te of what the poor
Small
For much more detail on the inappr opriate ness see E.F. Schuma cher,
is Beauti ful, Blond and Briggs , London , 1973.
As to the capita l and
other require ments, see [2], p.48, and also [7] and [9].
For an illumin ating look at the sort of develop ment high-en ergy
techno logy will tend to promot e in the so-cal led underd evelope d
countr ies see the paper .of Waiko and other papers in The Melane sian
Environ ment (edited J.H. Winslo w), Austra lian Nation al Univer sity Press,
Canber ra, 1977.
.-B9-..- -'.JT;lhHi~sHf§'..ia'!1ee,jtE---:1ii·ss-:1t.i·m;a:pE>cll-1.ic·e.eici~t±l:-;:v-r-4r:ee~c,QO'l:!g,i;ineii~s~e~0Hittrrr- [P.2f]~,:7p~.~5516J.
A use
Ta
1 survey is given in A. Lovins . Energy Strateg y:
The Road Not
n, Friend s of the Earth Austra lia, 1977 (reprin ted from Foreign
/
Af. airs, Octobe r 1976);
see also [17], [6], [7], [14], p.233 ff, and
Schum~ cher, op. cit.
//3·
An
argume nt like this is sugges ted in Passmo re
-f-fi, chapte rs 4 and 7,
with respec t to the questio n of saving resour ces.
In Passmo re this
argume nt for the overrid ing importa nce of passing on contem porary
l
culture is underp inned by what appear s to be a future -direct ed ethica
version of the Hidden Hand argume nt of econom ics -
that, by a coincid ence
care of
which if correc t would indeed be fortun ate, the best way t o take
the future (and perhap s even the only way to do so, since do-good
of
iRterv ention is almost certain to go wrong) is to take proper care
the presen t and immedi ate future.
The argume nt has all the defects
of the related Chain Argume nt discuss ed above and others .
/1, IA;, u,./n er
Very persuasive argurn en t sAh ave b een
advanced by civil liberties groups and othe.rs in
· a number of countries:
C.$ee especia· 11y M.
· , Nuclear Prospects.
y·
Flood and R. Grove-White,
A Comment on the Individual., the State and Nuclear
Power, 'F riends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural.
England _a~d National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
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Certainly practical transitional programs may involve tempor ary
and limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such a s
coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not
lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and
the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use o f
such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of encn1y,
i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cosl
,.
------~--
tl
~
-1
footno te le continued.
of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking ac count
of environmental cost of production . Other (sometimes
strategies towards more s a tisfactory altercooptive)
natives should also, of course, be adopted, in particul a r
the removal of institutional barriers to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local g ove rnment
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state
assistance to fuel and power industries.
ff
Symptomatic of the fact that is it not treated a s rene wa ble
is that forest economics do not generally a llow for full
renewability - if they did the losses and de ficits on
forestry operations would be much more striking than they
already are often enough .
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of
f o rests can be a ! fully renewable operation if net energy
see, e.g. the argument in
production is to be worthwhile;
L.R.B. Mann 'Some difficulties with energy farmin g fo r
portable fuels', and add in the costs of ecosy stem mainte nance.
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Box 59, Item 1875: Draft of Nuclear power - ethical, social and political dimensions
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Typescript draft, with handwritten emendations and annotations, and handwritten notes, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield.
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a>
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a>
Source
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<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 59, Item 1875
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
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[71] leaves. 58.48 MB.
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<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:8e30ade">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:8e30ade</a>
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1982-01-01
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n/a - location not listed in manuscript finding aid
Box 59: Nuclear
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/f51dc99ef93d040908b142ebb835179a.pdf
d210fbed6580d80dafbf3af881e514fc
PDF Text
Text
Elaboration of *Nuclear energy and obligations to the future*:
A note on expertise and methodology.
Some people may ask why philosophers, who know nothing about
nuclear physics, should be dealing with this area, which surely
should be left to the province of the real experts in the area,
nuclear physicists and those with direct experience and authority
in the area of nuclear power.
One of the most irritating things in this area for a
philosopher is the sight of such people constantly presented, by
themselves and others, as experts and authorities whose pronounce
ments on the issue should be accepted without question by laymen
(see e.g. articles [15] and [16]), when in fact the issues involve
quite crucially issues of and assumptions about values and morality^
matters concerning which the so-called ’’authorities" and "experts"
commonly know less than the average first year student in philosophy.
Value issues and moral issues and issues of social and political
theory are probably more crucially concerned in the nuclear issues
than are issues of fact concerning nuclear power, and certainly
they are just as important.
Few philosophers nowadays would want to claim to be "experts"
or "authorities" on matters of value or morality in the way nuclear
experts claim to be authorities on matters of nuclear power, who
can tell people what to do in way which is authoritative or
which must be uncritically accepted by the non-experts/non
philosophers.
Rejection of the argument from authority is basic
in proper philosophical method, going back to Plato and beyond,
and forming a basic position without which the subject, as critical
inquiry into basic assumptions, could not operate as it does and
traditionally has.
Indeed rejection of the argument from
authority is one feature which distinguishes philosophy proper
from closely related areas such as theology, casuistry, some
�2.
areas of legal thought and various types of apology.
But a form
/of the argument from authority*—the claim to entitlement to have
one’s word or views accepted, not on the basis of what one says
and how sound it is,!^ but of who one is - appears however to be
an important element in the modern cult of the ''scientific expert"
which has played such a large part in the contempory Australian
discussion of the neclear issue.
While most philosophers would
reject the view that they were "experts" in this sense on values
or moral issues, philosophers can fairly lay claim to a number of
special skills which enable them to bring out explicit assumptions
about values or morality, and expose defects in arguments.
Most
philosophers also have moral view’s, that is, they believe some
things to be morally acceptable and others morally unacceptable,
although some might prefer to express similar attitudes without
use of explicit moral terminology.
In writing this paper then we don’t hope to be accepted as
’authorities’ or ’experts’ on moral questions, but only to have
skills which may throw light on some areas.
We have tried to
bring out value and moral assumptions, expose logical defects and
inconsistencies in the structure of some of the arguments and in
certain sorts of argumentsconcerning the future, and to argue that
if one accepts a certain moral judgment (which we accept and which
we believe would be widely agreed on*), one should, if one is
going to be consistent, non-arbitrary, and follow through one’s
principles, accept a certain other one.
This seems to us a propei
area for philosophical work.
The non-philosophical or background factual assumptions which
are essential for discussing the issue are not large, and are in
substance only those of the Fox Report (p.110, in particular)•
* We are sure that philosophers can be found who will disagree wit!
virtually every statement we make.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Draft Papers
Description
An account of the resource
Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
Elaboration of *Nuclear energy and obligations to the future*:
A note on expertise and methodology.
Some people may ask why philosophers, who know nothing about
nuclear physics, should be dealing with this area, which surely
should be left to the province of the real experts in the area,
nuclear physicists and those with direct experience and authority
in the area of nuclear power.
One of the most irritating things in this area for a
philosopher is the sight of such people constantly presented, by
themselves and others, as experts and authorities whose pronounce
ments on the issue should be accepted without question by laymen
(see e.g. articles [15] and [16]), when in fact the issues involve
quite crucially issues of and assumptions about values and morality^
matters concerning which the so-called ’’authorities" and "experts"
commonly know less than the average first year student in philosophy.
Value issues and moral issues and issues of social and political
theory are probably more crucially concerned in the nuclear issues
than are issues of fact concerning nuclear power, and certainly
they are just as important.
Few philosophers nowadays would want to claim to be "experts"
or "authorities" on matters of value or morality in the way nuclear
experts claim to be authorities on matters of nuclear power, who
can tell people what to do in way which is authoritative or
which must be uncritically accepted by the non-experts/non
philosophers.
Rejection of the argument from authority is basic
in proper philosophical method, going back to Plato and beyond,
and forming a basic position without which the subject, as critical
inquiry into basic assumptions, could not operate as it does and
traditionally has.
Indeed rejection of the argument from
authority is one feature which distinguishes philosophy proper
from closely related areas such as theology, casuistry, some
2.
areas of legal thought and various types of apology.
But a form
/of the argument from authority*—the claim to entitlement to have
one’s word or views accepted, not on the basis of what one says
and how sound it is,!^ but of who one is - appears however to be
an important element in the modern cult of the ''scientific expert"
which has played such a large part in the contempory Australian
discussion of the neclear issue.
While most philosophers would
reject the view that they were "experts" in this sense on values
or moral issues, philosophers can fairly lay claim to a number of
special skills which enable them to bring out explicit assumptions
about values or morality, and expose defects in arguments.
Most
philosophers also have moral view’s, that is, they believe some
things to be morally acceptable and others morally unacceptable,
although some might prefer to express similar attitudes without
use of explicit moral terminology.
In writing this paper then we don’t hope to be accepted as
’authorities’ or ’experts’ on moral questions, but only to have
skills which may throw light on some areas.
We have tried to
bring out value and moral assumptions, expose logical defects and
inconsistencies in the structure of some of the arguments and in
certain sorts of argumentsconcerning the future, and to argue that
if one accepts a certain moral judgment (which we accept and which
we believe would be widely agreed on*), one should, if one is
going to be consistent, non-arbitrary, and follow through one’s
principles, accept a certain other one.
This seems to us a propei
area for philosophical work.
The non-philosophical or background factual assumptions which
are essential for discussing the issue are not large, and are in
substance only those of the Fox Report (p.110, in particular)•
* We are sure that philosophers can be found who will disagree wit!
virtually every statement we make.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Box 59, Item 1: Draft of Elaboration of 'Nuclear energy and obligations to the future': a note on expertise and methodology
Subject
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Typescript of draft, with handwritten emendations, undated.
Description
An account of the resource
Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
Creator
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a>
<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&pageSize=20&sortBy=score&sortDirection=Desc&searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 59, Item 1
Publisher
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a>
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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>.
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For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.
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[2] leaves. 1.56 MB.
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<a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:536f5c3">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:536f5c3</a>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
n/a - location unidentified in manuscript finding aid
Box 59: Nuclear
-
https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/b660995c442b4ed34e33174523ca0eaf.pdf
e2754cf92cd4759c1c7554709975a749
PDF Text
Text
94K Fraser Court,
Kingston, 2604.
6th February, 1975
Dear Sir,
A possible change of government later this year should not
be a matter for too much concern, since the difference in policies
between the Labor government and the conservative alternative is
becoming increasingly difficult to discern.
Thus in September
Dr. Cairns told us all to work harder, and at Christmas Mr. Bryant
urged us to buy more.
In January the Prime Minister insisted that
wage demands were the cause of inflation, and in February our
'socialist' Treasurer who had previously exhorted us to buy more
cars, tells us, in effect, that the business of Australia is
business.
That the Labor government, although presenting itself as one
of "change and reform", has a commitment to the industrial- consumer status quo and protecting business, and an aversion to
politically difficult decisions approaching that of its predecessors
is demonstrated by its determination that there shall be no
restructuring (even on a long-term basis) of employment in the
motor vehicle industry.
This industry is widely recognised as a
major polluter and waster of resources, and was, until recently,
the favourite target of several ministers who are now strangely
silent on the subject.
The employment in this environmenta lly
damaging industry which the government is determined to preserve
without change, on a long term basis and apparently at virtually
any cost, is of such poor quality that the industrial sabotage which
was common a few years ago and is now reappearing was attributed by
the unions to the miserable nature of the work.
In normal times of
full employment the immigration program played an essential part in
maintaining the supply of workers to fill these undesirable jobs.
The impression of the early days of the Labor government that
Australians had somehow managed to elect a government of courage,
independence and principle has long since faded.
But nowhere is the
lack of these qualities so clear as in the decision to compete with ·
the opposition in the development stakes and to proceed withthe sale
of uranium for 'peaceful purposes'.
The Prime Minister has
attempted to quell doubts about environmenta l hazards by appealing
to the inadequate standards of the Internationa l Atomic Energy
Authority and by stating that no one overseas to whom he spoke cared
a jot about the hazards of pollution from controlled nuclear plants
or waste, and that (therefore) no one here should either.
Mr. Connor,
displaying a similar slavish concern for what the internationa l
neighbours think, claims that the Australian government would become
a laughing stock if it attempted to act with courage and principle
on the matter of
ur a 11 /um
sales.
The request for a public
inquiry to enable adequate public discussion of the momentous moral
issues involved in ur.ani- um sales has been refused, on the thin and
question-begg ing grounds that this would jeopardise one prematurely
concluded contract and others in the pipeline.
The switch to nuclear fission energy sources which the
Australian government's decision will greatly assist is likely to
impose enormous burdens and risks on future people for nuclear waste
disposal as long as 200,000 years in the future on conservative
estimates. There are clear alternatives to its use.
The moral
position of Australia, as an important supplier of this material,
may be likened to that of an arms
or heroin peddler - obtaining a
comfortable existence for itself at the expense of enormous costs
to other people.
Just as in the case of the a..rft'\S or heroin
dealer, the moral responsibili ty of the supplier cannot be evaded
by the pretence that the moral decision is entirely that of his
customer.
V.
&
R. Routley
�94K Fraser Court,
Kingston, 2604.
6th February, 1975
Dear Sir,
A possible change of government later this year should not
be a matter for too much concern, since the difference in policies
between the Labor government and the conservative alternative is
becoming increasingly difficult to discern.
Thus in September
Dr. Cairns told us all to work harder, and at Christmas Mr. Bryant
urged us to buy more.
In January the Prime Minister insisted that
wage demands were the cause of inflation, and in February our
'socialist' Treasurer who had previously exhorted us to buy more
cars, tells us, in effect, that the business of Australia is
business.
That the Labor government, although presenting itself as one
of "change and reform", has a commitment to the industrial__: consumer status quo and protecting business, and an aversion to
politically difficult decisions approaching that of its predecessors
is demonstrated by its determination that there shall be no
restructuring (even on a long-term basis) of employment in the
motor vehicle industry.
This industry is widely recognised as a
major polluter and waster of resources, and was, until recently,
the favourite target of several ministers who are now strangely
silent on the subject.
The employment in this environmentally
damaging industry which the government is determined to preserve
without change, on a long term basis and apparently at virtually
any cost, is of such poor quality that the industrial sabotage which
was common a few years ago and is now reappearing was attributed by
the unions to the miserable nature of the work.
In normal times of
full employment the immigration program played an essential part in
maintaining the supply of workers to fill these undesirable jobs.
The impression of the early days of the Labor government that
Australians had somehow managed to elect a government of courage,
independence and principle has long since faded.
But nowhere is the
lack of these qualities so clear as in the decision to compete with
the opposition in the development stakes and to proceed withthe sale
of uranium for 'peaceful purposes'.
The Prime Minister has
attempted to quell doubts about environmental hazards by apF ealing
to the inadequate standards of the International Atomic Energy
Authority and by stating that no one overseas to whom he spoke cared
a jot about the hazards of pollution from controlled nuclear plants
or waste, and that (therefore) no one here should either.
Mr. Connor,
displaying a similar slavish concern for what the international
neighbours think, claims that the Australian government would become
a laughing stock if it attempted to act with courage and principle
on the matter of
u r ,i A ,'ufrL
sales.
The request for a public
inquiry to enable adequ~te public discussion of the momentous moral
issues involved in l.lia.ni~ .um sales has been refused, on the thin and
question-begging grounds that this would jeopardise one prematurely
concluded contract and others in the pipeline.
The switch to nuclear fission energy sources which the
Australian government's decision will greatly assist is likely to
impose enormous burdens and risks on future people for nuclear waste
disposal as long as 200,000 years in the future on conservative
estimates. There are clear alternatives to its use.
The moral
position of Australia, as an important supplier of this material,
may be likened to that of an atMJ
or heroin peddler - obtaining a
comfortable existence for itself at the expense of enormous costs
to other people.
Just as in the case of the a.rAt!
or heroin
dealer, the moral responsibility of the supplier cannot be evaded
by the pretence that the moral decision is entirely that of his
customer.
V.
&
R. Routley
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia
Description
An account of the resource
In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid".
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
94K Fraser Court,
Kingston, 2604.
6th February, 1975
Dear Sir,
A possible change of government later this year should not
be a matter for too much concern, since the difference in policies
between the Labor government and the conservative alternative is
becoming increasingly difficult to discern.
Thus in September
Dr. Cairns told us all to work harder, and at Christmas Mr. Bryant
urged us to buy more.
In January the Prime Minister insisted that
wage demands were the cause of inflation, and in February our
'socialist' Treasurer who had previously exhorted us to buy more
cars, tells us, in effect, that the business of Australia is
business.
That the Labor government, although presenting itself as one
of "change and reform", has a commitment to the industrial- consumer status quo and protecting business, and an aversion to
politically difficult decisions approaching that of its predecessors
is demonstrated by its determination that there shall be no
restructuring (even on a long-term basis) of employment in the
motor vehicle industry.
This industry is widely recognised as a
major polluter and waster of resources, and was, until recently,
the favourite target of several ministers who are now strangely
silent on the subject.
The employment in this environmenta lly
damaging industry which the government is determined to preserve
without change, on a long term basis and apparently at virtually
any cost, is of such poor quality that the industrial sabotage which
was common a few years ago and is now reappearing was attributed by
the unions to the miserable nature of the work.
In normal times of
full employment the immigration program played an essential part in
maintaining the supply of workers to fill these undesirable jobs.
The impression of the early days of the Labor government that
Australians had somehow managed to elect a government of courage,
independence and principle has long since faded.
But nowhere is the
lack of these qualities so clear as in the decision to compete with ·
the opposition in the development stakes and to proceed withthe sale
of uranium for 'peaceful purposes'.
The Prime Minister has
attempted to quell doubts about environmenta l hazards by appealing
to the inadequate standards of the Internationa l Atomic Energy
Authority and by stating that no one overseas to whom he spoke cared
a jot about the hazards of pollution from controlled nuclear plants
or waste, and that (therefore) no one here should either.
Mr. Connor,
displaying a similar slavish concern for what the internationa l
neighbours think, claims that the Australian government would become
a laughing stock if it attempted to act with courage and principle
on the matter of
ur a 11 /um
sales.
The request for a public
inquiry to enable adequate public discussion of the momentous moral
issues involved in ur.ani- um sales has been refused, on the thin and
question-begg ing grounds that this would jeopardise one prematurely
concluded contract and others in the pipeline.
The switch to nuclear fission energy sources which the
Australian government's decision will greatly assist is likely to
impose enormous burdens and risks on future people for nuclear waste
disposal as long as 200,000 years in the future on conservative
estimates. There are clear alternatives to its use.
The moral
position of Australia, as an important supplier of this material,
may be likened to that of an arms
or heroin peddler - obtaining a
comfortable existence for itself at the expense of enormous costs
to other people.
Just as in the case of the a..rft'\S or heroin
dealer, the moral responsibili ty of the supplier cannot be evaded
by the pretence that the moral decision is entirely that of his
customer.
V.
&
R. Routley
94K Fraser Court,
Kingston, 2604.
6th February, 1975
Dear Sir,
A possible change of government later this year should not
be a matter for too much concern, since the difference in policies
between the Labor government and the conservative alternative is
becoming increasingly difficult to discern.
Thus in September
Dr. Cairns told us all to work harder, and at Christmas Mr. Bryant
urged us to buy more.
In January the Prime Minister insisted that
wage demands were the cause of inflation, and in February our
'socialist' Treasurer who had previously exhorted us to buy more
cars, tells us, in effect, that the business of Australia is
business.
That the Labor government, although presenting itself as one
of "change and reform", has a commitment to the industrial__: consumer status quo and protecting business, and an aversion to
politically difficult decisions approaching that of its predecessors
is demonstrated by its determination that there shall be no
restructuring (even on a long-term basis) of employment in the
motor vehicle industry.
This industry is widely recognised as a
major polluter and waster of resources, and was, until recently,
the favourite target of several ministers who are now strangely
silent on the subject.
The employment in this environmentally
damaging industry which the government is determined to preserve
without change, on a long term basis and apparently at virtually
any cost, is of such poor quality that the industrial sabotage which
was common a few years ago and is now reappearing was attributed by
the unions to the miserable nature of the work.
In normal times of
full employment the immigration program played an essential part in
maintaining the supply of workers to fill these undesirable jobs.
The impression of the early days of the Labor government that
Australians had somehow managed to elect a government of courage,
independence and principle has long since faded.
But nowhere is the
lack of these qualities so clear as in the decision to compete with
the opposition in the development stakes and to proceed withthe sale
of uranium for 'peaceful purposes'.
The Prime Minister has
attempted to quell doubts about environmental hazards by apF ealing
to the inadequate standards of the International Atomic Energy
Authority and by stating that no one overseas to whom he spoke cared
a jot about the hazards of pollution from controlled nuclear plants
or waste, and that (therefore) no one here should either.
Mr. Connor,
displaying a similar slavish concern for what the international
neighbours think, claims that the Australian government would become
a laughing stock if it attempted to act with courage and principle
on the matter of
u r ,i A ,'ufrL
sales.
The request for a public
inquiry to enable adequ~te public discussion of the momentous moral
issues involved in l.lia.ni~ .um sales has been refused, on the thin and
question-begging grounds that this would jeopardise one prematurely
concluded contract and others in the pipeline.
The switch to nuclear fission energy sources which the
Australian government's decision will greatly assist is likely to
impose enormous burdens and risks on future people for nuclear waste
disposal as long as 200,000 years in the future on conservative
estimates. There are clear alternatives to its use.
The moral
position of Australia, as an important supplier of this material,
may be likened to that of an atMJ
or heroin peddler - obtaining a
comfortable existence for itself at the expense of enormous costs
to other people.
Just as in the case of the a.rAt!
or heroin
dealer, the moral responsibility of the supplier cannot be evaded
by the pretence that the moral decision is entirely that of his
customer.
V.
&
R. Routley
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Box 23, Item 1: Val Routley and Richard Routley to "Sir", 6 Feb 1975
Subject
The topic of the resource
Two copies of typescript letter addressed to "Sir", from Val Routley (later Val Plumwood) and Richard Routley (later Richard Sylvan). The letter to government addresses nuclear energy.
Description
An account of the resource
Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
Creator
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<a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Val+Routley&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&geolocation-mapped=&geolocation-address=&geolocation-latitude=&geolocation-longitude=&geolocation-radius=10&submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a>
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/0b17d50e19500ff0b2b32520f6a252ed.pdf
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AGAINST THE INEVITABILITY OF HUMAN CHAUVINISM
In our enlightened times, when most forms of chauvinism have been abandoned
at least in theory by those who consider themselves progressive, western ethics
still appears to retain, at its very heart, a fundamental form of chauvinism,
namely, human chauvinism.
ethical theories
For both popular western thought and most western
assume that both value and morality can ultimately be reduced
to matters of interest or concern to the class of humans.
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is substantially differential,
discriminatory, and inferior treatment (characteristically, but not necessarily,
by members of the privileged class) of items outside the class, for which there
is not sufficient justification.
Human chauvinism, like other varieties of
chauvinism, can take stronger and weaker forms;
an example of the weaker form
is the Greater Value Thesis, the invariable allocation of greater value or
preference, on the basis of species, to humans, while not however entirely
excluding non-humans from moral consideration and claims.
We will be concerned
primarily with strong forms of human chauvinism, which see value and morality as
ultimately concerned entirely with humans, and non-human items as having value
or creating constraints on human action only insofar as these items serve human
interests or purposes.
In recent years, since the rise of the 'environmental consciousness', there
has been increasing, if still tentative, questioning of this exclusive concern
with, or at least heavy bias towards, human interests;
and indeed, at a time
when human beings are rapidly accelerating their impact on the natural world,
the question as to the validity of this basic assumption is not merely an
abstract one, but is of immediate and practical concern in its implications for
This thesis has, among other unacceptable outcomes, the consequence that,
if there is only room in one's boat for one and one must choose between
saving Adolf Hitler and a wombat which has lived a decent and kindly life
and never harmed a living creature, one is morally obligated to choose the
former. That would not be the choice of the authors.
�2.
human action.
In reply to this questioning (which appears to originate largely
from people with environmental interests), modern moral philosophers - fulfilling
their now established function of providing a theoretical superstructure to explain
and justify contemporary moral sensibilities,
questioning fundamental
assumptions - tend to argue that the bias towards human interests, which is an
integral part of going ethical theories, is not just another form of class
chauvinism which it is both possible and desirable to eliminate, but rather a
restriction dictated by the logic of evaluative and moral concepts, and that
there is no coherent, possible or viable alternative to the "human chauvinism"
of standard ethical theories.
series of
In this paper we want to consider and reject a
arguments in the theory of value designed to show that this
is so, and thereby to advance the cause of an alternative, non-chauvinistic,
environmental ethic.
The orthodox defence of human chauvinism argues that it is inevitable
that humans should be taken as the exclusive subjects of value and morality.
Humans are uniquely and exclusively qualified for moral consideration and
attributions of value, according to this defence either because the human
species alone does, as a matter of fact, possess properties which are a pre
condition for such ascriptions or because, as a matter of the definition or
the logic or the significance of moral concepts in natural language, such
considerations are restricted, as a matter of logic, to the human species.
In the first case the restriction of morality and value to the human species
will be taken as contingent, in the second necessary.
In either case, if the
argument is correct, the bias in favour of humans in current theories is
inescapable, so that, depending on one's definition of chauvinism, either
human chauvinism itself is inevitable, or human bias is, because justifiable,
not a real chauvinism at all.
We shall consider the logical or definitional
approach first.
According to the definitional approach, moral and evaluative terms are,
as a matter of their definitions, restricted in their application to members
of the human species;
only in a secondary way
at best do such terms find a
�3.
wider application, according as evaluated items are instrumental to human
interests.
The thesis is often backed up by the production of definitions
which are so restricted, for example,
'the value of a thing is its capacity
to confer a benefit on someone, to make a favourable difference to his life'
(Baier, in [13], p. 40), where in the intended context 'someone' is obviously
restricted to humans.
The attempt to preserve human chauvinism in an unchallengeable form
through definitions involves the fallacy of taking definitions to be self
validating and unchallengeable, and appears to be based on the confusion of
abbreviative definitions with those involving or presupposing substantive
claims, such as creative definitions, which may be accepted or rejected.
Such
definitions as those above, cannot be merely abbreviative because they attempt
to characterise or explicate already understood terms, such as 'moral' or
'value'.
Worse still, they do so in a way which is not dictated by prevailing
usage - which does not require that moral and value terms be restricted in
range to human:in order that they continue to apply to humans in the ordinary
way.
Alternative definitions which do not so restrict the range of application
may be supplied, they can in fact be found by looking up dictionaries, and
these alternatives quite properly do not close off genuine issues which natural
language itself leaves open.
The fallacy of the definitional move is that of believing that by converting
the substantive evaluative theses of human chauvinism to matters of definition
they become somehow exempt from challenge or need for justification.
This is
comparable to justifying discriminatory membership for a club by referring to
the rules, similarly conceived as self-validating and exempt from question or
justification.
Since a similar move could obviously be employed to limit
membership of the Moral Club to say, white male humans in place of humans, it
is plain that such a definitional argument does far too much, and is capable
of use to produce completely unacceptable conclusions.
But of course substantive theses involved in definitions, like club rules,
are not exempt from challenge and may be arbitrary, undesirable, restrictive,
c/
�4.
and in need of justification.
Once this is grasped the definitional move can
be seen as entirely question-begging, since the question of the acceptability
and inevitability of human chauvinism is simply transformed into the question
of the acceptability and inevitability of the definition.
The production of
such human chauvinist definitions has done nothing to advance the case of
human chauvinism, other than to throw a spurious air of unchallangeability and
over the highly challengeable and arbitrary substantive theses
they embody.
The attempt to settle substantive issues 'by definition' is both
philosophically facile and methodologically unsound, and is especially so when
there are clearly alternative definitions which would not settle the issue in
the same way.
What, however, of the substantive claim presupposed by the
definitional move, namely that as a matter of natural language usage, or the
logic of moral and evaluative concepts, the meaning of moral and value terms,
it is logically necessary that direct, non-instrumental, application of such
terms be restricted to the human (a claim made at least in the case of rights
by Ritchie [4], p. 107, and subsequently by Passmore [5] and [9]^,p. 116, 189,
Ay
and,others).
But usually, when it is asserted that non-humans cannot have
rights, obligations and such like, what sort of 'cannot' is involved is
not specified - whether
it is a 'cannot' of logical impossibility, or of
non-significance or absurdity, or something else again (the point is nicely
illustrated by Feinberg's discussion of McCloskey,
McCloskey [11] itself).
in
p. 195 , and by
In any case, however, the thesis appears to be mistaken,
for it rules out as logically impossible or absurd a number of positions and
theses which are very plainly neither and which it may even, in some circumstances,
be important to consider.
For example, it is surely neither impossible nor absurd
to consider moral questions concerning conduct of humans towards other species,
e.g. to a race of sensitive and intelligent extraterrestrial beings, and
similarly moral questions arising from their conduct towards or concerning humans,
indeed science fiction writ .ers do this commonly without producing nonsense or
contradicting themselves.
Not only does the proposed restriction appear quite
�5.
mistaken given current usage, but there seems indeed to be something logically
unsound about the attempt to place a logical restriction to a particular species
on such terms, just as there would be in restricting membership of the Moral
Club to people with blue eyes and blond hair who are over 6 feet tall.
The
accident of being a zoological human, defined in terms of various physical
characteristics, cannot be morally relevant.
It is impossible to restrict
moral terms to particular species, when species distinctions are defined in
terms of physical characteristics which are not morally relevant.
More generally, any attempt to derive a logically necessary connection
between humanity itself and the applicability of morality is bound to fail.
For creatures anatomically and zoologically distinct from humans which are
identical with humans in terms of all morally relevant features are logically
possible, upsetting any logical linkage.
tie between humanity
But attempts to establish a logical
and morality through features which all and only humans
possess and which are themselves linked logically to morality, would, of course,
involve a modal fallacy, namely that of substituting a contingent equivalence
within an opaque modal conte t of logical necessity.
In order for such an
argument to be val? d, it would have to be logically necessary that non
humans do not possess such features, not merely a contingent fact that they
do not;
but this assumption must be incorrect for morally relevant
characteristics.
The only proposal which has ac/n/tce of succeeding, then, is the factual one
which makes the selection of just humans for the Moral Club a contingent matter,
the claim being that as a matter of contingent fact all and only humans possess
a certain set of characteristics, which characteristics themselves are logically
tied with qualification for moral consideration and for direct attribution of
value to the possessor.
What this contingent form of human chauvinism has to produce then, in
order to establish its case, is a set of characteristics which satisfy the
following conditions of adequacy:
�6.
1.
The set of characteristics must be possessed by at least all properly
functioning humans, since to omit any significant category usually considered
subject to moral consideration, such as infants, young children, primitive
tribesmen etc., and to allow that it was permissible to treat these gro^J^L^
in the way it is considered permissible to treat non-humans, ^s mere instruments,
would certainly be repuguant to modern moral sensibilities, and would offend
common intuitions as to the brotherhood of man, the view that all humans are
possessors of inalienable
rights.
Thus human chauvinism, if it is to produce
a coherent theory which does not unacceptably rule out some groups of humans
must find some set of features common to the most diverse members of humankind,
from Rio Tinto executives to hunter-gatherer tribes of Amazonian Indians,
from those who engage in highly abstract activities such as logic and
mathematics to those who cannot, from the literate and cultured to the
illiterate and uncouth, from the poet and professor to the infant.
This
alone will be no easy task.
2.
In order for human chauvinism to be justified this set of characteristics
must not be possessed by any non-human.
3.
The set of characteristics must not merely be morally relevant,but
sufficient to justify, in a non-circular way, the cut-off of moral consideration
at exactly the right point.
If human chauvinism is to avoid the charge of
arbitrariness and unjustifiability, and demonstrate its inevitability and
the impossibility of alternatives, it must emerge from the characteristicj
why items not having
may be used as mere instruments to serve the interests
of those which do possess
There must be some explanatory logical
connection between the set of characteristics and membership of the Moral
Club.
Chauvinists aie.
fc
stress
distinguishing points between
the privileged class and those outside it - and there is no lack of
characteristics which distinguish humans from non-humans, at least
functioning healthy adult ones.
The point is that these distinctions usually
do not warrant the sort of radically inferior treatment for which they are
�7.
proposed as a rationale.
On the basis of the characteristics then the
proposed radical difference in treatment between the privileged and non
privileged class and the purely instrumental treatment of the non-privileged
class, must be warranted, that is, the distinguishing characteristics must
be able to carry the moral superstructure placed upon them.
A large and exceedingly disparate collection of features has been suggested
as distinguishing humans from non-humans and justifying human chauvinism.
But
it turns out that every one of these, on examination, either fails to pick out
the desired privileged class of humans in an unequivchcal fashion, that is, it
applies to some non-humans or excludes some humans who should not be excluded,
or, when it does select the desired class, fails on condition 3, and does not
warrant the exclusive claim to moral consideration of the privileged class.
Many suggested criteria in fact fail on more than one count.
The traditional distinction between humans and the rest in terms of
rationality illustrates the point.
Once the theological doctrines of the
exclusively human soul on which the distinction once rested are abandoned,
it is not so easy to see what is meant by this term.
Indeed it often appears
to function as little more than a self-congratulatory predicate applied
exclusively to humans, with no other clear function at all.
clarifications are sometimes offered.
However various
For example rationality may be said
to be the ability to reason, this being tested by such basically linguistic
performances as the ability to do lo^ic, to prove theorems, to draw conclusions
from arguments and to engage in inductive and deductive linguistic behaviour.
But such stringent and linguistically-loaded criteria will eliminate far
too many members of the human species who cannot perform these tasks.
If,
however, behavioural criteria for rationality are adopted, or the ability to
solve problems and to fit attion to individual goals becomes the test - that
is, practical reasoning is the test - it is obvious that many non-human
admission to
the Moral Club, rather than the ability to perform some other
�tasks
or meet some other set of standards, such as orienteering ability,the
ability to mix concrete (the use of concrete being, afte^all, a far more
conspicuous feature of modern human society than the use of reason).
One
senses also in the appeal to such criteria (andespecially to linguistic
criteria) the overvaluation of the things in which the privileged class
typically excells and the undervaluation of the skills - not obviously^ in any
non—circular way inferior - of the non-privileged class, which is such a
typical feature of chauvinism.
We list
some of the suggested characteristics supposedly justifying
human chauvinism, and indicate in brackets after each some of the conditions
they fail:
using tools (fails 1, 2, 3), altering the environment (1, 2, 3),
the ability to communicate (1, 2, 3), the ability to use and learn language
(1, 2, 3), the ability to use and learn English (1, 3), possession of
consciousness (2, 3), self-consciousness or self-awareness (1, 2?, 3), having
a conscience (1, 2?, 3), having a sense of shame (1, 2?, 3), being aware of
oneself as an agent or initiator (1, 2, 3), having awareness (2, 3), being
aware of one's existence (1, 2?, 3), being aware of the inevitability of
one's own death (1, 2?, 3), being capable of self-deception (1, 3), being
able to ask questions about moral issues such as human chauvinism (1, 3),
having a mental life (2, 3), being able to play games (1, 2, 3), being able
to laugh (1, 3), to laugh at oneself (1, 3), being able to make jokes (1, 3),
having interests (2, 3), having projects (1, 2, 3), being able to assess
some of one's performances as successful or not (1, 2, 3), enjoying freedom
of action (2, 3), being able to vary one's behaviour outside a narrow range
of insttnctu al behaviour (1, 2, 3), belonging to a social community (1, 2, 3),
being morally responsible for one's actions (1), being able to love (1, 2),
being capable of altruism (1, 2), being capable of being a Christian, or
capable of religious faith (1, 3), being able to produce the items of (human)
civilisation grid, culture
*
(1, 3).
* This feature typifies a number of rather circular distinguishing characteristics,
or at least ones which raise serious theob^. tical problems for human chauvinism,
because they attempt to explain the unique value of humans in terms of their
ability to produce items which are taken to be independently valuable, thus
contradicting human chauvinism (see the discussion in [10],/?.;77/,
�It appears that none of these criteria meet the conditions of adequacy;
furthermore it seems most unlikely that any other characteristic
or any cowbinlation of the^characteristics does
so.
Thus we conclude that these contingent direct arguments for human
&
chauvinism^not establish its inevitability, and that indeed the position rests
on a shaky base and so f^r lacks a coherent theoretical justification.
Human chauvinism cannot be restored by a detour through the concept of
a person, that is by linking perso/JnoocL with membership of the /*
foral
(lub, and
identifying the class of persons contingently with the class of humans.
For then the same problem as above arises with different terminology
even if the
of person
since,
can be specified in such a way as to justify
the restriction of moral privileges to persons, the class of persons will
then not
conicin the way human chauvinism requires^ with the class
of humans, but will either include a great many non-humans or exclude a good
many humans^morally considered.
Attempts to enlarge the privileged class, for example to persons (broadly
specified), or to sentient or preference having creatures, may avoid many
of the problems of arbitrariness and justification which face the strong
form of human chauvinism, but, as we
shall argue, face a set of problems of
coherence and consistency common to all instrumentalist theories of value and
morality.
*******
There are a number of indirect arguments for human chauvinism based on
features of value and morality.
argument
We turn now to consider these.
One abstract
which is supposed to establish that values are, or must, be
determined through the interests of humans or persons - a central argument
underlying chauvinism - takes the following form:-
�10.
A.
Values are determined through the preference rankings of valuers.
(The
no detachable values assumption).
B.
Valuers' preference rankings are determined through valuers' interests.
(The preference reduction thesis).
C.
Valuers are humans [persons].
(The species assumption).
Therefore:
D.
Values are determined through human interests [through the interests of
persons].
Hence, it is sometimes concluded, not only is it perfectly acceptable for
humans to reduce matters of value and morality to matters of human interest,
there is no rational or possible alternative to doing so:
any alternative
is simply incoherent.
Although th{$
argument does not, so far as we are aware, appear anywhere
with its premisses explicitly stated, it does seem to reflect the sorts of
considerations those who claim that there is no rational or coherent alternative
to organising everything in human interests usually have in mind.
Of course
once the premisses are exposed, it is easier to see that this initially
persuasive argument, like others in the area, rests on fallacious assumptions.
y<2^ —
We shall claim that although the argument to conclusion D is formally^given
only some quite conventional assumptions such as that the relation of determin
ation or functionality is appropriately transitive and the principle of
replacement of necessary identicals - not all the premisses should be accepted.
The argument can be treated as the major representative of a family of
similar arguments.
For there are many variations that can be made on the
argument with a view to amending it, tightening it, varying or strengthening
its conclusion, and so on.
Our criticisms of the argument will, for the most
part, transfer to the variations.
qualifies the determining relation;
A first group of variations replaces or
for example, 'determined through' or
'determined by' may be replaced by 'answer back to',
of',
'can be reduced to', or 'are a function of'.
'reflect',
'are a matter
(The latter functional
form makes it plain that 'determined' has to mean 'exactly determined', which
�11.
ensures that no extraneous factors enter
into the chauvinistic determination:
mere partial determination would be quite compatible with the rejection of
human chauvinism.)
Alternatively, 'determined' may be modally upgraded to
'have to be determined', in order to reveal the sheer necessity of conclusion
D.
(In this case it is essential that premiss C be of modal strength, and not
merely contingent as it would be if the original form were retained;
other
wise the argument would contain a modal fallacy.).
Another familiar, and appealing, variation we have already bracketed into
the form of the argument given;
class by persons.
namely the replacement of humans as base
This straightaway increases the cogency of premiss C,
which otherwise - while better than, say,
'Valuers are white (North American)
humans' - would at best be contingently true (which is not good enough for the
argument and in fact appears false, since some valuers may not be human;
and
certainly not all humans are valuers), while at worst it is simply a circular
way of reintroducing the logical version of human chauvinism by rest^cting the
class of valuers a priori to humans.
That all valuers are persons may be made
analytic on the sense of 'person' - given a redefinition of 'person' away from
its normal English usage, which philosophical
English appears to almost
tolerate - thus shielding premiss C from criticism.
Other base classes than
persons can replace humans in premiss C, for example animals, thus leading
to the conclusion, of animal chauvinism, that values are determined through
the interests (considerations and concerns) of animals, sentient creatures,
or whatever.
In the end, of course premiss C could be absorbed (as: Valuers
are valuers or valuing creatures) and accordingly omitted, leaving the
conclusion:
Values are determined in the interests of valuers.
However even
the analytic form of premiss C does not, as we shall see, save the argument.
Much the same applies in the case of premiss A.
The premiss is certainly
not unobjectionable in the usual sense of 'determined';
but there are ways
of repairing it so that the argument still works in a sufficiently damaging
form, and one way goes as follows:—
What is true, analytically, if
sufficiently many valuers are taken into account, is that values are deter
�12.
mined through the value rankings of valuers.
Value rankings cannot however
be cashed in for preference rankings since, as is well-known, preference
rankings and value rankings can diverge:
value and can value what is not preferred.
a valuer can prefer what has less
Let us amend the argument then -
so that we can locate the real cause of damage - by replacing premiss A by
the following premiss:
A^.
Values are determined through the value rankings of (appropriate) valuers.
Correspondingly B will be adjusted to B^ in which 'value' replaces 'preference'.
The really objectionable premiss in the central argument is
neither
premiss A nor premiss C, but premiss B - or, more exactly, where A is repaired,
premiss B^.
Suspicion of premiss B may be aroused by noticing that it plays
an exactly parallel role in the class chauvinism argument to that the critical
premiss
BE.
One's preferences of choices are always determined through self-interest,
plays in familiar arguments for egoism, that whatever course of action one
adopts, it is always really adopted in one's own selfish interests.
The argument for egoism runs along the following, parallel, lines:-
AE.
Individual persons [agents) always act (in freely chosen cases) in the
way they prefer or choose, i.e. in accordance with their preference rankings.
BE.
Individual preference rankings are always determined through ^reflect) self
interest.
Therefore:
There is nonetheless an esoteric, semantical, sense of 'determined' in which
premiss A is demonstrably true, and so a sense in which it is analytically
true that value rankings are semantically determined by the preference rankings
of situations by a class of valuers. The details of these semantical foundations
for values are set out in 131. But while premiss A can be corrected by replacing
'determined' by 'semantically determined' and giving this an appropriate construal,
such a move would do nothing to restore the intended argument:
for it would
either invalidate the argument, through change in the key middle term 'determined',
or, alternatively, if 'determined' is systematically replaced throughout the
argument, drastically alter the intended conclusion D - so that looking at the
interests that humans in fact have would no longer provide a guide to values
(instead the interests of hypothetical valuers with respect to worlds that never
exist or could exist would have to be gathered).
�13.
DE.
Individual persons ^agents] always act in ways determined by self
interest [that reflect their own interests^.
Thereafter follows the slide from in their own interests^ to to their own
advantage, or for their own uses or purposes.
The final conclusion of egoism
again parallelling the class chauvinism case, is not only that the egoistic
position is perfectly in order and thoroughly rational but that there are no
alternatives, that there is, or at least ought to be, no other way of acting,
'that men can only choose to do what is in their own interests or that it is
only rational to do this'
([2], p. 140).
Thus human chauvinism, as based on the central argument, stands revealed
as a form of group selfishness, group egoism one might almost say.
Likewise
the criticisms of the Group Selfishness argument, as we shall now call the
central argument, parallel those of egoism, in particular premiss B (B )
succumbs to similar objections to those that defeat premiss BE (BE^).
Group
selfishness is no more acceptable than egoism, since it depends on exactly
the same set of confusions between values and advantages, and slides on such
terms as 'interests', as the arguments on which egoism rests.
Nowell-Smith's
very appealing critique of egoism ([2], p. 140-144) may, by simple paraphrase,
be converted into a critique of group selfishness.
recast B^ and BE"
*"
This is obvious once we
and set them side by side:
BE^. Individual value rankings are determined through (individual) self
interest;
and
B^.
Valuers'
[groups'] value rankings are determined through valuers'
(group) interests [joint interests of groups].
Because, however, one sets up or selects one's own preference or value
rankings, it does not follow that they are set up or selected in one's own
interests;
similarly in group cases, because a group determines its own
rankings, it does not follow that it determines them in its own interests.
Just as BE^ is, prima facie at least, refuted by a range of examples where
�value, and also preference, rankings run counter to self-interest, e.g. cases
of altruism, so prima facie at least, B is refuted by examples where value, and
also overall preference rankings, vary from group interests, e.g. cases of
In the case
group altruism.
of limited groups examples are easy to locate,
e.g. resistance movements, environmental action groups, and so on;
case, however, of the larger human group
in the
are bound to be more controversial
(since B^ unlike BE^ is a live thesis), but are still easy to find, especially
if future humans are discounted, e.g. it is in humans' selfish interests to
have plentiful supplies of this and that, electricity from uranium, oil,
Me were
Sy/Z/ey
whalemeat, fish, etc., right now rather than^which would result from restraint,
but altruistic value rankings would rank the latter
above the former.
It is often in selfish human interests (no less selfish
because pertaining to a group) to open up and develop the wilderness, strip
mine the earth, exploit animals, and so on, but environmentalists who advocate
not doing so, in many cases not merely because of future humans, are apparently
acting not just out of their own or human group interests.
But, just as BE^ is not demolished by such counterexamples of apparently
altruistic action, neither is B :
in each case it can be made out that further
selfish interests are involved, e.g., in the case of B , that an agent did
what he did, an altruistic action, because he liked doing it.
As Nowell-Smith
explains in the egoism case, interest is written in as an internal accusative,
thereby rendering such theses as BE^ true at the cost, however, of trivialising
them.
More generally, valuing something gets written in as a further sort
of "interest";
whatever valuers value that does not seem to be in their
interests is said to provide a further interest, either the value itself or
an invented value surrogate; for example^the environmentalist who works to
retain a wilderness he never expects to see may be said to be so acting
because he has an interest in or derives benefit or advantage from just knowing
it exists, just as he would be in the egoist case.
theses can be retained;
By such strategies the
for then a valued item really is in valuers
interests,
in the extended sense, even if they are in obvious ways seriously inconvenienced
�15.
by it, i.e. even if it is not in their interests in the customary sense.
',
*
Thus.BE'
like 4^', is preserved by stretching the elastic term 'interests',
in a way that it too readily admits, to include values, or value surrogates,
among interests.
Then however the conclusion of the &roup Selfishness
argument loses its intended force, and becomes the platitude that values
are determined through valuers' values , just as egoism, under the extension
a
which makes us all covert egoists,loses its sting and becomes,platitude.
It can be seen that human chauvinism in this form, like egoism, derives its
plausibility from vacillation in the sense of 'interests', with a resulting
fluctuation between a strong false thesis - the face of^chauvinism usually
presented - and a trivial analytic thesis,between paradox and platitude.-^ To
sum up the dilemma for the argument then:-
when 'interest' is used in its
weaker sense premiss B may be accepted but the argument does not establish
its intended conclusion or in any way support human chauvinism.
intended effect of the argument, in the crude form is this:
values it is enough to look at human advantage:
For the
in determining
nothing else counts.
If the
argument were correct, then one could assess values by checking out the local
(selfish) advantage of humans, or, more generally, the advantage of the base
class somehow assembled.
If, on the other hand,
'interest' is used in its
strong sense, the conclusion would lice^'hce a form of human chauvinism, but
premiss B now fails.
Most philosphers think they know how to discredit the egoist arguments.
It is curious indeed then, that an argument which is regarded as so unsatisfactory
in the individual case - that for egoism - remains unchallenged and is still
considered so convincing in a precisely parallel group case - that for human
chauvinism.
********
The technique of rescuing philosphical theses by natural extensions and
accompanying redefinitions of terms, including the thesis "We're all selfish
really", is delightfully explained in Wisdom [7], chapter 1.
�16.
The Group Selfishness argument is often employed in another way, as the
presentation for a choice between the conclusion D, that value is determined by
or reducible to a matter of human interests, and the denial of premiss A, which
denial is seen as entailing a commitment to a detached,intrinsic or naturalistic
theory of value.
Thus, it may be said either one accepts the conclusion, with
its consequent instrumentalist account of value, or one is committed to an intrinsic
or detached value theory which takes values to be completely independent of valuers,
and no way determined by them.
But, it is assumed, the latter theory is well
known as untenable, and may even be seen as involving mysticism or as irrational
^e.g. by Passmore [9], chapter 7).
Thus it may be concluded, there is no real
coherent alternative to such an instrumental account of value, and hence no real
alternative to human chauvinism.
The form of the argument then, is essentially: *^A
v D, but A,therefore D,
or, if a stronger connection, of intensional disjunction, is intended:
but A, therefore D.
It can be seen that the main premiss, -A v D, has resulted
from the exportation and suppression of premisses B and C of the Group
argument.
^A,
Selfishness
This suppression does nothing to improve the standing of the premisses
although it does have the (possibly advantageous) effect of making it more difficult
to see the fallacious assumptions on which it is based.
For of course the choice
a false one, and for precisely the same reasons that led us
to say that premiss B was false.
To reject the instrumentalist
conclusion D is
by no means to be committed to ^A, or to the view that the valuer's and their
preference
rankings play no role in determining values and that values are a
further set of mysterious independent items in the world somehow perceived by
valuers through a special (even mystical and non—rational) moral sense.
Valuers'
;
*
preference rankings may be admitted to play an important role in evaluation
are still not committed to D unless we assume - what amounts to premiss B
these preference rankings reflect, or can be reduced to, valuers' interests.
* on page 16a
we
that
�16a
Value rankings can be semantically analysed in terms of preference or
interest rankings, as in [3]; but this does not offer a reduction of
values to preferences or interests, as [8] explains.
The semantical
foundations, while conceding nothing to subjectivism or instrumentalism,
make it easy to concede main points of the case (attributed to Dewey)
against detached values, against the view that there are values somehow
out there (in Meinong's aussersein), purely naturalistic values completely
detached from all valuers, or from all preference rankings of valuers.
Put differently, there are no values that do not somehow answer back to
preference rankings of valuers, and so no values that are entirely
detached from valuers and valuational activity such as preference-ranking
of situations.
But the answering back is made explicit and precise by
the semantical analysis, not by any syntactical reduction or translation
of value statements into statements about valuers' preference or interest
rankings; and the valuers of the analysis are, like the situations
introduced, ideal and need in no way exist.
As a result then, valuations
may be independent of the aggregated preference rankings of all actual
humans or, for that matter, of all persons over all time.
Thus too the
semantical analysis makes it easy to navigate a course between the
alternatives of two influential false dichotomies, to the effect that
values are either instrumental or else detached, or that values are either
subjective or else detached.
For though a semantical analysis can be
given, upsetting the detached value thesis, no translation or syntactical
reduction of the sort subjectivism assumes is thereby effected.
�17.
The dichotomy frequently presented between instrumentalist accounts of
value, on the one hand, and detached theories (or what are mistakenly taken
to be the same, intrinsic theories) is, for the same reason, a false one.
Instrumental theories are those which attempt to reduce value to what is
instrumental to^contribute$to a stated goal.
Typically such theories take
the goal to be the furtherance of the interest of a privileged class;
for
example the goal may be taken to be determined in terms of the interests,
concerns, advantage or welfare of the class of humans, or of persons, or of
sentient creatures, depending on the type of chauvinism.
In particular, human
chauvinist theories are, characteristically, instrumentalist theories.
In
contrast,an item is valued intrinsically where it is valued for its own sake,
and not merely as a means to something further;
and an intrinsic value theory
allows that some items are intrinsically valuable.
Intrinsic theories then,
instrumental
contrast with
Z.
theories, and what 'intrinsic' tells us is no more than
that the item taken as intrinsically valuable is not valued merely as a means to
some goal, i.e. is not merely instrumentally valued.
Accordingly detached value
theories, since disjoint from instrumental theories, are a subclass of intrinsic
value theories;
be detached:
and they are a proper subclass since intrinsic values need not
something may be valuable in itself without its value being
detached from all valuing experience.
It is evident, furthermore, that the
identification of intrinsic and detached value theories presupposed in the
argument is no more than a restatement of the false dichotomy -^A v D, or
^A,
The assumption
i.e. non-instrumental, therefore detached^that if preference or value rankings are
involved at all the resulting assignments must be instrumental is either false or
or is variation of the fallacious premiss B which plays a crucial role in the
Group Selfishness and Egoist arguments;
the variation is that if value or
preference rankings are involved they must reflect valuers' interests, therefore
such values are instrumental, because the items valued are valued according as
they reflect valuers interest, therefore according as they are a means to the
end of satisfying the valuers' interest.
It follows
that intrinsic value theories
�18.
may allow for a third way between instrumental and detached theories, because
of the possibility of value rankings (and also preference rankings) which are
not themselves set up in a purely instrumentalist way, that is attributing value
to aiitem only according as it is a means to some goal.
The argument that there is no coherent alternative to instrumentalism does
not however rely just on misrepresenting alternative intrinsic accounts as
logically incoherent by assimilating them to detached accounts.
It also trades
on a contemporary insensitivity to the serious logical and epistemological problems
of instrumental accounts of value, problems which were well known to classical
philosophers (see e.g., Aristotle Metaphysics, 994b9-16)
It does not appear to
be widely realised that the classical arguments apply not just to a few especially
shaky instrumentalist theories which adopt questionable goals but
to instrumentalism
in general, since they assume only quite general features of the instrumentalist
position.
Instrumentalist positions take as valuable (or in the moral case, as creating
moral constraints) just what contributes to a stated end.
which comes to mind is utilitarianism.
An obvious example
However in the more general case we
are concerned with, of instrumentalist forms of human chauvinism, there may be a
set of goalnot just a single goal such as that of maximising net happiness of
humans;
the human chauvinist assumption is that the values (indeed constraints)
are goal-reducible, and that all goals reduce in some way to human goals, or at
least can be assessed in terms of human concerns and interests.
Human chauvinist
positions are not necessarily instrumental, but those that are not (e.g. the
position that just humans and nothing else
are intrinsically valuable) tend to
make the arbitrary chauvinistic nature of their assumptions unwisely explicit -
most successful contempory chauvinisms being covert ones.
Problems for instrumentalism arise (as Aristotle observed) when questions
are asked about the status of the goal itself.
Instrumentalism relies entirely
for its plausibility upon selecting a set of goats which are widely accepted and are, in
�19.
It relies at bottom on an implicit
the theory, implicitly treated as valuable.
valuation which cannot itself be explained in purely instrumental terms. Of course
a value assumption is not eliminated on this fashion:
the general
consensus
it is merely hidden under
that such a goal is appropriate, that such an end is valuable.
But the strategy of successful instrumentalism is to avoid recognition of the fact
that the goal is, and indeed must be, implicitly treated as
valuable, by selecting
a set of goals so much part of the framework of comtemporary thought, so entrenched
and habitual 3s a valued item by humans that the value attached to the goal becomes
virtually invisible, at least to those
the framework.
Thus it is with the
assumption of human chauvinist instrumentalism that goals are exclusively
determinable in terms of human interest.
The basic, convincing
and self-evident
character of this assumption rests on nothing more than the shared beliefs of the
privileged class of humans concerning the paramount and exclusive importance of
their own interests and concerns, on a valuational assumption or goal which is
^'self-evident'" because it is advantageous and is habitual.
The consensus features,
of which instrumentalists make so much, are nothing more than the consensus of the
privileged class about the goal of maintaining
consensus of interests.
their own privilege, i.e. a
This sort of agreement of course shows very little about
the well-grountiness of the position.
Unless the goals set are widely accepted as valuable, the account will be
unconvincing to those who do not
share the goal and even to those who appreciate
that it is possible to reject the goal.
In order for instrumentalism to work
logically however, the goal must be implicitly treated within the theory as valuable,
for otherwise the proposed analysis loses explanatory and justificatory power
and lacks compulsion.
For how can the value of an item be explained and justified
in terms of its contribution to an end not itself considered valuable!
Serious
problems also arise about the nature of value statements under the instrumentalist
analysis unless the goal is treated as valuable.
For if the goals themselves are
not so treated within the theory, but are taken simply as unevaluated facts, then
a valuational statement 'x is valuable' becomes, under the proposed analysis,
�20.
simply the statement that x tends to produce a certain result, to contribute to
certain human states, a statement whose logical status, openness to verification,
allowance for disagreement, and so on, does not substantially differ from that
statement that x tends to producejoxide, to contribute to the rusting of human
products.
Such an account of value statements is open to the same sort of
objections as other naturalistic reductions of value, for example, Mill's account
the desirable in terms of the desired.
of
The special logical and
epistemological character of value statements then, especially with respect to
verification and disagreement,must be supplied in instrumentalism, if it is to
be supplied at all, by the implicit treatment of the goal itself as valuable.
The fact that the goaL of an instrumental account must be taken as itself
valuable, gives rise to two choices.
In the first, the goal is taken as itself
instrumentally valuable, which creates an infinite regress.
For if the end,
reason or assignment for which other items are intrumentally valuable is itself
only instrumentally valuable then there must in turn be some other end, reason or
assignment
in terms of which it is valuable (by definition of instrumental).
A regress is thus begun, and if this regress is not to be viciously infinite, it
must terminate in some end or feature which is taken as valuable just in itself,
that is, with intrinsic values.
On the alternative option the goal is not taken to be instrumentally valuable
but is admitted to be valuable in some other way.
Unless an 'except' clause is
, so that all values are held to be
account
instrumental with the exception of the goal, the
will of course be contextually
added to the original instrumentalist
inconsistent, since it is inconsistent when contextually supplied assumptions are
added.
For these include the assuption that the goal itself is valuable, but not
in the way that the instrumentalist thesis claims is the only way possible.
the goal is taken to be both valuable and not valuable.
If, on the other hand, an'except^ clause is added, this amounts to an
admission that the goal is taken to be non-instrumentally valuable.
Thus the
account may be able to retain consistency, but does so at the expense of
Thus
�21
explicitly admitting a value, that of the goal, which cannot be accounted for in
purely instrumental terms, in short, that the gcdl is taken as intrinsically
valuable.
To sum up, the dilemma for the instrumentalist can be put as follows:
Consider the desirability of the goal of the instrumental theory: it must
implicitly be judged to be desirable, for otherwise nothing could be justified
by reduction to it.
or not?
Ask:
Is this goal also instrumentally desirable (valuable)
If it is, i.e. it is only desirable as a means to a further goal,
then either a regress is initiated or the same issue arises with respect to
the new goal.
But if it is not, then the instrumental theory is again refuted,
since the goal is desirable though not desirable according to the test of the
theory because it is not instrumental to the goal.
Whichever ho rn of the dilemma is taken^ then> the outcome is the same:
the instrumentalist must rely on treating the goal itself as implicitly valuable
in a way not purely instrumental, that is, as intrinsically valuable.
Thus the
instrumentalist is, at bottom, guilty of precisely the same crime of which he
accuses the adherent of a intrinsic account, with the added delinquency of failing
to admit and face up to his basic assumptions.
The logical and epistemological
position of such an instrumental account is certainly no better than that of an
intrinsic account, since there is logically no difference between the recognition
of one intrinsic value (or one set in the case where gcals are multiple) and the
recognition of many of them, ancf^lxtgical and epistemological status of the
instrumentalist's account is no better than that of the goal to which his values
are taken as instrumental.
Since the instrumentalist has implicitly admitted
the legitimacy of an intrinsic value assignment in setting up his account, he
cannot claim any superiority over a more general intrinsic theory which allows for
many intrinsic values, since what is legitimate in the case of one value assignment
must be equally legitimate in the multiple case.
�22,
This abstract dilemma for human chauvinist instrumentalism is illustrated
in a concrete case by Passmore's procedure in [9];
for Passmore (1) wishes to
say that there is no coherent alternative to instrumental values, that an item
is valuable insofar as it serves human interest, and (2) wants to explain the
unique value attributed to humans in terms of their production of valuable
civilised and cultural
But (2) involves the admission of values, that
items.
of civilised items, which cannot be valuable in the way (1) states, and indeed
(2) amounts to the admission of non-instrumental values.
The proposed account is
inconsistent because if intrinsic values are admissible in the case of civilised
items, they cannot be logically ^oherent in the way (1) claims.
The sort of problem faced by Passmore is however not a readily avoidable
one for the instrumentalist;
for if the charge of arbitary and unjustifiable
human chauvinism is to be avoided by those who opt for (1), and humans are not
themselves to be awarded intrinsic values,, thus conceding the logical legitimacy
of intrinsic values generally, and hence the avoidability of human chauvinist
accounts of value, some explanation must be provided for the exclusive value
attributed to humans.
But only explanation capable of justifying this valuation
in a non-arbitray and non-chauvinistic way would have to refer to properties of
humans, and would have to say something like:
'Humans are uniquely valuable because
they alone have valuable properties x,y,z,... or produce valuable items A, B, C...'.
distinguishing
The list of proposed
features already considered on page 8 are usually
those that will be employed here.
But this is to admit intrinsic value for the
properties which explain the exclusive value of humans.
The dilemma
for the human chauvinist is that he must either take the exclusive human value
assumption (the goal) as ultimate—laying him open to the charge of arbitrary
chauvinism and of attributing intrinsic values to humans-or attempt to explain it*
in which case he will again end by concedingly non-instrumental values.
Thus the case for the inevitability of human chauvinism, that alternatives to
it must be based on an incoherent and logically and epistemically defective account
of values, namely a non-instrumental account, has not been established by these
arguments.
&
*
&&&&
**
**&
�23.
Egoism, not group selfishness, is one of the assumptions underlying the next
The leading ideas of the representative
series of abstract defences of chauvinism.
argument we first consider are essentially those of social contract theories.
This
argument takes the following form (the bracketed paramaeters X and Z are filled out
in the representative argument respectively by:
and:
J.
justification of moral principles,
enter into contracts):
The only justification of moral principles [only X] is a contractual one, i.e.
the entry into contracts of agents [Zry].
K.
Agents only enter into contracts [only Z] if it serves their own interests.
(The
egoist assumption)
L.
Humans [persons] are the only agents that enter into contracts [that Z].
Therefore, by K and L,
M.
Humans [persons] only enter into contracts [only Z] if it serves their own interests
Therefore, from J and M,
N.
The only justification for moral principles [only X] is the (selfish) interests
of humans [persons].
*
The argument can be varied by different choices of parameters, X and Z.
example, X could be filled out by
replaced by 'community-based'
For
'determination of value judgments', and 'contractual'
(i.e. Z is filled out by 'are community-based' or some
such) yielding in place of J the familiar premiss that the only justification of
value judgments is a community-based one, and leading to a conclusion, analytically
linked to D above, that all value judgments
are determined by human self-interest.
Alternatively just one of X or Z may be so replaced, leaving the other as in the
original
example .
Another variation of the argument that has figured prominently
in the discussion of animal rights fills out X and Z respectively by 'determination
of rights' and 'belong to human society'.
Under this assignment the parametric premiss
The logical transitions in the argument take on more evidently valid form upon
analytic transformation of the premisses, to those now illustrated:J'. All justifications of moral principles are cases of (justified by) the entry
into contracts of agents.
K'. All cases of the entry into contracts are cases of self-interests of agents.
And so on for L' through M'.
�24.
J becomes essentially that commonly adopted (e.g. [4] and [5] again), but already
criticised above, that 'rights are determined solely by reference to human society'.
As the arguments are in each case valid, the issue of the correctness of the
conclusions devolves on that of the correctness of the premisses.
In each case too
the arguments could be made rather more plausible by replacing 'humans' by 'persons'
(and correspondingly 'human society' by 'society of persons', etc.);
for otherwise
premisses such as L and its variations are suspect, since there is nothing, legally or
morally, to prevent consortia, organisations and other non-humans from entering into
contracts (and these items are appropriately counted as persons in the larger legal
sense).
Given that that amendment deals with premiss L, the correctness of the
arguments turns on the correctness of premisses J and K.
But both these premisses are
false, and premiss J imports the very chauvinism that is at issue in the conclusion.
Though
the representative contract argument is only one of several important
variations that can be made on the general parametric argument, it is often regarded
as having special appeal, because the contract model appears to explain the origin of
obligation, and offer a justification for it, in a way that no other model does, and
thus to provide a bulwark against moral, and political, scepticism.
That the
appearance is illusory, because the obligation to honour contracts is assumed at bottom,
is well enough known and not our concern here.
What is of concern is the correctness of
representative premisses J and K.
The egoist assumption K is faulted on the same grounds as egoism itself.
For
agents sometimes enter into contracts that are not in their own interests but are in
the interests of other persons or creatures, or are undertaken on behalf of, for
instance to protect, other items that do not have interests at all, e.g. rivers,
buildings, forests.
The attempt to represent all these undertakings as in human
interests, because done in the "selfish interests" of the agents is the same as in the
egoist arguments, and the resolution of the problem is the same, namely to distinguish
acting, valuing, and so on, clearly from acting in one's own selfish (or in group)
interests.
However even if premiss K were amended to admit that agents may enter into
�25.
contracts on behalf of non-human items, it would still result in a form of human
chauvinism given familiar assumptions, since non—human items will still be unable to
create moral obligations except through a human sponsor or patron, who will, presumably,
be able to choose whether or not to protect them.
Natural items will generate no moral
constraints unless humans freely choose to allow them to do so;
since the obligatory
features of moral obligation thus disappear, no genuine moral obligations can be
created by natural items under such an amended account.
Thus the amended premiss
assumes the question at issue.
Premiss J, the view that moral
obligations are generated solely by contracts
undertaken by moral agents, is then the crucial assumption for this argument for human
chauvinism.
J however has serious difficulties, for there are many recognised moral
principles which apparently cannot be explained as contractually based, at least if
"contract" is to be taken seriously.
There is no actual contract underlying the
principle that one ought not to be cruel to animals, children and others not in a
position to contract.
Adherents of a social contract view of moral obligation are of
course inclined to withhold recognition of those moral principles that cannot be con
tractually based, so that the contract thesis becomes not so much explanatory as pre
scriptive.
But even allowing for this, the thesis has many unacceptable consequences
just concerning humans, and if the notion of contract plays a serious role, it is
difficult to reconcile with the view of all humans a possessing rights.
A crucial feature of contracts is that they are freely undertaken by responsible
parties.
If they can be freely undertaken there must be a choice with respect to them
the choice of not so contracting.
But then we are left
with the conclusion that it is
permissible to treat those who do choose not to contract as mere instruments of those
who do, in the way that the non-human world is presently treated;
these contractual
dropouts, like those outside society, can have no rights and there can be no moral
constraints on behaviour concerning them,whatever their capacity for suffering.
A
similar conclusion emerges if humans who are not morally responsible are considered,
for although we are normally considered to have quite substantial obligations to such
�26.
humans, e.g. babies, young children, those who are considered mentally ill or as
having diminished responsibility, they cannot themselves be free and responsible
parties to a contract, and will, on the social contract view, presumably have to
depend for their rights on others freely choosing to contract on their behalf.
If^this
does not^for some reason^) occur we will be left with a similarly unacceptable con-
elusion as in the case of the contractual dropouts.
Obviously then, moral obligations
do not require morally equal, freehand responsible contracting parties, in the way
the social contract account presupposes.
Worse, the argument would appear, with but
little adaptation, to justify the practices of such groups as death squads, multi
rr
nationals, and the Mafia, it!
If these unacceptable conclusions are to be avoided, all humans will have to be
somehow, in virtue of simply being human, subject to some mysterious, fictional,
social contract which they did not freely choose to enter into, cannot get out of, and
which can never exclude any member of the human species.
So the unacceptable con-
sequences are avoided only if crucial features of the notion of contract such as
freedom and responsibility are dropped, and the notion^and premiss J so seriously
weakened as to become virtually without conditions.
For the argument to work the
residue has to be mere common humanity, and the "contract" little more than the
convention of morally considering just other members of the human species.
convention differs little
however from a restatement of human chauvinism;
Such a
the pro
ferred explanation is really no explanation, for such a convention can neither justify
human chauvinism nor, since different conventions could be arranged, explain why it is
inevitable.
The social contract account of moral obligation is defective because it implies
that moral obligations can really only hold between responsible moral agents, and
attempts to account for all moral obligation as based on contract.
But of course the
account is correct as an account of the origin of some types of moral obligation;
there are moral obligations of a type that can only hold between free and responsible
agents, and others which only apply within a social and political context.
Yet other
types of obligation, such as the obligation not to cause suffering, can arise only with
respect to sentient or preference-having creatures -
who are not necessarily morally
�27.
responsible — and could not significantly arise with respect to a non—sentient item
such as a tree or a rock.
What emerges is a picture of types of moral obligation
as associated with a nest of rings or annular boundary classes, with the innermost
class, consisting of highjyintelligent, social, sentient creatures, having the full range
of moral obligations applicable to them, and outer classes^ such non—sentient items as
rocks having only a much more restricted range of moral obliga
trees and
tions significantly applicable to them.
between the rings.
In some cases there is no sharp division
But there is no single uniform privileged class of items, no one
base class, to which all and only moral principles directly apply, and moreover the
zoological class of humans is not one of the really significant boundary classes.
The
recognition that some types of moral obligation can only apply within the context of
a particular sort of society or through contract does nothing to support the case of
human chauvinism.
The failure of the contract theory nevertheless leaves the issue as to whether
there is some logical or categorial restriction on what can be the object of moral
obligations, which would reinstate human chauvinism or animal chauvinism.
There is
however no such restriction on the object place of the obligation relation to humans
or sentient creatures.
Even if the special locution 'Y has an obligation towards X'
requires that X is at least a preference-having creature, there are other locutions
which are not so restricted, and
one can perfectly well speak of having duties toward
land and of having obligations concerning or with respect to such items as mountains
and rivers, and without necessarily implying that such moral constraints arise only in
an indirect fashion.
Thus neither natural language nor the logic of moral concepts
rules out the possibility of non-sentient items creating direct moral constraints.
There is then, given this point and the annular model, no need to opt for the
position of Leopold [12] as the only alternative to human (or animal) chauvinism, that
is for a position which simply transfers to natural items the full set of rights and
obligations applicable to humans, leading to such non-significance as that rocks have
obligations to mountains.
Distinctions between the moral constraints appropriate to
different types of items can be recognised without leading back to human chauvinism.
The point is an important one since many objections to allowing moral obligations to
�28.
extend beyond the sphere of humans, or in some cases the sphere of sentient creatures,
depend on ignoring such distinctions, on assuming that it is a question of transferring
the full set of rights and obligations appropriate to intelligent social creatures to
such items as trees and rivers - that the alternative to chauvinism is therefore an
irrational and mystical animism concerning nature (cf. Passmore [9], p. 187 ff.).
*****
*
*
The ecological restatement of the strong version of human chauvinism, according
to which items outside the privileged human class have zero intrinsic value, is the
Dominion thesis,
the view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are
available for man's benefit and to serve his interests, and hence that man is entitled
to manipulate the world and its systems as he wants, that is^ in his interests.
The
thesis indeed follows, given fairly uncontroversial, analytic, assumptions, from the
conclusions of the main chauvinistic arguments examined, notably D, that values are
determined through human interests.
The earth and all its non-human contents thus
have no intrinsic value, at best instrumental value, and so can create no direct moral
constraints on human action.
For what has only instrumental value is already written
down, in this framework, as serving human interests.
And since what has no instru
mental value cannot be abused or have its value diminished, it is permissible for
humans to treat it as they will in accord with their interests.
thesis.
Ergo the Dominion
Conversely, if non-human items are available for man's use, interests and
benefits, they can have no value except insofar as they answer his interests.
Other
wise there would be restrictions on his behaviour with respect to them, since not any
sort of behaviour is permissible as regards independently valuable items.
value is determined through man's interests, i.e. D holds.
is strictly equivalent to D.
implies human chauvinism.
Accordingly
Thus the Dominion thesis
It follows that the Dominion thesis, like D, strictly
Conversely, the strong version of human chauvinism strictly
implies D, and so the Dominion thesis, completing the sketch of the equivalence
argument.
Since the positions are equivalent what counts against one also counts
against the others.
In particular, then, the Dominion thesis is no more inevitable
This view encompasses what Passmore [9] has isolated as the Western environmental
ideologies, both the dominant view and the lesser traditions: see [10].
�29.
than, and just as unsatisfactory as, strong human chauvinism.
The upshot is that the dominant ethical systems of our times, those clustered
as the western ethic, and other kindred human chauvinistic systems, are far less
defensible, and less satisfactory, than has been commonly assumed, and lack an
adequate, and non-arbitrary, basis.
Furthermore alternative theories are far less
incoherent than is commonly claimed, especially by philosophers.
are viable alternatives to the Dominion thesis,
Yet although there
the natural world is rapidly being
preempted in favour of human chauvinism - and of what it ideologically underwrites,
the modern economic-industrial superstructure - by the elimination or over-exploitation
of those things that are not considered of sufficient instrumental value for human
beings.
Witness the
of the non-human world, the assaults being made on
tropical rainforests, surviving temperate wildernesses, wild animals, the oceans, to
list only a few of the victims of man's assault on the natural world.
Observe also
the associated measures to bring primitive or recalcitrant peoples into the Western
consumer society and the spread of human chauvinist value systems.
The time is fast
approaching when questions raised by an environmental ethic will cease to involve live
options.
As things stand at present however, the ethical issues generated by the
preemptions - especially given the weakness and inadequacy of the ideological and
value—theoretical basis on which the damaging chauvinistic transformation of the
world is premissed, and the viability of alternative environmental ethics - are not
merely of theoretical interest, but are among the most important and urgent questions
of our times,
perhaps, that
human beings, whose individual or group self-interest
is the source of most environmental problems, have ever asked themselves.
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain
Braidwood
Australia 2622
�References
[1]
R. and V. Routley, 'Human chauvinism and environmental ethics', mimeographed,
privately circulated, 1974.
[2]
P.H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics, Penguin, London, 1954.
[3]
R. and V. Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory', Nous (forthcoming)
[4]
D.G. Ritchie, Natural Rights, Allen and Unwin, London, 1894.
[5]
J. Passmore, 'The treatment of animals', Journal of the History of Ideas, _36
(1975), 195-218.
[6]
T. Regan and P. Singer (editors), Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Prentice-
Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976.
[7]
J. Wisdom, Other Minds, Blackwell, Oxford, 1952.
[8]
R. Routley, 'The semantical metamorphosis of metaphysics', Australasian Journal
of Philosophy^5A (1976),157.
[9]
[10]
J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
V. Routley, Critical Notice of [9], Australasian Journal of Philosophy 53. (1975)
171-185.
[11]
H.J. McCloskey, 'Rights', Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (1965), 115-127.
[12]
A. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, with other essays on conservation from Round
River, Ballantine, New York, 1966.
[13]
K. Baier and N. Rescher (editors), Values and the Future, the impact of techno
logical change on American values, The Free Press, New York, 1969.
�
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AGAINST THE INEVITABILITY OF HUMAN CHAUVINISM
In our enlightened times, when most forms of chauvinism have been abandoned
at least in theory by those who consider themselves progressive, western ethics
still appears to retain, at its very heart, a fundamental form of chauvinism,
namely, human chauvinism.
ethical theories
For both popular western thought and most western
assume that both value and morality can ultimately be reduced
to matters of interest or concern to the class of humans.
Class chauvinism, in the relevant sense, is substantially differential,
discriminatory, and inferior treatment (characteristically, but not necessarily,
by members of the privileged class) of items outside the class, for which there
is not sufficient justification.
Human chauvinism, like other varieties of
chauvinism, can take stronger and weaker forms;
an example of the weaker form
is the Greater Value Thesis, the invariable allocation of greater value or
preference, on the basis of species, to humans, while not however entirely
excluding non-humans from moral consideration and claims.
We will be concerned
primarily with strong forms of human chauvinism, which see value and morality as
ultimately concerned entirely with humans, and non-human items as having value
or creating constraints on human action only insofar as these items serve human
interests or purposes.
In recent years, since the rise of the 'environmental consciousness', there
has been increasing, if still tentative, questioning of this exclusive concern
with, or at least heavy bias towards, human interests;
and indeed, at a time
when human beings are rapidly accelerating their impact on the natural world,
the question as to the validity of this basic assumption is not merely an
abstract one, but is of immediate and practical concern in its implications for
This thesis has, among other unacceptable outcomes, the consequence that,
if there is only room in one's boat for one and one must choose between
saving Adolf Hitler and a wombat which has lived a decent and kindly life
and never harmed a living creature, one is morally obligated to choose the
former. That would not be the choice of the authors.
2.
human action.
In reply to this questioning (which appears to originate largely
from people with environmental interests), modern moral philosophers - fulfilling
their now established function of providing a theoretical superstructure to explain
and justify contemporary moral sensibilities,
questioning fundamental
assumptions - tend to argue that the bias towards human interests, which is an
integral part of going ethical theories, is not just another form of class
chauvinism which it is both possible and desirable to eliminate, but rather a
restriction dictated by the logic of evaluative and moral concepts, and that
there is no coherent, possible or viable alternative to the "human chauvinism"
of standard ethical theories.
series of
In this paper we want to consider and reject a
arguments in the theory of value designed to show that this
is so, and thereby to advance the cause of an alternative, non-chauvinistic,
environmental ethic.
The orthodox defence of human chauvinism argues that it is inevitable
that humans should be taken as the exclusive subjects of value and morality.
Humans are uniquely and exclusively qualified for moral consideration and
attributions of value, according to this defence either because the human
species alone does, as a matter of fact, possess properties which are a pre
condition for such ascriptions or because, as a matter of the definition or
the logic or the significance of moral concepts in natural language, such
considerations are restricted, as a matter of logic, to the human species.
In the first case the restriction of morality and value to the human species
will be taken as contingent, in the second necessary.
In either case, if the
argument is correct, the bias in favour of humans in current theories is
inescapable, so that, depending on one's definition of chauvinism, either
human chauvinism itself is inevitable, or human bias is, because justifiable,
not a real chauvinism at all.
We shall consider the logical or definitional
approach first.
According to the definitional approach, moral and evaluative terms are,
as a matter of their definitions, restricted in their application to members
of the human species;
only in a secondary way
at best do such terms find a
3.
wider application, according as evaluated items are instrumental to human
interests.
The thesis is often backed up by the production of definitions
which are so restricted, for example,
'the value of a thing is its capacity
to confer a benefit on someone, to make a favourable difference to his life'
(Baier, in [13], p. 40), where in the intended context 'someone' is obviously
restricted to humans.
The attempt to preserve human chauvinism in an unchallengeable form
through definitions involves the fallacy of taking definitions to be self
validating and unchallengeable, and appears to be based on the confusion of
abbreviative definitions with those involving or presupposing substantive
claims, such as creative definitions, which may be accepted or rejected.
Such
definitions as those above, cannot be merely abbreviative because they attempt
to characterise or explicate already understood terms, such as 'moral' or
'value'.
Worse still, they do so in a way which is not dictated by prevailing
usage - which does not require that moral and value terms be restricted in
range to human:in order that they continue to apply to humans in the ordinary
way.
Alternative definitions which do not so restrict the range of application
may be supplied, they can in fact be found by looking up dictionaries, and
these alternatives quite properly do not close off genuine issues which natural
language itself leaves open.
The fallacy of the definitional move is that of believing that by converting
the substantive evaluative theses of human chauvinism to matters of definition
they become somehow exempt from challenge or need for justification.
This is
comparable to justifying discriminatory membership for a club by referring to
the rules, similarly conceived as self-validating and exempt from question or
justification.
Since a similar move could obviously be employed to limit
membership of the Moral Club to say, white male humans in place of humans, it
is plain that such a definitional argument does far too much, and is capable
of use to produce completely unacceptable conclusions.
But of course substantive theses involved in definitions, like club rules,
are not exempt from challenge and may be arbitrary, undesirable, restrictive,
c/
4.
and in need of justification.
Once this is grasped the definitional move can
be seen as entirely question-begging, since the question of the acceptability
and inevitability of human chauvinism is simply transformed into the question
of the acceptability and inevitability of the definition.
The production of
such human chauvinist definitions has done nothing to advance the case of
human chauvinism, other than to throw a spurious air of unchallangeability and
over the highly challengeable and arbitrary substantive theses
they embody.
The attempt to settle substantive issues 'by definition' is both
philosophically facile and methodologically unsound, and is especially so when
there are clearly alternative definitions which would not settle the issue in
the same way.
What, however, of the substantive claim presupposed by the
definitional move, namely that as a matter of natural language usage, or the
logic of moral and evaluative concepts, the meaning of moral and value terms,
it is logically necessary that direct, non-instrumental, application of such
terms be restricted to the human (a claim made at least in the case of rights
by Ritchie [4], p. 107, and subsequently by Passmore [5] and [9]^,p. 116, 189,
Ay
and,others).
But usually, when it is asserted that non-humans cannot have
rights, obligations and such like, what sort of 'cannot' is involved is
not specified - whether
it is a 'cannot' of logical impossibility, or of
non-significance or absurdity, or something else again (the point is nicely
illustrated by Feinberg's discussion of McCloskey,
McCloskey [11] itself).
in
p. 195 , and by
In any case, however, the thesis appears to be mistaken,
for it rules out as logically impossible or absurd a number of positions and
theses which are very plainly neither and which it may even, in some circumstances,
be important to consider.
For example, it is surely neither impossible nor absurd
to consider moral questions concerning conduct of humans towards other species,
e.g. to a race of sensitive and intelligent extraterrestrial beings, and
similarly moral questions arising from their conduct towards or concerning humans,
indeed science fiction writ .ers do this commonly without producing nonsense or
contradicting themselves.
Not only does the proposed restriction appear quite
5.
mistaken given current usage, but there seems indeed to be something logically
unsound about the attempt to place a logical restriction to a particular species
on such terms, just as there would be in restricting membership of the Moral
Club to people with blue eyes and blond hair who are over 6 feet tall.
The
accident of being a zoological human, defined in terms of various physical
characteristics, cannot be morally relevant.
It is impossible to restrict
moral terms to particular species, when species distinctions are defined in
terms of physical characteristics which are not morally relevant.
More generally, any attempt to derive a logically necessary connection
between humanity itself and the applicability of morality is bound to fail.
For creatures anatomically and zoologically distinct from humans which are
identical with humans in terms of all morally relevant features are logically
possible, upsetting any logical linkage.
tie between humanity
But attempts to establish a logical
and morality through features which all and only humans
possess and which are themselves linked logically to morality, would, of course,
involve a modal fallacy, namely that of substituting a contingent equivalence
within an opaque modal conte t of logical necessity.
In order for such an
argument to be val? d, it would have to be logically necessary that non
humans do not possess such features, not merely a contingent fact that they
do not;
but this assumption must be incorrect for morally relevant
characteristics.
The only proposal which has ac/n/tce of succeeding, then, is the factual one
which makes the selection of just humans for the Moral Club a contingent matter,
the claim being that as a matter of contingent fact all and only humans possess
a certain set of characteristics, which characteristics themselves are logically
tied with qualification for moral consideration and for direct attribution of
value to the possessor.
What this contingent form of human chauvinism has to produce then, in
order to establish its case, is a set of characteristics which satisfy the
following conditions of adequacy:
6.
1.
The set of characteristics must be possessed by at least all properly
functioning humans, since to omit any significant category usually considered
subject to moral consideration, such as infants, young children, primitive
tribesmen etc., and to allow that it was permissible to treat these gro^J^L^
in the way it is considered permissible to treat non-humans, ^s mere instruments,
would certainly be repuguant to modern moral sensibilities, and would offend
common intuitions as to the brotherhood of man, the view that all humans are
possessors of inalienable
rights.
Thus human chauvinism, if it is to produce
a coherent theory which does not unacceptably rule out some groups of humans
must find some set of features common to the most diverse members of humankind,
from Rio Tinto executives to hunter-gatherer tribes of Amazonian Indians,
from those who engage in highly abstract activities such as logic and
mathematics to those who cannot, from the literate and cultured to the
illiterate and uncouth, from the poet and professor to the infant.
This
alone will be no easy task.
2.
In order for human chauvinism to be justified this set of characteristics
must not be possessed by any non-human.
3.
The set of characteristics must not merely be morally relevant,but
sufficient to justify, in a non-circular way, the cut-off of moral consideration
at exactly the right point.
If human chauvinism is to avoid the charge of
arbitrariness and unjustifiability, and demonstrate its inevitability and
the impossibility of alternatives, it must emerge from the characteristicj
why items not having
may be used as mere instruments to serve the interests
of those which do possess
There must be some explanatory logical
connection between the set of characteristics and membership of the Moral
Club.
Chauvinists aie.
fc
stress
distinguishing points between
the privileged class and those outside it - and there is no lack of
characteristics which distinguish humans from non-humans, at least
functioning healthy adult ones.
The point is that these distinctions usually
do not warrant the sort of radically inferior treatment for which they are
7.
proposed as a rationale.
On the basis of the characteristics then the
proposed radical difference in treatment between the privileged and non
privileged class and the purely instrumental treatment of the non-privileged
class, must be warranted, that is, the distinguishing characteristics must
be able to carry the moral superstructure placed upon them.
A large and exceedingly disparate collection of features has been suggested
as distinguishing humans from non-humans and justifying human chauvinism.
But
it turns out that every one of these, on examination, either fails to pick out
the desired privileged class of humans in an unequivchcal fashion, that is, it
applies to some non-humans or excludes some humans who should not be excluded,
or, when it does select the desired class, fails on condition 3, and does not
warrant the exclusive claim to moral consideration of the privileged class.
Many suggested criteria in fact fail on more than one count.
The traditional distinction between humans and the rest in terms of
rationality illustrates the point.
Once the theological doctrines of the
exclusively human soul on which the distinction once rested are abandoned,
it is not so easy to see what is meant by this term.
Indeed it often appears
to function as little more than a self-congratulatory predicate applied
exclusively to humans, with no other clear function at all.
clarifications are sometimes offered.
However various
For example rationality may be said
to be the ability to reason, this being tested by such basically linguistic
performances as the ability to do lo^ic, to prove theorems, to draw conclusions
from arguments and to engage in inductive and deductive linguistic behaviour.
But such stringent and linguistically-loaded criteria will eliminate far
too many members of the human species who cannot perform these tasks.
If,
however, behavioural criteria for rationality are adopted, or the ability to
solve problems and to fit attion to individual goals becomes the test - that
is, practical reasoning is the test - it is obvious that many non-human
admission to
the Moral Club, rather than the ability to perform some other
tasks
or meet some other set of standards, such as orienteering ability,the
ability to mix concrete (the use of concrete being, afte^all, a far more
conspicuous feature of modern human society than the use of reason).
One
senses also in the appeal to such criteria (andespecially to linguistic
criteria) the overvaluation of the things in which the privileged class
typically excells and the undervaluation of the skills - not obviously^ in any
non—circular way inferior - of the non-privileged class, which is such a
typical feature of chauvinism.
We list
some of the suggested characteristics supposedly justifying
human chauvinism, and indicate in brackets after each some of the conditions
they fail:
using tools (fails 1, 2, 3), altering the environment (1, 2, 3),
the ability to communicate (1, 2, 3), the ability to use and learn language
(1, 2, 3), the ability to use and learn English (1, 3), possession of
consciousness (2, 3), self-consciousness or self-awareness (1, 2?, 3), having
a conscience (1, 2?, 3), having a sense of shame (1, 2?, 3), being aware of
oneself as an agent or initiator (1, 2, 3), having awareness (2, 3), being
aware of one's existence (1, 2?, 3), being aware of the inevitability of
one's own death (1, 2?, 3), being capable of self-deception (1, 3), being
able to ask questions about moral issues such as human chauvinism (1, 3),
having a mental life (2, 3), being able to play games (1, 2, 3), being able
to laugh (1, 3), to laugh at oneself (1, 3), being able to make jokes (1, 3),
having interests (2, 3), having projects (1, 2, 3), being able to assess
some of one's performances as successful or not (1, 2, 3), enjoying freedom
of action (2, 3), being able to vary one's behaviour outside a narrow range
of insttnctu al behaviour (1, 2, 3), belonging to a social community (1, 2, 3),
being morally responsible for one's actions (1), being able to love (1, 2),
being capable of altruism (1, 2), being capable of being a Christian, or
capable of religious faith (1, 3), being able to produce the items of (human)
civilisation grid, culture
*
(1, 3).
* This feature typifies a number of rather circular distinguishing characteristics,
or at least ones which raise serious theob^. tical problems for human chauvinism,
because they attempt to explain the unique value of humans in terms of their
ability to produce items which are taken to be independently valuable, thus
contradicting human chauvinism (see the discussion in [10],/?.;77/,
It appears that none of these criteria meet the conditions of adequacy;
furthermore it seems most unlikely that any other characteristic
or any cowbinlation of the^characteristics does
so.
Thus we conclude that these contingent direct arguments for human
&
chauvinism^not establish its inevitability, and that indeed the position rests
on a shaky base and so f^r lacks a coherent theoretical justification.
Human chauvinism cannot be restored by a detour through the concept of
a person, that is by linking perso/JnoocL with membership of the /*
foral
(lub, and
identifying the class of persons contingently with the class of humans.
For then the same problem as above arises with different terminology
even if the
of person
since,
can be specified in such a way as to justify
the restriction of moral privileges to persons, the class of persons will
then not
conicin the way human chauvinism requires^ with the class
of humans, but will either include a great many non-humans or exclude a good
many humans^morally considered.
Attempts to enlarge the privileged class, for example to persons (broadly
specified), or to sentient or preference having creatures, may avoid many
of the problems of arbitrariness and justification which face the strong
form of human chauvinism, but, as we
shall argue, face a set of problems of
coherence and consistency common to all instrumentalist theories of value and
morality.
*******
There are a number of indirect arguments for human chauvinism based on
features of value and morality.
argument
We turn now to consider these.
One abstract
which is supposed to establish that values are, or must, be
determined through the interests of humans or persons - a central argument
underlying chauvinism - takes the following form:-
10.
A.
Values are determined through the preference rankings of valuers.
(The
no detachable values assumption).
B.
Valuers' preference rankings are determined through valuers' interests.
(The preference reduction thesis).
C.
Valuers are humans [persons].
(The species assumption).
Therefore:
D.
Values are determined through human interests [through the interests of
persons].
Hence, it is sometimes concluded, not only is it perfectly acceptable for
humans to reduce matters of value and morality to matters of human interest,
there is no rational or possible alternative to doing so:
any alternative
is simply incoherent.
Although th{$
argument does not, so far as we are aware, appear anywhere
with its premisses explicitly stated, it does seem to reflect the sorts of
considerations those who claim that there is no rational or coherent alternative
to organising everything in human interests usually have in mind.
Of course
once the premisses are exposed, it is easier to see that this initially
persuasive argument, like others in the area, rests on fallacious assumptions.
y<2^ —
We shall claim that although the argument to conclusion D is formally^given
only some quite conventional assumptions such as that the relation of determin
ation or functionality is appropriately transitive and the principle of
replacement of necessary identicals - not all the premisses should be accepted.
The argument can be treated as the major representative of a family of
similar arguments.
For there are many variations that can be made on the
argument with a view to amending it, tightening it, varying or strengthening
its conclusion, and so on.
Our criticisms of the argument will, for the most
part, transfer to the variations.
qualifies the determining relation;
A first group of variations replaces or
for example, 'determined through' or
'determined by' may be replaced by 'answer back to',
of',
'can be reduced to', or 'are a function of'.
'reflect',
'are a matter
(The latter functional
form makes it plain that 'determined' has to mean 'exactly determined', which
11.
ensures that no extraneous factors enter
into the chauvinistic determination:
mere partial determination would be quite compatible with the rejection of
human chauvinism.)
Alternatively, 'determined' may be modally upgraded to
'have to be determined', in order to reveal the sheer necessity of conclusion
D.
(In this case it is essential that premiss C be of modal strength, and not
merely contingent as it would be if the original form were retained;
other
wise the argument would contain a modal fallacy.).
Another familiar, and appealing, variation we have already bracketed into
the form of the argument given;
class by persons.
namely the replacement of humans as base
This straightaway increases the cogency of premiss C,
which otherwise - while better than, say,
'Valuers are white (North American)
humans' - would at best be contingently true (which is not good enough for the
argument and in fact appears false, since some valuers may not be human;
and
certainly not all humans are valuers), while at worst it is simply a circular
way of reintroducing the logical version of human chauvinism by rest^cting the
class of valuers a priori to humans.
That all valuers are persons may be made
analytic on the sense of 'person' - given a redefinition of 'person' away from
its normal English usage, which philosophical
English appears to almost
tolerate - thus shielding premiss C from criticism.
Other base classes than
persons can replace humans in premiss C, for example animals, thus leading
to the conclusion, of animal chauvinism, that values are determined through
the interests (considerations and concerns) of animals, sentient creatures,
or whatever.
In the end, of course premiss C could be absorbed (as: Valuers
are valuers or valuing creatures) and accordingly omitted, leaving the
conclusion:
Values are determined in the interests of valuers.
However even
the analytic form of premiss C does not, as we shall see, save the argument.
Much the same applies in the case of premiss A.
The premiss is certainly
not unobjectionable in the usual sense of 'determined';
but there are ways
of repairing it so that the argument still works in a sufficiently damaging
form, and one way goes as follows:—
What is true, analytically, if
sufficiently many valuers are taken into account, is that values are deter
12.
mined through the value rankings of valuers.
Value rankings cannot however
be cashed in for preference rankings since, as is well-known, preference
rankings and value rankings can diverge:
value and can value what is not preferred.
a valuer can prefer what has less
Let us amend the argument then -
so that we can locate the real cause of damage - by replacing premiss A by
the following premiss:
A^.
Values are determined through the value rankings of (appropriate) valuers.
Correspondingly B will be adjusted to B^ in which 'value' replaces 'preference'.
The really objectionable premiss in the central argument is
neither
premiss A nor premiss C, but premiss B - or, more exactly, where A is repaired,
premiss B^.
Suspicion of premiss B may be aroused by noticing that it plays
an exactly parallel role in the class chauvinism argument to that the critical
premiss
BE.
One's preferences of choices are always determined through self-interest,
plays in familiar arguments for egoism, that whatever course of action one
adopts, it is always really adopted in one's own selfish interests.
The argument for egoism runs along the following, parallel, lines:-
AE.
Individual persons [agents) always act (in freely chosen cases) in the
way they prefer or choose, i.e. in accordance with their preference rankings.
BE.
Individual preference rankings are always determined through ^reflect) self
interest.
Therefore:
There is nonetheless an esoteric, semantical, sense of 'determined' in which
premiss A is demonstrably true, and so a sense in which it is analytically
true that value rankings are semantically determined by the preference rankings
of situations by a class of valuers. The details of these semantical foundations
for values are set out in 131. But while premiss A can be corrected by replacing
'determined' by 'semantically determined' and giving this an appropriate construal,
such a move would do nothing to restore the intended argument:
for it would
either invalidate the argument, through change in the key middle term 'determined',
or, alternatively, if 'determined' is systematically replaced throughout the
argument, drastically alter the intended conclusion D - so that looking at the
interests that humans in fact have would no longer provide a guide to values
(instead the interests of hypothetical valuers with respect to worlds that never
exist or could exist would have to be gathered).
13.
DE.
Individual persons ^agents] always act in ways determined by self
interest [that reflect their own interests^.
Thereafter follows the slide from in their own interests^ to to their own
advantage, or for their own uses or purposes.
The final conclusion of egoism
again parallelling the class chauvinism case, is not only that the egoistic
position is perfectly in order and thoroughly rational but that there are no
alternatives, that there is, or at least ought to be, no other way of acting,
'that men can only choose to do what is in their own interests or that it is
only rational to do this'
([2], p. 140).
Thus human chauvinism, as based on the central argument, stands revealed
as a form of group selfishness, group egoism one might almost say.
Likewise
the criticisms of the Group Selfishness argument, as we shall now call the
central argument, parallel those of egoism, in particular premiss B (B )
succumbs to similar objections to those that defeat premiss BE (BE^).
Group
selfishness is no more acceptable than egoism, since it depends on exactly
the same set of confusions between values and advantages, and slides on such
terms as 'interests', as the arguments on which egoism rests.
Nowell-Smith's
very appealing critique of egoism ([2], p. 140-144) may, by simple paraphrase,
be converted into a critique of group selfishness.
recast B^ and BE"
*"
This is obvious once we
and set them side by side:
BE^. Individual value rankings are determined through (individual) self
interest;
and
B^.
Valuers'
[groups'] value rankings are determined through valuers'
(group) interests [joint interests of groups].
Because, however, one sets up or selects one's own preference or value
rankings, it does not follow that they are set up or selected in one's own
interests;
similarly in group cases, because a group determines its own
rankings, it does not follow that it determines them in its own interests.
Just as BE^ is, prima facie at least, refuted by a range of examples where
value, and also preference, rankings run counter to self-interest, e.g. cases
of altruism, so prima facie at least, B is refuted by examples where value, and
also overall preference rankings, vary from group interests, e.g. cases of
In the case
group altruism.
of limited groups examples are easy to locate,
e.g. resistance movements, environmental action groups, and so on;
case, however, of the larger human group
in the
are bound to be more controversial
(since B^ unlike BE^ is a live thesis), but are still easy to find, especially
if future humans are discounted, e.g. it is in humans' selfish interests to
have plentiful supplies of this and that, electricity from uranium, oil,
Me were
Sy/Z/ey
whalemeat, fish, etc., right now rather than^which would result from restraint,
but altruistic value rankings would rank the latter
above the former.
It is often in selfish human interests (no less selfish
because pertaining to a group) to open up and develop the wilderness, strip
mine the earth, exploit animals, and so on, but environmentalists who advocate
not doing so, in many cases not merely because of future humans, are apparently
acting not just out of their own or human group interests.
But, just as BE^ is not demolished by such counterexamples of apparently
altruistic action, neither is B :
in each case it can be made out that further
selfish interests are involved, e.g., in the case of B , that an agent did
what he did, an altruistic action, because he liked doing it.
As Nowell-Smith
explains in the egoism case, interest is written in as an internal accusative,
thereby rendering such theses as BE^ true at the cost, however, of trivialising
them.
More generally, valuing something gets written in as a further sort
of "interest";
whatever valuers value that does not seem to be in their
interests is said to provide a further interest, either the value itself or
an invented value surrogate; for example^the environmentalist who works to
retain a wilderness he never expects to see may be said to be so acting
because he has an interest in or derives benefit or advantage from just knowing
it exists, just as he would be in the egoist case.
theses can be retained;
By such strategies the
for then a valued item really is in valuers
interests,
in the extended sense, even if they are in obvious ways seriously inconvenienced
15.
by it, i.e. even if it is not in their interests in the customary sense.
',
*
Thus.BE'
like 4^', is preserved by stretching the elastic term 'interests',
in a way that it too readily admits, to include values, or value surrogates,
among interests.
Then however the conclusion of the &roup Selfishness
argument loses its intended force, and becomes the platitude that values
are determined through valuers' values , just as egoism, under the extension
a
which makes us all covert egoists,loses its sting and becomes,platitude.
It can be seen that human chauvinism in this form, like egoism, derives its
plausibility from vacillation in the sense of 'interests', with a resulting
fluctuation between a strong false thesis - the face of^chauvinism usually
presented - and a trivial analytic thesis,between paradox and platitude.-^ To
sum up the dilemma for the argument then:-
when 'interest' is used in its
weaker sense premiss B may be accepted but the argument does not establish
its intended conclusion or in any way support human chauvinism.
intended effect of the argument, in the crude form is this:
values it is enough to look at human advantage:
For the
in determining
nothing else counts.
If the
argument were correct, then one could assess values by checking out the local
(selfish) advantage of humans, or, more generally, the advantage of the base
class somehow assembled.
If, on the other hand,
'interest' is used in its
strong sense, the conclusion would lice^'hce a form of human chauvinism, but
premiss B now fails.
Most philosphers think they know how to discredit the egoist arguments.
It is curious indeed then, that an argument which is regarded as so unsatisfactory
in the individual case - that for egoism - remains unchallenged and is still
considered so convincing in a precisely parallel group case - that for human
chauvinism.
********
The technique of rescuing philosphical theses by natural extensions and
accompanying redefinitions of terms, including the thesis "We're all selfish
really", is delightfully explained in Wisdom [7], chapter 1.
16.
The Group Selfishness argument is often employed in another way, as the
presentation for a choice between the conclusion D, that value is determined by
or reducible to a matter of human interests, and the denial of premiss A, which
denial is seen as entailing a commitment to a detached,intrinsic or naturalistic
theory of value.
Thus, it may be said either one accepts the conclusion, with
its consequent instrumentalist account of value, or one is committed to an intrinsic
or detached value theory which takes values to be completely independent of valuers,
and no way determined by them.
But, it is assumed, the latter theory is well
known as untenable, and may even be seen as involving mysticism or as irrational
^e.g. by Passmore [9], chapter 7).
Thus it may be concluded, there is no real
coherent alternative to such an instrumental account of value, and hence no real
alternative to human chauvinism.
The form of the argument then, is essentially: *^A
v D, but A,therefore D,
or, if a stronger connection, of intensional disjunction, is intended:
but A, therefore D.
It can be seen that the main premiss, -A v D, has resulted
from the exportation and suppression of premisses B and C of the Group
argument.
^A,
Selfishness
This suppression does nothing to improve the standing of the premisses
although it does have the (possibly advantageous) effect of making it more difficult
to see the fallacious assumptions on which it is based.
For of course the choice
a false one, and for precisely the same reasons that led us
to say that premiss B was false.
To reject the instrumentalist
conclusion D is
by no means to be committed to ^A, or to the view that the valuer's and their
preference
rankings play no role in determining values and that values are a
further set of mysterious independent items in the world somehow perceived by
valuers through a special (even mystical and non—rational) moral sense.
Valuers'
;
*
preference rankings may be admitted to play an important role in evaluation
are still not committed to D unless we assume - what amounts to premiss B
these preference rankings reflect, or can be reduced to, valuers' interests.
* on page 16a
we
that
16a
Value rankings can be semantically analysed in terms of preference or
interest rankings, as in [3]; but this does not offer a reduction of
values to preferences or interests, as [8] explains.
The semantical
foundations, while conceding nothing to subjectivism or instrumentalism,
make it easy to concede main points of the case (attributed to Dewey)
against detached values, against the view that there are values somehow
out there (in Meinong's aussersein), purely naturalistic values completely
detached from all valuers, or from all preference rankings of valuers.
Put differently, there are no values that do not somehow answer back to
preference rankings of valuers, and so no values that are entirely
detached from valuers and valuational activity such as preference-ranking
of situations.
But the answering back is made explicit and precise by
the semantical analysis, not by any syntactical reduction or translation
of value statements into statements about valuers' preference or interest
rankings; and the valuers of the analysis are, like the situations
introduced, ideal and need in no way exist.
As a result then, valuations
may be independent of the aggregated preference rankings of all actual
humans or, for that matter, of all persons over all time.
Thus too the
semantical analysis makes it easy to navigate a course between the
alternatives of two influential false dichotomies, to the effect that
values are either instrumental or else detached, or that values are either
subjective or else detached.
For though a semantical analysis can be
given, upsetting the detached value thesis, no translation or syntactical
reduction of the sort subjectivism assumes is thereby effected.
17.
The dichotomy frequently presented between instrumentalist accounts of
value, on the one hand, and detached theories (or what are mistakenly taken
to be the same, intrinsic theories) is, for the same reason, a false one.
Instrumental theories are those which attempt to reduce value to what is
instrumental to^contribute$to a stated goal.
Typically such theories take
the goal to be the furtherance of the interest of a privileged class;
for
example the goal may be taken to be determined in terms of the interests,
concerns, advantage or welfare of the class of humans, or of persons, or of
sentient creatures, depending on the type of chauvinism.
In particular, human
chauvinist theories are, characteristically, instrumentalist theories.
In
contrast,an item is valued intrinsically where it is valued for its own sake,
and not merely as a means to something further;
and an intrinsic value theory
allows that some items are intrinsically valuable.
Intrinsic theories then,
instrumental
contrast with
Z.
theories, and what 'intrinsic' tells us is no more than
that the item taken as intrinsically valuable is not valued merely as a means to
some goal, i.e. is not merely instrumentally valued.
Accordingly detached value
theories, since disjoint from instrumental theories, are a subclass of intrinsic
value theories;
be detached:
and they are a proper subclass since intrinsic values need not
something may be valuable in itself without its value being
detached from all valuing experience.
It is evident, furthermore, that the
identification of intrinsic and detached value theories presupposed in the
argument is no more than a restatement of the false dichotomy -^A v D, or
^A,
The assumption
i.e. non-instrumental, therefore detached^that if preference or value rankings are
involved at all the resulting assignments must be instrumental is either false or
or is variation of the fallacious premiss B which plays a crucial role in the
Group Selfishness and Egoist arguments;
the variation is that if value or
preference rankings are involved they must reflect valuers' interests, therefore
such values are instrumental, because the items valued are valued according as
they reflect valuers interest, therefore according as they are a means to the
end of satisfying the valuers' interest.
It follows
that intrinsic value theories
18.
may allow for a third way between instrumental and detached theories, because
of the possibility of value rankings (and also preference rankings) which are
not themselves set up in a purely instrumentalist way, that is attributing value
to aiitem only according as it is a means to some goal.
The argument that there is no coherent alternative to instrumentalism does
not however rely just on misrepresenting alternative intrinsic accounts as
logically incoherent by assimilating them to detached accounts.
It also trades
on a contemporary insensitivity to the serious logical and epistemological problems
of instrumental accounts of value, problems which were well known to classical
philosophers (see e.g., Aristotle Metaphysics, 994b9-16)
It does not appear to
be widely realised that the classical arguments apply not just to a few especially
shaky instrumentalist theories which adopt questionable goals but
to instrumentalism
in general, since they assume only quite general features of the instrumentalist
position.
Instrumentalist positions take as valuable (or in the moral case, as creating
moral constraints) just what contributes to a stated end.
which comes to mind is utilitarianism.
An obvious example
However in the more general case we
are concerned with, of instrumentalist forms of human chauvinism, there may be a
set of goalnot just a single goal such as that of maximising net happiness of
humans;
the human chauvinist assumption is that the values (indeed constraints)
are goal-reducible, and that all goals reduce in some way to human goals, or at
least can be assessed in terms of human concerns and interests.
Human chauvinist
positions are not necessarily instrumental, but those that are not (e.g. the
position that just humans and nothing else
are intrinsically valuable) tend to
make the arbitrary chauvinistic nature of their assumptions unwisely explicit -
most successful contempory chauvinisms being covert ones.
Problems for instrumentalism arise (as Aristotle observed) when questions
are asked about the status of the goal itself.
Instrumentalism relies entirely
for its plausibility upon selecting a set of goats which are widely accepted and are, in
19.
It relies at bottom on an implicit
the theory, implicitly treated as valuable.
valuation which cannot itself be explained in purely instrumental terms. Of course
a value assumption is not eliminated on this fashion:
the general
consensus
it is merely hidden under
that such a goal is appropriate, that such an end is valuable.
But the strategy of successful instrumentalism is to avoid recognition of the fact
that the goal is, and indeed must be, implicitly treated as
valuable, by selecting
a set of goals so much part of the framework of comtemporary thought, so entrenched
and habitual 3s a valued item by humans that the value attached to the goal becomes
virtually invisible, at least to those
the framework.
Thus it is with the
assumption of human chauvinist instrumentalism that goals are exclusively
determinable in terms of human interest.
The basic, convincing
and self-evident
character of this assumption rests on nothing more than the shared beliefs of the
privileged class of humans concerning the paramount and exclusive importance of
their own interests and concerns, on a valuational assumption or goal which is
^'self-evident'" because it is advantageous and is habitual.
The consensus features,
of which instrumentalists make so much, are nothing more than the consensus of the
privileged class about the goal of maintaining
consensus of interests.
their own privilege, i.e. a
This sort of agreement of course shows very little about
the well-grountiness of the position.
Unless the goals set are widely accepted as valuable, the account will be
unconvincing to those who do not
share the goal and even to those who appreciate
that it is possible to reject the goal.
In order for instrumentalism to work
logically however, the goal must be implicitly treated within the theory as valuable,
for otherwise the proposed analysis loses explanatory and justificatory power
and lacks compulsion.
For how can the value of an item be explained and justified
in terms of its contribution to an end not itself considered valuable!
Serious
problems also arise about the nature of value statements under the instrumentalist
analysis unless the goal is treated as valuable.
For if the goals themselves are
not so treated within the theory, but are taken simply as unevaluated facts, then
a valuational statement 'x is valuable' becomes, under the proposed analysis,
20.
simply the statement that x tends to produce a certain result, to contribute to
certain human states, a statement whose logical status, openness to verification,
allowance for disagreement, and so on, does not substantially differ from that
statement that x tends to producejoxide, to contribute to the rusting of human
products.
Such an account of value statements is open to the same sort of
objections as other naturalistic reductions of value, for example, Mill's account
the desirable in terms of the desired.
of
The special logical and
epistemological character of value statements then, especially with respect to
verification and disagreement,must be supplied in instrumentalism, if it is to
be supplied at all, by the implicit treatment of the goal itself as valuable.
The fact that the goaL of an instrumental account must be taken as itself
valuable, gives rise to two choices.
In the first, the goal is taken as itself
instrumentally valuable, which creates an infinite regress.
For if the end,
reason or assignment for which other items are intrumentally valuable is itself
only instrumentally valuable then there must in turn be some other end, reason or
assignment
in terms of which it is valuable (by definition of instrumental).
A regress is thus begun, and if this regress is not to be viciously infinite, it
must terminate in some end or feature which is taken as valuable just in itself,
that is, with intrinsic values.
On the alternative option the goal is not taken to be instrumentally valuable
but is admitted to be valuable in some other way.
Unless an 'except' clause is
, so that all values are held to be
account
instrumental with the exception of the goal, the
will of course be contextually
added to the original instrumentalist
inconsistent, since it is inconsistent when contextually supplied assumptions are
added.
For these include the assuption that the goal itself is valuable, but not
in the way that the instrumentalist thesis claims is the only way possible.
the goal is taken to be both valuable and not valuable.
If, on the other hand, an'except^ clause is added, this amounts to an
admission that the goal is taken to be non-instrumentally valuable.
Thus the
account may be able to retain consistency, but does so at the expense of
Thus
21
explicitly admitting a value, that of the goal, which cannot be accounted for in
purely instrumental terms, in short, that the gcdl is taken as intrinsically
valuable.
To sum up, the dilemma for the instrumentalist can be put as follows:
Consider the desirability of the goal of the instrumental theory: it must
implicitly be judged to be desirable, for otherwise nothing could be justified
by reduction to it.
or not?
Ask:
Is this goal also instrumentally desirable (valuable)
If it is, i.e. it is only desirable as a means to a further goal,
then either a regress is initiated or the same issue arises with respect to
the new goal.
But if it is not, then the instrumental theory is again refuted,
since the goal is desirable though not desirable according to the test of the
theory because it is not instrumental to the goal.
Whichever ho rn of the dilemma is taken^ then> the outcome is the same:
the instrumentalist must rely on treating the goal itself as implicitly valuable
in a way not purely instrumental, that is, as intrinsically valuable.
Thus the
instrumentalist is, at bottom, guilty of precisely the same crime of which he
accuses the adherent of a intrinsic account, with the added delinquency of failing
to admit and face up to his basic assumptions.
The logical and epistemological
position of such an instrumental account is certainly no better than that of an
intrinsic account, since there is logically no difference between the recognition
of one intrinsic value (or one set in the case where gcals are multiple) and the
recognition of many of them, ancf^lxtgical and epistemological status of the
instrumentalist's account is no better than that of the goal to which his values
are taken as instrumental.
Since the instrumentalist has implicitly admitted
the legitimacy of an intrinsic value assignment in setting up his account, he
cannot claim any superiority over a more general intrinsic theory which allows for
many intrinsic values, since what is legitimate in the case of one value assignment
must be equally legitimate in the multiple case.
22,
This abstract dilemma for human chauvinist instrumentalism is illustrated
in a concrete case by Passmore's procedure in [9];
for Passmore (1) wishes to
say that there is no coherent alternative to instrumental values, that an item
is valuable insofar as it serves human interest, and (2) wants to explain the
unique value attributed to humans in terms of their production of valuable
civilised and cultural
But (2) involves the admission of values, that
items.
of civilised items, which cannot be valuable in the way (1) states, and indeed
(2) amounts to the admission of non-instrumental values.
The proposed account is
inconsistent because if intrinsic values are admissible in the case of civilised
items, they cannot be logically ^oherent in the way (1) claims.
The sort of problem faced by Passmore is however not a readily avoidable
one for the instrumentalist;
for if the charge of arbitary and unjustifiable
human chauvinism is to be avoided by those who opt for (1), and humans are not
themselves to be awarded intrinsic values,, thus conceding the logical legitimacy
of intrinsic values generally, and hence the avoidability of human chauvinist
accounts of value, some explanation must be provided for the exclusive value
attributed to humans.
But only explanation capable of justifying this valuation
in a non-arbitray and non-chauvinistic way would have to refer to properties of
humans, and would have to say something like:
'Humans are uniquely valuable because
they alone have valuable properties x,y,z,... or produce valuable items A, B, C...'.
distinguishing
The list of proposed
features already considered on page 8 are usually
those that will be employed here.
But this is to admit intrinsic value for the
properties which explain the exclusive value of humans.
The dilemma
for the human chauvinist is that he must either take the exclusive human value
assumption (the goal) as ultimate—laying him open to the charge of arbitrary
chauvinism and of attributing intrinsic values to humans-or attempt to explain it*
in which case he will again end by concedingly non-instrumental values.
Thus the case for the inevitability of human chauvinism, that alternatives to
it must be based on an incoherent and logically and epistemically defective account
of values, namely a non-instrumental account, has not been established by these
arguments.
&
*
&&&&
**
**&
23.
Egoism, not group selfishness, is one of the assumptions underlying the next
The leading ideas of the representative
series of abstract defences of chauvinism.
argument we first consider are essentially those of social contract theories.
This
argument takes the following form (the bracketed paramaeters X and Z are filled out
in the representative argument respectively by:
and:
J.
justification of moral principles,
enter into contracts):
The only justification of moral principles [only X] is a contractual one, i.e.
the entry into contracts of agents [Zry].
K.
Agents only enter into contracts [only Z] if it serves their own interests.
(The
egoist assumption)
L.
Humans [persons] are the only agents that enter into contracts [that Z].
Therefore, by K and L,
M.
Humans [persons] only enter into contracts [only Z] if it serves their own interests
Therefore, from J and M,
N.
The only justification for moral principles [only X] is the (selfish) interests
of humans [persons].
*
The argument can be varied by different choices of parameters, X and Z.
example, X could be filled out by
replaced by 'community-based'
For
'determination of value judgments', and 'contractual'
(i.e. Z is filled out by 'are community-based' or some
such) yielding in place of J the familiar premiss that the only justification of
value judgments is a community-based one, and leading to a conclusion, analytically
linked to D above, that all value judgments
are determined by human self-interest.
Alternatively just one of X or Z may be so replaced, leaving the other as in the
original
example .
Another variation of the argument that has figured prominently
in the discussion of animal rights fills out X and Z respectively by 'determination
of rights' and 'belong to human society'.
Under this assignment the parametric premiss
The logical transitions in the argument take on more evidently valid form upon
analytic transformation of the premisses, to those now illustrated:J'. All justifications of moral principles are cases of (justified by) the entry
into contracts of agents.
K'. All cases of the entry into contracts are cases of self-interests of agents.
And so on for L' through M'.
24.
J becomes essentially that commonly adopted (e.g. [4] and [5] again), but already
criticised above, that 'rights are determined solely by reference to human society'.
As the arguments are in each case valid, the issue of the correctness of the
conclusions devolves on that of the correctness of the premisses.
In each case too
the arguments could be made rather more plausible by replacing 'humans' by 'persons'
(and correspondingly 'human society' by 'society of persons', etc.);
for otherwise
premisses such as L and its variations are suspect, since there is nothing, legally or
morally, to prevent consortia, organisations and other non-humans from entering into
contracts (and these items are appropriately counted as persons in the larger legal
sense).
Given that that amendment deals with premiss L, the correctness of the
arguments turns on the correctness of premisses J and K.
But both these premisses are
false, and premiss J imports the very chauvinism that is at issue in the conclusion.
Though
the representative contract argument is only one of several important
variations that can be made on the general parametric argument, it is often regarded
as having special appeal, because the contract model appears to explain the origin of
obligation, and offer a justification for it, in a way that no other model does, and
thus to provide a bulwark against moral, and political, scepticism.
That the
appearance is illusory, because the obligation to honour contracts is assumed at bottom,
is well enough known and not our concern here.
What is of concern is the correctness of
representative premisses J and K.
The egoist assumption K is faulted on the same grounds as egoism itself.
For
agents sometimes enter into contracts that are not in their own interests but are in
the interests of other persons or creatures, or are undertaken on behalf of, for
instance to protect, other items that do not have interests at all, e.g. rivers,
buildings, forests.
The attempt to represent all these undertakings as in human
interests, because done in the "selfish interests" of the agents is the same as in the
egoist arguments, and the resolution of the problem is the same, namely to distinguish
acting, valuing, and so on, clearly from acting in one's own selfish (or in group)
interests.
However even if premiss K were amended to admit that agents may enter into
25.
contracts on behalf of non-human items, it would still result in a form of human
chauvinism given familiar assumptions, since non—human items will still be unable to
create moral obligations except through a human sponsor or patron, who will, presumably,
be able to choose whether or not to protect them.
Natural items will generate no moral
constraints unless humans freely choose to allow them to do so;
since the obligatory
features of moral obligation thus disappear, no genuine moral obligations can be
created by natural items under such an amended account.
Thus the amended premiss
assumes the question at issue.
Premiss J, the view that moral
obligations are generated solely by contracts
undertaken by moral agents, is then the crucial assumption for this argument for human
chauvinism.
J however has serious difficulties, for there are many recognised moral
principles which apparently cannot be explained as contractually based, at least if
"contract" is to be taken seriously.
There is no actual contract underlying the
principle that one ought not to be cruel to animals, children and others not in a
position to contract.
Adherents of a social contract view of moral obligation are of
course inclined to withhold recognition of those moral principles that cannot be con
tractually based, so that the contract thesis becomes not so much explanatory as pre
scriptive.
But even allowing for this, the thesis has many unacceptable consequences
just concerning humans, and if the notion of contract plays a serious role, it is
difficult to reconcile with the view of all humans a possessing rights.
A crucial feature of contracts is that they are freely undertaken by responsible
parties.
If they can be freely undertaken there must be a choice with respect to them
the choice of not so contracting.
But then we are left
with the conclusion that it is
permissible to treat those who do choose not to contract as mere instruments of those
who do, in the way that the non-human world is presently treated;
these contractual
dropouts, like those outside society, can have no rights and there can be no moral
constraints on behaviour concerning them,whatever their capacity for suffering.
A
similar conclusion emerges if humans who are not morally responsible are considered,
for although we are normally considered to have quite substantial obligations to such
26.
humans, e.g. babies, young children, those who are considered mentally ill or as
having diminished responsibility, they cannot themselves be free and responsible
parties to a contract, and will, on the social contract view, presumably have to
depend for their rights on others freely choosing to contract on their behalf.
If^this
does not^for some reason^) occur we will be left with a similarly unacceptable con-
elusion as in the case of the contractual dropouts.
Obviously then, moral obligations
do not require morally equal, freehand responsible contracting parties, in the way
the social contract account presupposes.
Worse, the argument would appear, with but
little adaptation, to justify the practices of such groups as death squads, multi
rr
nationals, and the Mafia, it!
If these unacceptable conclusions are to be avoided, all humans will have to be
somehow, in virtue of simply being human, subject to some mysterious, fictional,
social contract which they did not freely choose to enter into, cannot get out of, and
which can never exclude any member of the human species.
So the unacceptable con-
sequences are avoided only if crucial features of the notion of contract such as
freedom and responsibility are dropped, and the notion^and premiss J so seriously
weakened as to become virtually without conditions.
For the argument to work the
residue has to be mere common humanity, and the "contract" little more than the
convention of morally considering just other members of the human species.
convention differs little
however from a restatement of human chauvinism;
Such a
the pro
ferred explanation is really no explanation, for such a convention can neither justify
human chauvinism nor, since different conventions could be arranged, explain why it is
inevitable.
The social contract account of moral obligation is defective because it implies
that moral obligations can really only hold between responsible moral agents, and
attempts to account for all moral obligation as based on contract.
But of course the
account is correct as an account of the origin of some types of moral obligation;
there are moral obligations of a type that can only hold between free and responsible
agents, and others which only apply within a social and political context.
Yet other
types of obligation, such as the obligation not to cause suffering, can arise only with
respect to sentient or preference-having creatures -
who are not necessarily morally
27.
responsible — and could not significantly arise with respect to a non—sentient item
such as a tree or a rock.
What emerges is a picture of types of moral obligation
as associated with a nest of rings or annular boundary classes, with the innermost
class, consisting of highjyintelligent, social, sentient creatures, having the full range
of moral obligations applicable to them, and outer classes^ such non—sentient items as
rocks having only a much more restricted range of moral obliga
trees and
tions significantly applicable to them.
between the rings.
In some cases there is no sharp division
But there is no single uniform privileged class of items, no one
base class, to which all and only moral principles directly apply, and moreover the
zoological class of humans is not one of the really significant boundary classes.
The
recognition that some types of moral obligation can only apply within the context of
a particular sort of society or through contract does nothing to support the case of
human chauvinism.
The failure of the contract theory nevertheless leaves the issue as to whether
there is some logical or categorial restriction on what can be the object of moral
obligations, which would reinstate human chauvinism or animal chauvinism.
There is
however no such restriction on the object place of the obligation relation to humans
or sentient creatures.
Even if the special locution 'Y has an obligation towards X'
requires that X is at least a preference-having creature, there are other locutions
which are not so restricted, and
one can perfectly well speak of having duties toward
land and of having obligations concerning or with respect to such items as mountains
and rivers, and without necessarily implying that such moral constraints arise only in
an indirect fashion.
Thus neither natural language nor the logic of moral concepts
rules out the possibility of non-sentient items creating direct moral constraints.
There is then, given this point and the annular model, no need to opt for the
position of Leopold [12] as the only alternative to human (or animal) chauvinism, that
is for a position which simply transfers to natural items the full set of rights and
obligations applicable to humans, leading to such non-significance as that rocks have
obligations to mountains.
Distinctions between the moral constraints appropriate to
different types of items can be recognised without leading back to human chauvinism.
The point is an important one since many objections to allowing moral obligations to
28.
extend beyond the sphere of humans, or in some cases the sphere of sentient creatures,
depend on ignoring such distinctions, on assuming that it is a question of transferring
the full set of rights and obligations appropriate to intelligent social creatures to
such items as trees and rivers - that the alternative to chauvinism is therefore an
irrational and mystical animism concerning nature (cf. Passmore [9], p. 187 ff.).
*****
*
*
The ecological restatement of the strong version of human chauvinism, according
to which items outside the privileged human class have zero intrinsic value, is the
Dominion thesis,
the view that the earth and all its non-human contents exist or are
available for man's benefit and to serve his interests, and hence that man is entitled
to manipulate the world and its systems as he wants, that is^ in his interests.
The
thesis indeed follows, given fairly uncontroversial, analytic, assumptions, from the
conclusions of the main chauvinistic arguments examined, notably D, that values are
determined through human interests.
The earth and all its non-human contents thus
have no intrinsic value, at best instrumental value, and so can create no direct moral
constraints on human action.
For what has only instrumental value is already written
down, in this framework, as serving human interests.
And since what has no instru
mental value cannot be abused or have its value diminished, it is permissible for
humans to treat it as they will in accord with their interests.
thesis.
Ergo the Dominion
Conversely, if non-human items are available for man's use, interests and
benefits, they can have no value except insofar as they answer his interests.
Other
wise there would be restrictions on his behaviour with respect to them, since not any
sort of behaviour is permissible as regards independently valuable items.
value is determined through man's interests, i.e. D holds.
is strictly equivalent to D.
implies human chauvinism.
Accordingly
Thus the Dominion thesis
It follows that the Dominion thesis, like D, strictly
Conversely, the strong version of human chauvinism strictly
implies D, and so the Dominion thesis, completing the sketch of the equivalence
argument.
Since the positions are equivalent what counts against one also counts
against the others.
In particular, then, the Dominion thesis is no more inevitable
This view encompasses what Passmore [9] has isolated as the Western environmental
ideologies, both the dominant view and the lesser traditions: see [10].
29.
than, and just as unsatisfactory as, strong human chauvinism.
The upshot is that the dominant ethical systems of our times, those clustered
as the western ethic, and other kindred human chauvinistic systems, are far less
defensible, and less satisfactory, than has been commonly assumed, and lack an
adequate, and non-arbitrary, basis.
Furthermore alternative theories are far less
incoherent than is commonly claimed, especially by philosophers.
are viable alternatives to the Dominion thesis,
Yet although there
the natural world is rapidly being
preempted in favour of human chauvinism - and of what it ideologically underwrites,
the modern economic-industrial superstructure - by the elimination or over-exploitation
of those things that are not considered of sufficient instrumental value for human
beings.
Witness the
of the non-human world, the assaults being made on
tropical rainforests, surviving temperate wildernesses, wild animals, the oceans, to
list only a few of the victims of man's assault on the natural world.
Observe also
the associated measures to bring primitive or recalcitrant peoples into the Western
consumer society and the spread of human chauvinist value systems.
The time is fast
approaching when questions raised by an environmental ethic will cease to involve live
options.
As things stand at present however, the ethical issues generated by the
preemptions - especially given the weakness and inadequacy of the ideological and
value—theoretical basis on which the damaging chauvinistic transformation of the
world is premissed, and the viability of alternative environmental ethics - are not
merely of theoretical interest, but are among the most important and urgent questions
of our times,
perhaps, that
human beings, whose individual or group self-interest
is the source of most environmental problems, have ever asked themselves.
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain
Braidwood
Australia 2622
References
[1]
R. and V. Routley, 'Human chauvinism and environmental ethics', mimeographed,
privately circulated, 1974.
[2]
P.H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics, Penguin, London, 1954.
[3]
R. and V. Routley, 'Semantical foundations for value theory', Nous (forthcoming)
[4]
D.G. Ritchie, Natural Rights, Allen and Unwin, London, 1894.
[5]
J. Passmore, 'The treatment of animals', Journal of the History of Ideas, _36
(1975), 195-218.
[6]
T. Regan and P. Singer (editors), Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Prentice-
Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976.
[7]
J. Wisdom, Other Minds, Blackwell, Oxford, 1952.
[8]
R. Routley, 'The semantical metamorphosis of metaphysics', Australasian Journal
of Philosophy^5A (1976),157.
[9]
[10]
J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London, 1974.
V. Routley, Critical Notice of [9], Australasian Journal of Philosophy 53. (1975)
171-185.
[11]
H.J. McCloskey, 'Rights', Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (1965), 115-127.
[12]
A. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, with other essays on conservation from Round
River, Ballantine, New York, 1966.
[13]
K. Baier and N. Rescher (editors), Values and the Future, the impact of techno
logical change on American values, The Free Press, New York, 1969.
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Typescript of draft, with handwritten emendations and corrections with whiteout, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1979) 'Against the inevitability of human chauvinism' in Goodpaster KE and Sayre KM (eds), Ethics and the problems of the 21st century, Notre Dame University Press.
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Richa rd and Val Rout ley
1.
NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS 1
One hardl y needs initi ation into the dark myst eries
of
nucle ar phys ics to cont ribut e usefu lly to the deba
te now
wide ly ragin g over nucle ar powe r. While many impo
rtant
empi rical ques tions are still unres olved , these do
not
reall y lie at the centr e of the contr over sy. Inste
ad,
it is a deba te abou t value s .•.
many of the ques tions which arise are socia l and
ethic al
ones .2
I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.
A long dista nce coun try
trai n has just pulle d out. The train which is crowd
ed carri es both
passe ngers and freig ht. At an early stop in the
journ ey someone consi gns as
fr e ight, to a far dista nt desti natio n, a packa ge
which conta ins a highl y
toxic an d explo sive gas. This is packe d in a very
thin conta iner which , as
t he consi gner is awar e, may well not conta in the
gas for the full dista nce
f or whi ch it is consi gned , and certa inly will not
do so if the train shou ld
s t r i ke any real troub le, for exam ple, if the train
shou ld be dera iled or
i nvo l ved in a colli sion , or if some passe nger sh:>u
ld inter fere inad verte ntly
or de liber ately with the freig ht, perha ps tryin g
to stea l some of it. All
o f these sorts of thing s have happe ned on some previ
ous journ eys~ If the
co ntain er shoul d break the resu lting disa ster would
proba bly kill at least
some of the peop le on the train in adjac ent carri
ages , while othe rs could
be maimed ~or poiso ned or soon er or later incur serio
us disea ses.
Most of us would round ly condemn such an actio n.
What migh t the cons igner
of the parc el say to try to justi fy it? He migh
t say that it is not certa in
that the gas will escap e, or that the world needs
his prod uct and it is his
duty to supp ly it, or that in any case he is not
respo nsibl e for the train
or the peop le on it. These sorts of ~xcu ses howe
ver would norm ally be seen
as ludic rous when set in this conte xt. Unfo rtuna
tely, simi lar excu ses are
o ;,...:'. ~ f'\ o t- s "
99• ole~~ seen when the cons igner , again a
(resp onsib le) busin essm an.pu ts his
wor kers' healt h or other peop les' welf are at risk.
Suppo se he says that it is his own and othe rapr essin
g needs which justi fy
his actio n. The company he cont rols, which produ
ces the mate rial as a by-p rodu ct,
i s in bad finan cial stra its, and could not affor d
to produ ce a bette r cont ainer
even if it knew how to make one. If the company
fails , he and his famil y
wi ll suffe r, his empl oyees will lose their jobs and
have to look for othe rs,
aP.d the whole company town, throu gh loss of spend
ing, will be worse off. The
poor and unem ploye d of the town, whom he would other
wise have been able to help ,
will suffe r espe ciall y. Few peop le would acce pt
such groun da as justi ficat ion.
�Even where there are serio us risks and costs to ones
elf or some group for whom
one is conce rned one is usua lly cons idere d not to
be entit led to simp ly
trans fer the heavy burde n of those risks and costs
onto othe r uninv olved parti es,
espe ciall y where they arise from one's own, or one's
grou p's chose n life- style .
The matte r of nucle ar waste has many mora l featu res
which resem ble the
train case. How fitti ng the analo gy is will becom
e appa rent as the argum ent
prog resse s. There is no known prove n safe way to
packa ge the high ly toxic
waste s gene rated by the nucle ar plan ts that will
be sprea d aroun d the world as
large -scal e nucle ar devel opme nt goes ahead .
The waste probl em will be much
more serio us than that gene rated by the 50 or so
react ors in use at prese nt,
with each one of the 2000 or so react ors envis aged
by the end of the centu ry
produ cing, on avera ge, annu al waste s conta ining 1000
times the radio activ ity
of the Hiros hima bomb. Much of this waste is extre
mely toxic . For exam ple,
a milli onth of a gramme of pluto nium is enoug h to
induc e a lung canc er. A leak
of even a part of the waste mate rial could invol ve
much loss of life, wide sprea d
disea se and gene tic dama ge, and conta mina tion of
innnense areas of land. Wast es
will inclu de the react ors them selve s, which will
have to be aband oned after their
expe cted life times of perha ps 40 year s, and whic
h, some have estim ated, may
requ ire U~ milli on y~ars to reach safe leve ls of
radio activ ity.
Nucl ear waste s must be kept suita bly isola ted from
the envir onme nt for
their entir e activ e lifet ime. For fissi on prod ucts
the requ ired stora ge perio d
avera ges a thous and years or so, and for trans uran
ic elem ents, which inclu de .
pluto nium, there is a half milli on to a milli on year
stora ge probl em. Serio us
probl ems have arise n with both shor t-term and propo
sed long- term metho ds of
stora ge , even with the comp arativ ely ~mal l quan tities
of waste produ ced over
th last twent y years . Shor t-term metho ds
of stora ge requ ire conti nued human
inter vent ion, while propo sed longe r term metho ds
are subje ct to both human inter feren ce and risk of leaka ge throu gh non-human facto
rs.
No one with even a sligh t know ledge of
the geolo gical and clim atic histo ry
of the earth over the last milli on year s, a perio
d whose fluct uatio ns in clim ate
we are only just begin ning to guage and which has
seen four Ice Ages , could be
confi dent that a rigor ous guara ntee of safe stora
ge could be provi ded for
the vast perio d of time invol ved. Nor does the histo
ry of human affa irs over the
last 3000 years give groun d for confi denc e in safe
stora ge by metho ds requ iring
human inter vent ion over perha ps a milli on year s.
Propo sed long- term stora ge meth ods
such as stora ge in gran ite form ation s or in salt
mine s, are large ly spec ulati ve
and relat ively unte sted, and have alrea dy prove d
to invol ve diffi culti es with
attem pts made to put them into prac tice. Even as
regar ds expe nsive recen t
prop osals for first embe dding conc entra ted wast es
in glass and enca psula ting the
resu lt in mult ilaye red meta l conta iner• befor e rock
depo sit, aimu latio n mode l•
,
�J,
3.
revea l that radio activ e mate rial may not remai n suita bly
isola ted from human
envir onm ents. - In short , the best prese nt stora ge propo
sals carry very real
poss ibilit ies of irrad iatin g futur e peopl e and damaging
their enviro nmen t. 3
Given the heavy costs which could be invol ved for the
futur e, and given
the known limit s of techn ology , it is metho dolog ically unsou
nd to bet, as
nucle ar natio ns have, on the disco very of safe proce dures
for stora ge of waste s.
Any new proce dures (requ ired befor e 2000) will proba bly
be but varia tions on
not. only have
prese nt propo sals, and subje ct to the same inade quaci_e s.
For insta nce,/ none
of the propo sed metho ds for safe stor age~ been prope
rly teste d, but they
may well prove to invol ve unfor eseen diffi culti es and risks
when an attem pt is
made to put them into pract ice on a comm ercial scale .
Only a method that
could provi de a rigor ous guara ntee of safet y over the stora
ge perio d, that
place d safet y beyond reaso nable doubt , would be accep table
. It is diffi cult
to see how -such rigor ous guara ntees could be given conce
rning eithe r the
geolo gical or futur e human facto rs. But even if an econo
mical ly viabl e,
rigor ously safe long term stora ge met~ d could be devis ed,
there is the proble m
of guara nteein g that it would be unive rsally and invar iably
used. The
assum ption that it would be (espe cially if, as appea rs
likel y, such a method
prove d expen sive econo mical ly and polit icall y) seems to
presu ppose a level of
effic iency , perfe ction , and conce rn for the futur e which
has not previ ously
been encou ntered in human affai rs, and has certa inly not
been consp icuou s in
the nucle ar indus try.
The risks imposed on the futur e by proce eding with nucle
ar devel opme nt are,
then, signi fican t. Perha ps 40,00 0 gener ation s of futur e
peopl e could be force d
to bear signi fican t risks resul ting from the provi sion
of the (extra vagan t)
energ y use of only a small propo rtion of the peopl e of
10 gener ation s.
Nor is the risk of direc t harm from the escap e or misus
e of radio activ e
mate rials the only burde n the nucle ar solut ion impos es
on the futur e. Becau se
the energ y provi ded by nucle ar fissio n is merel y a etop
gap, it seems proba ble
that in due cours e the same proble m, that of making a trans
ition to renew able
sourc es of energ y, will have to be faced again by a futur
e popu lation which will
proba bly, again as a resul t of our actio ns, be very much
worse place d to cope
with it.
Their world will most likel y be a world which is serio usly
deple ted
of non-r enewa ble resou rces, and in which such renew able
resou rces as fores ts
and soils as remai n, resou rces which inevi tably form an
impo rtant part of the
basis of life, are run-down or destr oyed. Such point s
tell again st the idea
that futur e peopl e must be, if not direc t bene ficiar ies
of energ y from nucle ar
fissio n, at least indir ect bene ficiar ies.
�(
The "solu tion" then is to buy time for conte mpora ry socie
ty at a price
.which not only creat es serio us proble ms for futur e peopl
e but which reduc es
their abili ty to cope with these probl ems. Like the consi
gner in the train
parab le, conte mpora ry indus trial socie ty propo ses, in order
to get itsel f out
of a mess arisin g from its own life- style - the creat ion
of econo mies
depen dent on an abund ance of non-r emwa ble energ y, which
is limit ed in suppl y to pass on costs and risks of serio us harm to other s who
will obtai n no
corre spond ing bene fits. The "solu tion" may enabl e the
avoid ance of some
uncom fortab le chang es in the lifeti me of those now livin
g and their imme diate
desce ndant s, just as the consi gner• • actio n avoid s uncom
foriab le chang es for
him and those in his imme diate surro undin gs, but at the
expen se of passi ng
heavy burde ns to other uninv olved parti es whose oppo rtunit
y to lead decen t
lives may be serio usly jeopa rdise d.
If we apply to the nucle ar situa tion the stand ards of behav
iour and moral
princ iples gener ally ackno wledg ed (in princ iple, if not
so often in fact) in
the ·conte mpora ry world , it is not easy to avoid the concl
usion that nucle ar
devel opme nt invol ves injus tice with respe ct to the futur
e on a grand scale .
There appea r to be only two plaus ible ways of tryin g to
avoid such a concl usion .
First , it might be argue d that the moral princ iples and
oblig ation s which we
ackno wledg e for the conte mpora ry world and perha ps the
imme diate futur e do not
apply to those in the non-im media te futur e. Secon dly,
an attem pt might be
made to appea l to overr iding circu mstan ces; for to rejec
t the consi gner' s
actio n in the circum stanc es outlin ed is not to imply that
there are no
circum stanc es in which such an actio n might be justi fiabl
e. As in the case
of the consi gner .of the packa ge there is a need to consi
der what these
justif ying circum stanc es might be, and wheth er they apply
in the prese nt case.
We consi der these possi ble escap e route s for the propo
nent of nucle ar
develo pmen t in turn.
l
II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
./
I
I
The espec ially probl emati c area
is that of the dista nt (i.e. non-im media te) futur e, the
futur e with which
peopl e alive today will have no direc t conta ct; by comp
arison , the imme diate
futur e gives fewer proble ms for most ethic al theor ies.
In fact the quest ion
of oblig ation s to futur e peopl e prese nts tests which a
number of ethic al theor ies
fail to pass, and also has serio us reper cussi ons in polit
ical philo sophy as
regar ds the adequ acy of accep ted (demo cratic and other )
insti tutio ns which do
not take due accou nt of the inter est• of futur e creat ures.
\ r
�Moral phil osop hers have , pred icta bly, diff
ered on ques tion s of obli gati ons
to dist ant futu re crea ture s. A good many
of the phil osop hers who have exp lici tly
cons ider ed the ques tion have come down in
favo ur of the same cons ider atio n
bein g give n to the righ ts and inte rest s of
futu re peop le as to thos e of
cont emp orary or imm edia tely futu re peop le.
Othe rs fall into thre e cate gori es:
thos e who ackn owle dge obli gati ons to the futu
re but who do not take them
seri ousl y or who assi gn them a less er weig
ht, thos e who deny , or who are
com mitte d by thei r gene ral mora l posi tion
to deny ing, that ther e are mor al
obli gati ons beyond the imm edia te futu re, and
thos e who come down, with
adm irab le phil osop hica l caut ion, on both side
s of the issu e, but with the
weig ht of the argu men t favo urin g the view
unde rlyin g prev ailin g economic
and poli tica l inst itut ions , that ther e are
no mora l obli gati ons to the futu re
beyond thos e perh aps to the next gene ratio
n.
Acco rdin g to the most extre me of thes e posi
tion s agai nst mora l obli gati ons to
the futu re, our beha viou r with resp ect to
the futu re is mor ally unco nstra ined ~
ther e are no mora l rest rict ions on acti ng
or fail ing to act deri ving from the
effe ct of our acti ons on futu re peop le. Of
thos e phil osop hers who say, or whose
view s impl y that we do not have obli gati ons
to the (non -imm edia te) futu re, many
have base d this view on acco unts of mora l
obli gati on which are buil t on
rela tion s which pres uppo se some degr ee of
temp oral or spa tial con tigu ity. Thus ,
mora l obli gati on is seen as pres uppo sing vari
ous rela tion s whic h coul d not hold
betw een peop le wide ly sepa rate d in time (or
some time s in spac e). Let us call
the posi tion that we have no obli gati ons to
(dis tant ) futu re peop le the Nocon stra ints posi tion .
Among sugg este d base s or grou nds of mora l
obli gati on for the pos itio n,
which would rule out obli gati ons to the nonimm edia te futu re, are thes e.
Firs tly. ther e are thos e acco unts whic h requ
ire that someone to whom a mora l
obli gati on is held be able to claim his righ
ts or enti tlem ent. Peop le in the
dist ant futu re will not be able to claim righ
ts and enti tlem ents agai nst us,
and of cour se they can do noth ing to enfo rce
any claim s they migh t have
agai nst us. Seco ndly , ther e are thos e acco
unts whic h base mora l obli gati ons
on soci al or lega l conv enti on, for exam ple
a conv entio n whic h would requ ire
puni shm ent of offe nder s or at leas t some kind
of soci al enfo rcem ent. But
plai nly thes e and othe r conv entio ns will not
be inva rian t over chan ge in soci ety
and amendment of lega l conv enti ons; henc e
they will not be inva rian t over time .
Also futu re peop le have no way of enforcin
& thei r inte rest s or puni shin g
off~ ndin g pred eces aora .
\
I
i
_L
�The No-cons traints view is a very difficu lt one to sustain . Conside r, for
example , a scienti fic group which, for no particu lar reason other than to test a
particu lar piece of technolo gy, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a
triggeri ng device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its
despatch .
No present ly living person and none of their immedia te descend ants
would be affected , but the populat ion of the earth in the distant future would
be wiped out as a direct and predicta ble result of the action. The ·Ho-con straints
position clearly implies that this is an accepta ble moral enterpr ise, that
whateve r else we might legitim ately criticiz e in the scienti sts' experim ent
(perhaps its being over-ex pensive or badly designed ) we cannot lodge a moral
protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-cons traints
position also endorse s as morally accepta ble the followin g sorts of policy: I
A firm discove rs it can make a handsome profit from mining, process ing and
manufac turing a new type of materia l which, although it ca~ses no problem for
present people or their immedia te descend ants, will over a period of hundred s
of years decay into a substan ce which will cause an enormous epidemi c of cancer
among the inhabita nts of the earth at that time. Accordi ng to the Ko-con straints
view the firm is free to act in its own interes ts, without any conside ration
for the harm it does remote future people.
Such countere xamples to the NQ-con straints position , which are easily
varied and multipl ied, might seem childlis hly obvious . Yet this view is far
from being a straw man; not only have several philosop hers endorsed this
position , but it is a clear implica tion of many current ly popular views of the
basis of moral obligat ion, as ~eli as of prevaili ng economic theory. It seems
that those who opt for the No-con straints position have not conside red such
example s, despite their being clearly implied by their position . We suspect
that {we certain ly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits
such countere xamples , that without any constra ints we are free to cause
pointles s harm for example , most of those who opted for this position would
want to assert that it was not what they intended . What many of those who have
put forward the No-con straints posit ion~ to have had in mind (in denying
moral obligat ion) is rather that future people can look after themsel ves, that
we are not respons ible for their lives. The popular view that the future can
take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally indepen dent of the
present . But it is not. It is not as if, in the countere xample cases or in
the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself.
Present people are influenc ing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of
the same sorts of moral respons ibilitie s as they do in causally affectin g the
present and immediate future, a.oat notably the obligat ion to take account in
�7.
'what they do of peop le affec ted and their inter ests,
to be care ful in their
ac tions , to take accou nt of the genu ine prob abili ty
of their actio ns causi ng
harm, and to sec that they do not act so as to rob
futur e peop le of the chnnc c
of a good life.
Furth ermo re, to say that we are not resp !~ibl e for
the lives of futur e
peop le does not amount to the same thing as sayin g
that we are free to do as we
like with respe ct to them. In just the same way,
the fact that one does not
have or has not acqu ired an oblig ation to some stran
ger with whom one has neve r
been invol ved does not imply that one is free to do
what one likes with respe ct
to him, for example to rob him or to serio usly harm
him when this could be
avoid ed.
V
These diffi culti es for the No-c onstr aints posi tion
resu lt in part
becau se of a failu re to make an impo rtant disti nctio
n. Some of our
oblig ation s to othe rs arise becau se we have volu ntari
ly enter ed into some
a greem ent with them - for exam ple, we have made a
prom ise. Othe r oblig ation s,
howe ver, such as our duty not to damage or harm some
one, do not assume that
an agree ment has been struc k betwe en us. Let us call
oblig ation s of the
f ormer kind acqu ired oblig ation s and those of the
latte r unac quire d oblig ation s.
There is a cons idera ble diffe renc e in the type of
resp onsi bilit y asso ciate d with
each. In the case of acqu ired oblig ation s resp onsi
bilit y arise s becau se one
s hould do some thing which one can fail to do, e.g.
keep a prom ise. In the
case of unac quire d dutie s resp onsi bilit y arise s as
a resu lt of being a caus al
ag ent who is aware of the conse quen ces or prob able
conse quen ces of his actio n,
a resp onsi bilit y that is not depen dent on one's havin
g perfo rmed some act in
the past (e.g. , made a prom ise).
Our oblig ation s to futur e peop le clear ly
are ,una cqui red. not acqu ired oblig ation s, a fact
the No-c onstr aints posi tion
~
simpl y fails to take into acco unt. These oblig ation
s arise as a resu lt of our
abili ty to produ ce caus al effec ts of a reaso nably
pred ictab le natu re, whet her
on our cont emp orar ies~ on those in the dista nt
futur e.
Thus , to retur n to
the train para ble, the cons igner cann ot argue in justi
ficat ion of his actio n
that he has. for exam ple, neve r assumed or acqu ired
resp onsi bilit y for the
passe ngers . that he does not know them and there fore
has no love or symp athy for
them and that they are not part of his mora l comm
unity; in shor t, that he has
acqu ired no oblig ation , and baa no apec ial oblig ation
• to help them. All that
v
t '
r .
�".
one needs to argue conce rning the train , and in the nucle
ar case, is that there
are moral oblig ation s again st impos ing harm ~ ~ ~·~
which are not speci ally
oblig atiq9 s to the dista nt
acqui red. Nor can this claim be rebut ted by the all
prete nce tha:,( tutur e i~vo1 ve
heroi c self sacri fice, somet hing "abov e and beyon d" what
is norm ally requi red.
One is no more engag ing in heroi c self sacri fice by not
forcin g futur e peopl e
into an unvia ble life posit ion or by refra ining from causi
ng them direc t harm
than the consi gner is resor ting to heroi c self sacri fice
in refra ining from
shipp ing the dange rous packa ge on the train .
V
III.
ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evadi
ng these
diffi culti es the No-c onstr aints posit ion may be quali fied
rathe r than wholl y
aband oned. Accor ding to the Quali fied posit ion we are
not entir ely uncon strain ed
wi th respe ct to the dista nt futur e. There are oblig ation
s, even to dista nt futur e
peopl e, but these are not so impor tant as those to the
prese nt, and the inter ests
of dista nt futur e peopl e canno t weigh very much in the
scale again st those of
the prese nt and imme diate futur e. The inter ests of futur
e peopl e then, excep t
in unusu al cases , count for very much less than the inter
ests of prese nt
peopl e. Hence such thing s aa nucle ar devel opme nt and vario
us explo itativ e
activ ities which bene fit prese nt peopl e shoul d proce ed,
even if peopl e of the
dista nt futur e are (somewhat) disad vanta ged by them.
The Quali fied posit ion appea rs to be widel y held and is
impli cit in
preva iling economic theor ies, where the posit ion of a decre
ase in weigh t of
futur e costs and bene fits (and so of futur e inter ests)
is obtai ned by
appli catio n over time of a disco unt rate, so disco untin g
costs and risks to
.
aM- a...-pi~ ~ \ -4 .
futur e peopl e. The attem pt to apply econo mics as a moral
theor y, -eeme th'-t
that is becoming incre asing ly common, can lead the~ to
the Quali fied posit ion.
What is objec tiona ble in such an appro ach is that econo
mics must opera te withi n
the bounds of ackno wledg ed non-a cquir ed moral cons train
ts, just as in pract ice
it opera tes withi n legal const raint s. What econo
mics canno t legiti mate ly do is
determ ine what these const raint s are. There are, moreo
ver, alter nativ e econo mic
theor ies and simpl y to adopt . witho ut furth er ado, one which
disco unts the futur e,
givin g much less impor tance to the inter ests of futur e
peopl e, is to beg all
the quest ions at issue .
Among the argum ents that econo mists offer for gener ally
disco untin g
the futur e, the most threa dbare is based on the Rosy -futur
e assum ption , that
futur e gener ation s will be bette r off than prese nt ones
(and so bette r place d
to handl e the waste probl em). Since there is moun ting
evide nce that futur e
gener ation s may wel l~ be bette r off th,Z prese nt ones,
espec ially in thing s
that matte r, no argum ent for disco untin g the inter ests
of futur e gener ation s
on this basis can carry much weigh t. For the waste proble
m to be hande d dovn
V
I
�to the futur e gener ation s, it would have to be shown, what
recen t economic
progr ess hardl y justi fies, that futur e gener ation s will
be not just bette r off
but so much bette r off that they can (easi ly)ca rry and
contr ol the nucle ar
freig ht.
A more plaus ible argum ent for disco untin g, the Oppo rtunit
y-cos t argum ent,
build s direc tly
on the notio n of oppo rtunit y cost. It is argue d from the
fact
that a dolla r gaine d now is worth much more than a dolla
r receiv ed in the nonimme diate futur e (beca use the first dolla r could meanw hile
be inves ted at
compound inter est}, that disco untin g is requi red to obtai
n equiv alent mone tary
value s. This same line of reaso ning is then appli ed to
the alloc ation of
re sourc es. Thus, comp ensati on - which,___1s what the waste
proble m is taken to come
to econo mical ly - cost~ much less now than later , e.g. a
few penni es set aside
1-1:>V
(e.g. in a trust fund ).the futur e, if need be, will suffi
ce to comp ensate
event ually for any ~ctim s of remot e radio activ e waste
leaka ge. Two proble ms
~ First , there are,
beset this appro ach.
prese ntly at least , insurm ounta ble
pract ical diffi culti es about apply ing such disco untin g.
We simpl y do not know
how to determ ine appro priate futur e disco unt rates . A
more serio us objec tion is
that the argum ent depen ds on a false assum ption. It is
not true that value , or
damages, can alway s be conve rted into mone tary equiv alent
s. There is no clear
"mon etary comp ensati on" for a varie ty of damag es, inclu ding
cance r, loss of
life, a lost speci es.
The disco untin g theme , however argue d for, is inade quate
, becau se it
leads back in pract ice to the No-c onstr aints posit ion.
The reaso n is that
disco untin g impos es an" economic horiz on"
beyond which nothi ng need be
consi dered , since any costs or bene fit which might arise
are, when disco unted
back to the prese nt, negli gible .
A diffe rent argum ent fot the Quali fied posit io~. the Prob
abilit ies argum ent,
avoid s the objec tions from cases of certa in damage throu
gh appea l to proba bility
consi derat ions. The dista nt futur e, it is argue d, is much
more uncer tain than the
prese nt and imme diate futur e, so that prob abili ties are
conse quent ly lower ,
perha ps even appro achin g or coinc iding with zero for any
hypot hesis conce rning
the dista nt futur e. Thus, the argum ent conti nues, the -inter
ests of futur e
peopl e must (apar t from excep tiona l cases where there is
an unusu ally high degre e
of certa inty} count for (very much) less than those of
prese nt and neigh bouri ng
peopl e where (much') highe r prob abili ties are attac hed.
So in the case of
confl ict betwe en the prese nt and the futur e, where it is
a quest ion of weigh ing
certa in bene fits to the peopl e of the prese nt and the imme
diate futur e again st
a much lower proba bility of indet ermin ate coats to an indet
ermin ate number of
V
�assuming anything like similar costs and benefit s were involve d.
is however
badly flawed.
The argumen t
Firstly , probab ilities involvin g distant
future situatio ns are not always less than those concern ing the immedia te
'"'tt..N ~ ~ -~ -q Nat l'-.Now wJ~a..+. ~,NA. «f ~~e J~N f2.(;.~ ~L of. ~~ft.. - ~ t~( _d-'z..,ve.. , ~ 1t:e..
future in the way the argumen t suppose s.AMor eove)th e outcome s of some moral
problem s often
do not depend on a high level of probabi lity.
.
In many cases it
is enough, as the train parable reveals , that a signific ant risk is created ;
such cases do not depend critica lly on high probabi lity assignm ents.
Nor,
of course, can it be assumed that anything like similar ly weighte d costs and
benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especia lly if it is a question of
risking poisonin g some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequ ent risk of serious harm to· thousand s of generat ions of future people,
in order to obtain quite doubtfu l, or even trivial , benefit for some present peopl
jin the shape of the opportu nity to continu e (unnece ssarily) shigh
energy use.
And even
if
the costs and benefit s were compara ble or evenly weighte d, such
an argumen t would be defectiv e, since an analogo us argumen t would show that
the consign er's action in the train parable , is accepta ble provided the benefit
(e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposin g signific ant risks on ·
other people) was sufficie ntly large.
Such a cost-be nefit approac h to moral and decisio n problem s, with or
without the probabi lity frills,
is quite inadequ ate when differe nt parties
are involved or when cases of conflic t of interes t involvin g moral obligat ions
are at issue.
permiss ible
s
For example , such a cost-be nefit approac h would imply that it is
for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocen t party
provided only that the company stands to make a sufficie ntly large gain from it,
that costs to some
group
are more than morally
larger benefit s to another group.
compens ated for by
But costs or benefit s are not legitim ately
transfer red in any simple way from one group to another .
The often
appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefit s . you have to accept
the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefit •
then~ have to accept the coat• (or aome of theDJ at leaat)"
i• another an_d_ _ __
�//
very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is
not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significa nt kind arising
fro~ an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties whQ are not involved
in the activity and are not beneficia ries. 6 This Transfer -limiting principle
is especiall y clear in cases
of whiea e
thalidomide rnaoufact u~ias and
mark.eti.Ag eompany J:9 or.a.,.. where the significa nt costs include an effect
on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitti qg
-
e. -1, J
-tt.. e ~ ~ "" {
party is of a noncrucia l or dispensib le nature/\ The principle is of
o ~f'(.,v,._{ ,~
fundamen tal importanc e in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again
~
c.
ta
it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other
liabiliti es of nuclear developm ent, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter
of reactor meltdown.
ln particula r, the principle invalidat es the compariso n,
heavily relied on in building a case for the ~cceptab ility of the nuclear risks,
\
between nuclear risks and those from such activitie s as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedl y benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelm ing extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficie aries
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily , their own
lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficia ries at allwho may be just the opposite!
More generally , the distribut ion of costs and damage in such a fashion,
i.e. on to non-bene ficiaries, is a characte ristic of certain serious forms of
po llution, and is among its morally objection able features.
productio n, from nuclear or fossil
pollution .
i mportant necessary condition for energy options:
~
energy option
risks of harm
Large-sca le energy
fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious
Thus from the Transfer -limiting
principle emerges an
To be morally acceptab le
should not involve the transfer of significa nt costs or
~
parties who .!!!.
~
involved,
benefit correspon dingly from!!!.!, energy source.
~
do
~ ~ ~
do
n_
~ ~ ~
t::.-L-~
~
Included in the acope of
c~ @.
�this cond ition , which nucl ear deve lopm ent viol
ates , are futu re peop le, i.e.
not mere ly peop le livin g at the pres ent time but
also futu re gene ratio ns (tho se
of the next town s). A furth er coro llary of the
prin cipl e is the Tran smis sion
Prin ciple , that we shou ld not hand the worl d we
have so expl oited on to our
succ esso rs in subs tant ially wors e shap e than we
"rec eive d" it. For if we did
then that would be a sign ifica nt tran sfer of cost
s.
The Tran sfer- limi ting prin cipl e can be deriv ed
from cert ain ethi cal
theo ries (e.g . thos e of a deon tic cast such as
Kan t's and Raw ls') and
from common prec epts (such as the Golden Rule ),
where one serio usly cons iders
putt ing ones elf in anot her's posi tion . But the
prin cipl e is perh aps best
defe nded , on a broa der basi s, indu ctive ly, by
way of exam ples. Supp ose, to
embr oider the train para ble, the company town
deci des to solv e its
disp osal prob lem by ship ping its noxi ous wast e
to anot her town down the line ,
which (like futu re towns) lack s the means to ship
it back or to regi ster due
prot est. The inha bitan ts of this town are then
force d to face the prob lem
eith er of unde rtaki ng the expe nsive and diff icul
t disp osal proc ess or of sustaini ng risk s to thei r own live s and heal th.
Most of us would rega rd this kind
of tran sfer of cost s as mora lly una~ cept able ,
however much the cons igne r's company
town flou rish es.
IV.
UNCERTAINTY AND
INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSI
BILITY.
Many of the argu ment s desig ned to show that we
cann ot be expe cted to take too
much acco unt of the effe cts of our actio ns on
the dist ant futu re appe al to
unce rtain ty. Ther e are two main components to
the Gene ral Unc ertai nty
argu ment , capa ble of sepa ratio n, but freq uent ly
tang led up. Both argu ment s
are mist aken , the firs t, an argum ent from igno
ranc e, on.! prio ri grou nds, the
seco nd on a post erio ri grou nds. The Argument
from igno ranc e conc erned runs as
foll ows :/ In cont rast to the exac t info rmat ion
we can obta in abou t the pr;s ent,
the infor mati on we can obta in abou t the effe cts
of our actio ns on the dist ant
futu re is unre liab le, wool ly and high ly spec ulati
ve. But we cann ot base
asse ssme nts of how we shou ld act on info rmat ion
of this kind , espe ciall y when
�IE
accurate informati on is obtainabl e about the present which would indicate
different action.
Therefore we must regretful ly ignore the · uncertain effects of
our actions on the distant future.
ignorance
A striking example of the argument from
at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear
developm ent, which ignore (the extensive ) costs of
7
grounds of uncertain ty. More formally and crudely
waste control on the
the argument concerned is this:
One only has obligatio rts to the future if these obligatio ns are based on
reliable informati on.
distant future.
There is no reliable informati on at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligatio ns to the distant future.
This argument is essential ly a variant on a sceptical argument concernin g
our knowledge of the future (formally , replace 'obligati ons' by 'knowledg e'
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considera bly
overestim ate and overstate the degree of certainty available
with respect to
the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is - required
as the basis for moral considera tion both with respect to the present and with
respect to the future.
Associate d with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp
division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the
adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constrain ts. We can an~ constantl y
such
do act on the basis ofj"unre liable" informati on, which the sceptic as regards the
future convenien tly labels "uncerta inl,,'.
In moral situation s in the present,
assessmen ts of what to do often take account of risk and probabil ity, even quite
low probabil ities.
Consider again the train parable.
We do not need to know
for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact
it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable
than not, in order for us to condemn the consigne r's action.
that there is a significa nt risk of harm
.
It is enough
in this sort of case.
It does not
matter if the decreased well-bein g of the consigner ia certain and that the
�......
prospects of the passenger s quite uncertain .
It is wrong to ship the gas.
But
if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constrain ts in contempo rary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
The unwarrant ed insistenc e on certainty as a ·necessary condition before moral
considera tion can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double
standard.
According to the second argument, the Practical -uncertai nty
argument.
even if in theory we have obligatio ns to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future peopl~ into account because uncertain ty about .
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequen ces of actions on it will be.
Therefore , however good our intention s
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests .
Given that moral principle s are characte ristically
of universal implicati onal form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character
then
x
is wrong, for every (action)
sharply thus:
x",
h
the argument may be stated more
We can never obtain the informati on about future actions whicl\.
~
t-~
,< tt a.s c t..tu._ a.. ~~
h J•
would enable us to iea ■ Jh the anteceden t of the implicati on/\ Therefore , even
r.r;
c
if in theory moral principle s do extend to future people, in practice they cannot
be applied to obtain clear conclusio ns.
It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain
that in every case it was impossibl e to determine in any way better than
chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action
would help or hinder future people, then moral principle s, although applicab le
in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusio ns
about how to act.
In this event the distant future would impose no practica l .
moral constrain ts on action.
~
However. the argument is factually incorrect in
as s uming that the future always is ao grossly uncertain or indeterm inate.
Admittedl y -there is often a high degree of uncertain ty concernin g the distant
future, but as a matter of (continge nt) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping •• the argument ha• to •••um•.
There are aome areas where uncertain ty ia
-
�not so great as to exclud e const raints on action . For examp le,
we may have
little id ea what the fashio ns will be in a hundre d years or, to
take anothe r
morally -irrel evant factor , what brands of ice cream people will
be eating , if any,
but we do have excel lent reason to believ e, espec ially if we consid
er 3000 years
of histor y, that what people there are in a hundre d years are
likely to have
mater ial and psych ic needs not entire ly unlike our own, that they
will need
a health y biosph ere for a good life; that like us they will not
be immune
to radiat ion; that their welfa re will not be enhanc ed by a high
incide nce of
cancer or geneti c defec ts, by the destru ction of resou rces, or
the elimin ation
from the face of the earth of that wonde rful variet y of non-human
life which at
presen t makes it such a rich and intere sting place. The case
of nuclea r waste
storag e, and of uncer tainty of the effec ts of it on future people
, is onearea where uncer tainty in moral ly releva nt ~espe cts is not so
great as to
preclu de moral const raints on action .
For this sort of reason , the
Pract ical uncer tainty argum ent should be reject ed.
Through the defec ts of the prec~d ing argum ents, we can see the
defec ts in
a number of widely employed uncer tainty argum ents used to write
off proba ble harm
to future people as outsid e the scope of prope r consid eratio n.
Most of these
popula r moves employ both of the uncer tainty argum ents as suits
the case,
switch ing from one to the other.
For examp le, we may be told that we
canno t really take accou nt of future people becaus e we canno t
be sure that they
will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be compl etely
differ ent from
our own, to the point where t.hey will not suffer from our exhau
stion of reso\l rces
or from the things that _would affec t us. But this is to insist
upon compl ete
-
certai nty of a sort beyond what is requir ed for the presen t and
immed iate future ,
where there is also commonly no guaran tee that some disas ter will
not overta ke
those to whom we are moral ly comm itted. Again we may be told
that there is no
guaran tee that future people will be worthy o( any effort s on
our part, becau se
,a-
MOc-CJ. , Ne,,.,i
~v
-fl~ ,v-
they may be morons o/ foreve r plugge d into/\Emjoyment.,
_/--
ef othe
·,
±-ultiR ea
Even
if one is prepar ed to accep t the elitis t approa ch presup posed
- accord ing to which
only those who meet certai n prope rly civili zed or intell ectua l
standa rds are
l
eligib le for moral consid eratio n - what we are being handed in
such argum ents
V
�... ..,.
i s again a mere outside possibility.
.
Neither the contemporary nor the historical
situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal
moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility.
We can
contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically
supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline
of
a civilisation through
destruction of its resource base.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
For example, according to the tndeterminacy argument,
the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will
prevent the interest of future peopie being taken into account where there is a
conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less
accurate form?
The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed
quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the
numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but
they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
of the future.
Nor are distributional
problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class
of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would
suggest.
It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the
-
indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to
resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise
answer to every
ethical question.
But, as the train parable again illustrates,
there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder
resolution,
and
cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers
of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The case of nuclear power is like that.
The failure of these various arguments reveals, what can be iodependently
-+- '-"
thelr placement . does noL
ar gued from the universalisability features of moral principles, 8 thatf
disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claimsr ,
tllUU' ,.., ') \trt2r /
below the claima of present people. That ia, we hav, "tbe ••m•
ions
V
�/1
to future people as to the presen t;
1
thus there is the same obliga tion to take
accoun t of them and their intere sts in what we do, to be carefu l in our
action s,
to take accoun t of the probab ility (and not just the certain ty) of our action
s
causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do
not act
so as to rob them of what is necessa ry for the chance of _a good life. Uncert
ainty
_,,
and indeter minacy do not relieve us of these obliga tions.
v.
PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION
REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN.
The ethica l problem s with nuclea r power are by no means confine d to waste
storag e
and future creatu res.
entitle ment
Just as remote ness in. time does not er~de obliga tions or
to just treatm ent, neithe r does locatio n in space, or a partic ular
geogra phical positio n.
Hence severa l furthe r problem s arise, to which princip les
and argume nts like those already arrived at in consid ering the waste problem
apply.
For exampl e, if one group (socia l unit,
or state) decide s to dump its
radioa ctive wastes in the territo ry or region of anothe r group, or not to
preven t
its (radioa ctive) polluti on enterin g the territo ry of anothe r group, then
it
impose s risks
and costs on presen tly existin g people of the second group, in
much the way that presen t nuclea r develop ments impose costs and risks on
future people .
There are differe nces howev er:
spatia lly
distan t people
cannot be discou nted in quite the way that future people can be, though
their
Jiie ~~~ o·F-tu
~t..+
.
intere sts and objecti ves/\Nt ?Wlc ignored or overrid den.
People living in the vicini ty of a nuclea r reacto r are subjec t to specia
l
costs and risks.
One is radioa ctive pollut ion, becaus e reacto rs routin ely dischar 1
radioa ctive materi als into the air and water near
Emissio n problem .
the plant : hence the
Such "norma l" emissio n during plant operat ion of low level
radiati on carrie s carcino genic and mutage nic costs.
While there are undoub tedly
costs, the number of cancer s and the precis e extent of geneti c damage induced
by exposu re to such radiati on are both uncert ain.
If our
ethica l princi ples
permit ted free transfe r of coata and riaka from one person to anothe r,
the
ethica l iaaue direct ly raised by nuclea r ••miaa ion•wo uld be:
what extent of
Q__
.......-
�.....
cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of
nuclear power, and unde{ what conditions?
Since, however, risks and benefits
are NOT {morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limit ing
principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses
-
for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion~ >
And these risks are
real!
v
In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclea ·
power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage/as much as 50 times that
borne by the population at large.
✓
And children living in this region are even more
vulnerable, since they ar~ several times more likely to contract cancer through
exposure than normal adults.
The serious costs to these people cannot be
justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could
be obtained without these costs.
Thus it is not just complacent to say 'It's
a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioner s
' make life comfprtable'.
~~e+,~
For such benefits to some as airconditioner~
provide,~which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of
buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer.
Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the
+£«-0:sc w~ \,14 e close ~ Nu<.. (e..a.,R,. pt~~
imposition of radiation ~ d i H - most of whom have no genuine voice
in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without
~\ \
serious losses - is really quite ,'right is the Doubling argument. ~ccording
I
to the US Atomic Energy Commission, "ho dcployud dU.&i nr• it is pennissfble
to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a
population ha$
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument
bei ng that the additional amount (being equivalent
is also
likely to have negligible consequences.
to the "natural" level)
The increased amounts of
radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal,
and, its; claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
;-tTb1s
::J
,"6r
argument is sound.
I,
~er.c
of eh@ seeps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no
ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person'• well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become norm.al for the person, the larger
one will, under euch conditiona, not be.
Finally, what ia or has become norcna_l_, _ _ _~ .
�e.g.
two murders or twenty canc ers a day in a give
n city , may be far from
acce ptab le.
/
IJ \
In fact , even the USA, which has very stri ct
stan dard s by compar_ison with
most othe r cou ntrie s with planned nucl ear reac
tors , perm its radi atio n emis sion s
very sub stan tiall y in exce ss of the stan dard
s laid down; so the emis sion
situ atio n is much worse than what cons ider atio
n of the stan dard s would
disc lose . Furt herm ore, the mon itori ng of the
stan dard s "imp osed " is entr uste d to
the nucl ear oper ator s them selv es, scar cely
disi nter este d part ies. Thus pub lic
poli cy is dete rmin ed not so as to guar ante e
pub lic hea lth, but rath er to serv e
as a "pub lic pac ifie r" whil e pub licly -sub sidi
zed priv ate nucl ear oper atio ns
proc eed rela tive ly unhampered? ·
While radi oact ive emis sion s are an ordi nary
feat ure of reac tor ope ratio n,
reac tor breakdown is, hop eful ly, not: offi cial
repo rts even try to make an
acci dent of mag nitud e, as a mat ter of defi niti
on, an 'ext raor dina ry nucl ear
occu rren ce'. But "def init ions " notw iths tand
ing, such acci dent s can happ en,
and almo st have on seve ral occa sion s (the most
noto riou s bein g Thre e Mile Isla nd):
henc e the Core-meltdown prob lem.
If the cool ing and emergency core cool ing syst
ems fail in American (lig ht
wate r) reac tors ,
then the core melt s and 'con tain men t fail ure'
is like ly,
with the resu lt that an area of 40,0 00 squa
re mile s coul d be radi oact ivel y
10
cont amin ated . In the even t of the wors t type
of acci dent in a very sma ll
reac tor, a steam expl osio n in the reac tor vess
el, abou t 45,0 00 peop le would be
kill ed inst antl y and at leas t 100, 000 would
die as a resu lt of the acci den t,
prop erty damages would exce ed $17 bill ion and
an area the size of Penn sylv ania
would be dest roye d. Modern nucl ear reac tors
are abou t five time s the size of
the reac tor for which thes e cons erva tive US
figu res (sti ll the best avai labl e from
11
offi cial sour ces) are give n:
the cons eque nces of a sim ilar acci dent with
a
modern reac tor would acco rdin gly be much grea
ter.
The cons igne r who risk s the live s and well -bei
ng of pass enge rs on the
trai n acts .i nadm issib ly. A government or
gove rnm ent- endo rsed util ity
appe ars to act in a way that doe• not diff er
in mor all;y aign ifica nt resp ect• in
-------~
�siti ng a nuc lear rea cto r in a commun
ity, in pla ntin g such a dan gero us pac kag
e on
the "community trai n". More dir ect ly,
the loc atio n of a nuc lear rea cto r in
a
community, even if it sho uld hap pen to
rec eiv e a fav our able ben efit -co st
ana lysi s and oth er economic app rais al,
would vio late such eth ica l requ irem ents
~
as the Tra nsf er-l imi ting prin cip le.
The adv oca tes of nuc lear power hav e,
in eff ect , end eav oure d to avo id
que stio ns of cos t-tr ans fer and equ ity,
by shi ftin g the disp ute out of the
extr aor din ary imp rob abil it't, , V
e thic al aren a and into a tech nol ogi cal
disp ute abo ut eaau~ theJ
of
· 0
r eac tor mal fun ctio n. They hav e argu ed,
in par ticu lar, what con tras ts with the
trai n par able , tha t the re is no rea l
pos sib ilit y of a cata stro phi c nuc lear
v
acc iden t.
Inde ed in the infl uen tial Rassmussen
rep ort - which was ext ens ive ly
used to sup por t pub lic con fide nce in
US nuc lear fiss ion tech nolo gy - an even
stro nge r, an inc red ibly stro ng, imp rob
abil ity clai m was stat ed: nam ely, the
' like liho od of a cata stro phi c nuc lear
acc iden t is so rem ote as to be (alm ost)
imp ossi ble. However, the mat hem atic
al models reli ed upon in this rep ort,
var iou sly call ed "fa ult tree ana lysi s"
and "re liab ilit y esti mat ing tech niq ues
".
are unso und , bec aus e, among oth er thin
gs, they exc lude as "no t cre dib le"
tha t the
pos sib ilit ies tha t may wel l happen in
the rea l wor ld. It is not sur pris ing
, the n,/
methodology and dat a of the rep ort hav
e bee n sou ndly and dec isiv ely crit icis
ed,
or tha t off icia l sup por t for the rep
ort has now been with draw n.12 Mor eov er,
use
of alte rna tive methods and data ind icat
es tha t the re is a rea l pos sib ilit y,
a
non -ne glig ible pro bab ility of a · seri
ous acc ide nt.
In resp ons e it is con tend ed tha t, even
if the re is a non -ne glig ible
\
pro bab ility of a rea cto r acc ide nt. sti
ll tha t is acc epta ble, bein g of no
gre ater ord er than risk s of acc iden ts
tha t are alre ady soc iall y acc epte d.
Here
we enc oun ter aga in tha t insi dio us eng
inee ring app roac h to mor alit y bui lt into
dec isio n models of an economic cas t,
e.g . ben efit -co st bala nce she ets, risk
asse ssm ent mod els, etc . Ris k asse ssm
ent, a sop his tica tion of tran sac tion
or
trad e-o ff mod els, pur por ts to pro vide
a com pari son betw een the rela tive riak
a
atta che d to diff ere nt opt ion s, ••I• ene
rgy otp ion a, whi ch aet tlea the ir
�eth ica l stat us.
The foll owi ng assu mpt ions are enc oun
tere d in risk asse ssm ent
as app lied to ene rgy opt ion s:
A
·
If o~io n'.J t_im pos es (co mpa rab le)B osts
B
on few er peo ple than op tio n~
then opt ion ,i_
pre fera ble to opt ion . ;
AL
is
,,_....,_,, .
AH.
Op tion iinv olv es a tota l net cos t in
term s of cos t to peo ple (e.g .
t3J
dea ths, inju ries , etc .) which is less
than tha t of opt ion .wh ich is •~re
ady
acc epte d; the refo re opt ion ~is acc ept
abl ef 3
These assu mpt ions are then app lied as
foll ows .
\....--"
Sin ce 't he number like ly to
eve ntu all' i'
by nuc lear power sta tion cata stro phe
is less !ha n the like ly number
I
kill ed by cig are tte smoking, and sinc
e the risk s of cig are tte smoking are
acc epte d;
it foll ows tha t the risk s of nuc
lear power are acc epta ble. A litt le
refl ect ion
rev eals tha t this sor t of risk asse ssm
ent argument gro ssly vio late s the Tra
nsfe r~
lim itin g prin cip le. In ord er to obt ain
a pro per eth ica l asse ssm ent we need
be kill ed
J
a much full er pic ture , and we need to
know at lea st thes e thin gs: / Do the
cos ts and ben efit s go to the same par
ties ; and is the pers on who vol unt aril
y
und erta kes the risk s also the pers on
who prim aril y rece ives the ben efit s,
as in
driv ing or cig are tte smoking, or are
the cos ts imposed
on oth er par ties who do
not ben efit ? It is only if the par ties
are the same in the cas e of the opt ion
s
l
S vC-t...
compared, and the re are no ~d ist rib
uti on al prob lem s, tha t a com pari son
8ft •-•h
~
would be sou ndly bas ed. Thi s is rare
ly the cas e, and it is not ao in
the case of risk asse ssm ents of ene rgy
opt ion s.
VI.
OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS
AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The prob lem s
alre ady disc uss ed by no means exh aus
t the
env iron men tal, hea lth and safe ty risk
s and cos ts in, or aris ing from , the
nuc lear
fue l cyc le. The ful l fue l cyc le incl
ude s many stag es both bef ore and afte
r
rea ct or ope rati on, apa rt from was te disp
osa l, nam ely, min ing, mil ling , con ver
sion ,
enri chm ent and pre par atio n, rep roc essi
ng spe nt fue l, and tran spo rtat ion of
materia ls. Sev eral of thes e stag es inv
olv e haz ard s. Unl ike the spe cial
"
risk s in the nuc lear cyc le
- of sab otag e of pla nts , of the ft of
fiss ion abl e
mat eria l, and of the furt her pro life rati
on of nuc lear armaments - thes e haz ards
µ
�have para llels . if not exac t equi vale nts, in othe
r high ly poll utin g methods of
gene ratin g powe r. e.g. 'wor kers in the uran ium
mini ng indu stry sust ain "the same
risk" of fata l and nonf atal inju ry as work ers
in the coal indu stry '.14 The
prob lems are not uniq ue to nucl ear deve lopm ent.
Othe r soci al and envi ronm enta l prob lems -
thou gh endemic wher e dang erou s
larg e-sc ale indu stry oper ates in soci etie s that
are high ly ineg alita rian and
inclu de sect ors that are far from afflu ent - are
more intim ately linke d with the
nucl ear power cycl e. Though poll utio n is a comm
on and gene rally unde sirab le
component of larg e-sc ale indu stria l oper ation ,
rad~ oact ive poll utio n .suc h
as urani um mini ng for insta nce prod uces . is espe
ciall y a lega cy of nucl ear
deve lopm ent. and a spec ially unde sirab le one,
as rect ifica tion cost s for dead
radi oact ive land s and wate rway s reve al. Though
sabo tage is a thre at to many
larg e indu strie s, sabo tage of a nucl ear reac tor
can have dire cons eque nces ,
of a diffe rent orde r of magn itude from most indu
stria l sabo tage (where core
meltdown is not a poss ibili ty). Though thef t
of mate rial from more dubi ous
ente rpris es such as mun ition s works can pose thre
ats to popu latio ns at larg e
and can assi st terro rism , no thef ts for alleg edly
peac eful ente rpris es pose
prob lems of the same orde r as thef t of fissi onab
le mate rial. No othe r indu stry
prod uces mate rials which so read ily perm it fabr
icati on into such mass ive
expl osiv es. No othe r indu stry is, to sum it up,
so vuln erab le on so many fron ts.
In part to redu ce its vuln erab ility , in part beca
use of its long and
cont inuin g asso ciati on with mili tary acti viti es,
the nucl ear indu stry is subj ect
to, and enco urag es, seve ral prac tices whic h (give
n thei r scal e) run coun ter to
basi c featu res of free and open soci etie s, cruc
ial featu res such as pers onal
libe rty, freedom of asso ciati on and of expr essio
n,an d free acce ss to info rmat ion.
Thes e prac tices inclu de secr ecy, rest ricti on of
info rmat ion, form ation of
spec ial poli ce and guar d forc es, espio nage , curt
ailm ent of civi l libe rtie s.
Alre ady oper ators of nucl ear inst alla tion s are
give n extr aord inar y
powe rs, in vett ing empl oyee s, to inve stiga te the
back grou nd and
acti vitie s not only of empl oyee s but also of thei
r fami lies and
sometimes even of thei r frien ds. The inst alla
tion s them selve s
become armed camps, whic h espe ciall y offe nds Brit
ish sens ibili ties .
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Spe cial Con stab les) Act
of 1976 crea ted a
spec ial armed forc e to guar nucl ear inst alla tion
s aud..made it
answ erab le • • • to the U.K. .. dAtom
ic En• ·
~
'
�These devel opme nts, and worse ones in West Germany
and elsew here, presa ge along
with nucle ar devel opme nt incre asing ly auth orita rian
and anti- demo crati c
soci eties . That nucle ar devel opme nt appe ars to force
such poli tical
conse quen ces tells heav ily again st it. Nucl ear devel
opme nt is furth er indic ted
poli tical ly by the direc t conn ectio n of nucle ar powe
r with nucle ar war. It ia
true that ethic al ques tions conc ernin g nucle ar war
- for exam ple, whet her a
nucle ar war is justi fied , or just, unde r any circu msta
nces, and if so what
circu msta nces - are disti ngui shab le from those conc
ernin g nucle ar power.
Undo ubted ly, however, the sprea d of nucle ar power is
subs tanti ally incre asing
the techn ical means for engag ing in nucle ar war and
so, to that exte nt, the
oppo rtuni ty for, and chanc es of, nuc~ ear engagement.
Since nucle ar wars are
neve r accou nted
posi tive good s, but are at best the lesse r of majo r
evils ,
nucle ar wars are alway s high ly ethic ally unde sirab le.
The sprea d of nucle ar
power acco rding ly expan ds the oppo rtuni ty for, and
chanc es of, high ly unde sirab le
conse quen ces. .,.fina l:½) the lac cet, sb irlete a&In g r.huuw
cbancac i'itid Opt111c I Oil I I te:::s,
is Heal f unda sha~ h,
■Rd 'lber efore )wha t
.
leads to it;nu clea r devel opme ntA is
unde sirab le.
This is, in outli ne, the argum ent from nucle ar war
again st
large -scal e nucle ar devel opme nt. 16
t5 F ·~ , ~
ATl"
VII. ,\CONFLICT ARGUMENTS~ JND R5Ila ff!f~ ~1 JN C~
THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF
NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. Much as with _nucle ar war, so
given the cumu lative caTe
again st nucle ar deve lop~e nt, only one
justi ficat ory route rema ins open ,
that of appe al to over ridin g circu msta nces. That appe
al, to be ethic ally
acce ptabl e; must go beyond mere ly economic cons idera
tions . For, as obse rved,
the cons igne r's actio n, in the train para ble, cann ot
be juati fied by pure ly
econ omis tic . argum ents, such as that his prof its would
rise, the company or the
town would be more prosp erous , or by appe aling to the
fact that some poss ibly
unco mfor table chang es would other wise be neede d. So
it is also in the nucle ar
½-12.,
case: ./Tra nsfe r-lim iting princ iple appl ies. But
suppo se now the cons igner argue s
that his actio n ia justi fied becau ae unlea a it 1• taken
the town will die. It ia
✓
i
l
�by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient,
especia lly where the risK5 to the passengers is high, since the case still
to
A
amo~ntsione of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict
situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is
alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan c~ses
atica;(where v~fer-limitin g principle is clearly violated. Nuclear development is often defended
in this way, through Conflict arguments, to
the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features,
nevertheless the alternatives are worse.
Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on
competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
i mpose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such
conflict arguments requirESthe presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only
al ternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the
action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument
(for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another
option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in
the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are
even worse than the option itself.
A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of industrialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimer,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating
the Transfer-limit ing principle through nuclear development.
The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the
poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is
good evid ence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment
and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of
direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging
substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear energy
is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both
politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires
massive amounts of capital, require• number• of imported acientiata and en2ineera.
---------
�~cr eate s negl igibl e loca l employment, and depen
ds for its feas ibili ty upon
large ly non- exist ent utili ty syste ms - e.g. estab
lishe d elec trici ty
trans miss ion syste ms and back- up faci litie s, and suffi
cien t elec trica l
appli ance s to plug into the syste m. Poli tical ly it
incre ases forei gn
depen dence , adds to cent ralis ed entre nche d power and
reduc es the chanc e for
chang e in the oppr essiv e poli tical struc tures which
are a large part of the
probl em.
The fact that nucle ar energ y is not in the inter ests
of the peop le
of the third world does not of cours e mean that it
is not in the inter ests of,
and wante d (ofte n for milit ary purpo ses) by, their
ruler s, the west ernis ed and
often milit ary elite s in whose inter ests the econo
mies of these coun tries are
usua lly organ ised. But that does not make the pove
rty argum ent anyth ing othe r
than what it is: a fraud .
There are well- know n energ y-con servi ng alter nativ es
and the prac tical optio n of deve lopin g furth er alter
nativ e energ y sourc es,
alter nativ es some of which offe r far bette r prosp ects
for helpi ng the poor ,
both in the third world and in indu stria l coun tries
: coal and othe r foss il fuels ,
geoth erma l, and a range of solar optio ns (incl udin
g as well as narro wly sola r
sourc es, wind , wate r and tidal powe r).
Anot her majo r argum ent advan ced to show conf lict,
the Ligh ts-go ingout argum ent, pppe als to a set of supp osedl y over ridin
g and comp eting oblig ation s
to futur e peop le. We have , it is said, a duty to
pass on the immensely
valua ble thing s and insti tutio ns which our cultu re
has devel oP,ed . Unle ss our
high- techn ology , high- energ y indu stria l socie ty is
conti nued and foste red, our
valua ble insti tutio ns and tradi tions will fall into
decay or be swep t away.
The argum ent is esse ntial ly that witho ut nucle ar powe
r, witho ut the conti nued
level of mate rial weal th it alone is assumed to make
poss ible, the light s of
our civil izati on will go out.
Futu re peop le will be the loser s.
The argum ent does raise impo rtant ques tions abou t
what is valua ble in
our socie ty and what char acte risti cs are nece ssary
for a good socie ty. But for
the most part these large ques tions can be by-p assed
. The reaso n is that the
argum ent adop ts an extre mely uncr itica l attit ude to
prese nt high- techn ology
soci eties , appa rentl y assum ing that they are unifo
rmly and uniqu ely valu able.
it
It assum es that techn olog ical socie ty is unmo difia
ble, thaic anno t be chang ed in
the direc tion of energ y cons ervat ion or alter nativ
e.(pe rhap s high techn ology )
energ y sourc es witho ut colla pse.
These assum ption s are all hard to acce pt. The assum
ption that
techn olog ical soci ety's energ y patte rns are unmo difia
ble is espe ciall y so;
after all, it has survi ved even ts such as world wars
which requ ired majo r
socia l and techn olog ical restr uctu ring and consu mptio
n modi ficat ion. If
west ern soci ety's demands for energ y were (con trary
to the evide nce) total ly
unmo difia ble witho ut colla pse, not only would it be
comm itted to a progr am
of incre asing destr uctio n, but much of ita cultu re
would be of dubio us value to
�future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction , lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporar y society.
The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. Since hightechnology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central
question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled
is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a
society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is
valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably ,that we have a duty to pass on to
the future.
The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence
or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good
reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource
consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even
if a radical change in these directions is independen tly desirable, it is
unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of
the Lights-goin g-out argument are wrong. The consumption of less energy than at
present need involve no reduction of well-being: and certainly a large increase
over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear
energy, is quite unnecessary .
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do
then is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisatio n, but to
enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase
the wattage output of the Energy Extravagan za.
~
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from~hig h energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by means of nuclear fission,be positively inimical to it. A society
which has become heavily dependent upon a highly centralised , controlled and
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-i ntensive e~ergy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchmen t of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucrati c, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people's lives, even more
then they do at present. Such a society would almost inevitably tend to
become authoritati an and increasingl y anti-democ ratic, as an outcome, among
other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the
nuclear situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism , alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritaria nism - while many valuable aspects, such as
the degree of political freedom and those opportuniti es for personal and
collective autonomy which exist, would be loat or diminished:
political fr eedqp
�for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and.#ener gy extravagenc e.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternative s,
a lternative social and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptabl e consequence s, are available. The alternative to _the high
technology- nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is
valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for
power or, better,the development of alternative technologie s and lifestyles which
offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what
is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The
Li ghts-going -out~umen t, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails.
Thus the fttrther escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the
appeal t ~ futurity, closed. If tbea we apply, as we have argued we should, the
~ 1, t.
same standards ef ■eral1t¥ to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
;present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape
routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.)
for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptab le. In sum, nuclear
development is morally unacceptabl e on several grounds.
SOCIAL OPTIONS: SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option
that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no
·doubt preferable to nuclear power. is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it
VIII.
the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as
acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliatio n caused by
extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very
high projected consumption figures. Such an option would,more over, also violate
the Transfer-li miting principle: for it would impose widespread costs on
nonbenefic iaries for some concentrate d benefits to some profit takers and to
some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacemen t.
To these main conventiona l options a third is often added which
emphasizes softer and more benign technologie s, such as those of solar energy and
hydroelec tricity. Such softer options - if suitably combined with energy
conservatio n measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of
energy extravaganc e and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no
genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power. The deeper
8
choice is not however technolo~ic al,
nor merel~Jindi vidua1}' 6fifrtocial, and
involves the restructuri ng of production away from energy intensive uses and,
v
at a more basic level, a change to nonconsum eristic, less consumptive lifestyles and social arrangem~n ts} 7 Thes.e iore fundamental choices between social
+"f? "'- •• t tt ti, fll ~ ~ t- e ,, ., , ~ f'I t- ~l.al t e rna t 1v e s,""convent i ona 1 technologic a~ly-orient ed discussion of energy options, ~
teod• to e&acur•. It ie not juet • utter of decidina in which way to meet the
v
1
�unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of
examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the
question of comparing different technologie s for meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption , and of trying to see how best to meet these;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged
needs and the cost of a society that creates them.
It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolle d energy consumption and demands. Even more benign
technologie s may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and
~
,~hich are.....,
__, likely to result in a deteriorate d world being handed on to
them. In short, even more benign technologie s may lead to violation of the
Transmissio n ~equirem ent. Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world's
forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used
for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchippin g. While few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the
unrestricte d exploitatio n of forests - whether it goes under the name of
"solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be
the final indignity for the world's already hard-presse d natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests
are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label
"renewable resources". Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true,
given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitatio n, but in fact there are now
very few forestry operations anywh~re in the world where the forests are treated
as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values. In
many regions too the rate of exploitatio n which would enable renewal has already
been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent. It
certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rainforest types,are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future;s The addition of
a major further and not readily !imitable demand pressure
for energy on top
of
the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciatio n
of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term
conservatio n of the forests and remaining natural conununities must regard with
alarm. The result of massive deforestati on for energy purposes, resembling
the deforestati on of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion
in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertifica tion in more arid regions,
possible climatic change, and massive impoverishm ent of natural ecosys~ems,
including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on,
and by the Transmissio n principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested
world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear
�29.
produ cts or pollu ted by coal prod ucts. In abor t,
as the fores t situa tion
illus trate s, a mere switc h to
more benig n techn olog ies - impo rtant thoug h this
is - witho ut any more basic struc tural and soci al
chang e1 is inade quate .
The deep er socia l optio n invol ves chall engin g and ·begi
nning to alter
a socia l .stru cture which prom ote, consu meris m, consu
mptio n far beyond genu ine needs
and an economic struc ture which enco urage s incre asing
use of high ly ener gy-in tensi ~e_
modes of prod uctio n. The socia l chang e optio n tends
to be obscu red in most
dis cussi ons of energ y optio ns and of how to meet energ
y ~eed s, in part becau se
it does ques tion unde rlyin g value s of curre nt socia
l arran geme nts. The
conv entip nal discu ssion proce eds by takin g alleg ed
demand (ofte n conf lated with
e ::s<.)..,..J1.~
f,. ~ants or need s) as unch allen geab le, and the
issue to be one ,',If which techn ology
V
can be most prof itabl y employed to meet.llhetft. This
effec tivel y prese nts a
(
"'"tt--~ ~ cJL.t ~ J.. ....~4'-- l~..,, wL., c
v .~ ~.:i.4~ - <e ---4(\ 1 >-..~ wt:S,;....,..1~ ,.s l r N Cl'-'~ r
false choic e. M\-d is the reett l-~-ef -t-ald'--:rigC. needs
and='
CQRt ext
IJl.h-.-t'f--
'"ft~
so that
d'etnamt=-n--bek-i ftt-a- &&&, i-a.J-
~
.
the.--ao,Q,:l:-a-1- ·etrt:t et·ttr-e,--wMeh-p-tt&titte-ee--the-,
,:nead&---i&- •&im-i-l&r-l-y-·
t aken as unch allen geab le and unch angea ble. The poin
t is read ily illus trate d.
I t is commonly argue d by repre senta tives of such
indu strie s as trans porta tion
and petro leum , as for exam ple by McGrowth of the XS
Consumption Co., that
peop le want deep freez ers, air cond ition s, power gadg
ets, •••• It would be
auth orita rian to preve nt them from satis fyin g these
want s. Such an argum ent
from creat ed wants
conv enien tly ignor es the socia l framew-0rk in which
~uch
\ " N ~c..;'2,... f -t1,.Q. ~ft:. plA,.i--1~<'
needs and wan~ arise or are produ ced. 'I:..+To
pe~ n~ . th ~ dat.e i;m-~
&~
~:::,... t >-.irl "'(At.J c" .... c..!,,..~, (IC . ~N t\ f1..,e_ ~~ '
f''-'l ~~t'. ...~ tN tu 9A-( C2..... o!&n,-J
ma"n¥- sueh-warrt s· a c rhe "'fl"'~Trnrk- ieve-1-- ia.:.
no,.t....,.,.•how e\t~t o., assum e .,tha.t, ...-t,h&y-.
~ c l-«:i , c...12.o
,J'!:', ~-ft. -.<./ t..-f 4'}. c.. ,._
1.1 ..+ e.
bF.
~t"
1£~
~
:i~
~
~
~:~
~~
:;;;
;a
:
:
h
se
~ -.,~ft~
.....__ ~-~; ,.; ;~
2 ~eval.-<a--e--~
l ~'
tdal _w;g_ ;!_nf, _!!_at
~
~hing as ·-tndi~ .tl!u arcir o-i-e ~••t~ i.nat io.n -at.._jl_ll...
~ t
..
is
1Te--- ao£ ial framework as a majo r facto r in deter mini
ng~c e~tai n kinds
................
.,,....,.....,.... ,••
of choic es, such as those -.. ·fo.t_ _~rav el, and k.inds ---~ f
. ,...:1-nf-r·a struc ture, and to see
appa rentl y indiv idua l choic es ~~:i°~') .n :,.'8uch':·;;~; ers
as being chan nelle d and
direc ted by a soci al fr,amework deter mine d large ly
"' 1n ·· th&.-. .inter ests of corp orate
...,,
and priva te prpf~-t" -~nd adva ntage .
The soci al chang e optio n ia a hard optio n, inso far
as it will be diffi cult
to imple ment poli tical ly; but it ia ultim ately the
only way of avoid ing the
passi ng on of serio us costs to futur e peop le. And
there are othe r sorts of
reaso ns than such ethic al ones for takin g it: it
is the main , indee d the only
sort of optio n,ope n to those who adop t what is now
calle d a deep ecolo gical
persp ectiv e, as cont raste d with _a shall ow ecolo gical
outlo ok which regar ds
the natu ral world and its nonhuinan deniz ens as not
worth while in them selve s but
only of value in as much as ther answ er back to human
inter ests. The .deep
ecolo gical persp ectiv e is an integ ral part of the
Alte rnati ve Ecol ogica l
Parad igm and is incom patib le wi;~h cent ral these s of
the Dominant Soci al Parad igm
(whic h is esse ntial ly the ideol pgy of claa aica l and
neoc lassi cal econo mics)
_·-~
.
,.....,,, ,......... ,....
•,
• c..-,.t. ... ,
�•
30.
and its vari ants (rou ghly , what are calle d Stat
e Soci alism , and Dem ocrat ic
\/,-tu JtN,k
Soci alism ).19 It is inco mpa tible with &w&h
.
a&Fhmptiafts as •h•• the n~tu ral
l( N ~0.S k.Mlt- JL,..
a..~
°'M.A ~ " " Co.. I ~ ~
envir onme nt '" "' va'1u,e .9nly as a reso urce , ~b
y And la~ hos tile /\~. .>
~ vM~ ~ .s -to ' t«. A~ ~~
o :r
9'\ d 11\.J , ~ -tt. «... o-t\...va...
~ u~
le ee11 tnlla hle :f:n ht1 11a
~a, e 1 a,ul uhAl ~
· r t h e • A.do mina tion- over wkt ,~ '-'4..
/2.42.A
....
''
natu re themes ~th e Dominant Parad igm and its
vari ants .
The conf lict betw een Alte rnat ive and Dominant Para
digm s, which is fast
incr easi ng, exte nds of cour se far beyond attit udes
to the natu ral worl d, sinc e
core valu es of the Dominant Par,~digm such as the
meri ts of unimpeded economic
growth and mate rial prog ress ar ~ at stak e; the
conf lict invo lves fund amen tal
1
diffe renc es over the whole fron t of econ omic al,
poli tica l and soci al arra ngem ents.
The conf lict unde rlies much of ;the nucl ear deba
te, inso far as it is not
spec ifica lly limi ted to questio1~s of tech nolo gica
l fixe s, but take s up the
basi c ethi cal issu es and the so ~ial ques tions to
which they lead .20 The
1
ethi cal requ irem ents alrea dy de1fended and appl ied
brin g us out, when follo wed
throu gh, on the Alte rnat ive sid1~ of the parad igm
conf lict, and acco rdin gly
lead to the diff icul t soci al ch1nge optio n.
The soci al chan ges that the deep alte rnat ive requ
ires will be stron gly
resis ted beca use they mean chan ges in curr ent soci
al orga nisa tion and power
stru ctur e. To the exte nt that the optio n repr esen
ts some kind of thre at to
part s of pres ent poli tica l and economic arran gem
ents, it is not surp risin g that
offi cial ener gy ppti on disc ussi on proc eeds by misr
epre sent ing and ofte n
obsc uring it. But diff icul t as it is to suita bly
alte r "the syste m,"
espe ciall y one with such far-r each ing effe cts on
the prev ailin g power stru ctur e,
it is impe rativ e to try: we are all on the nucl
ear train .
w
�•
FOOTNOTES
1.
This paper is a condens ation of an early version of our 'Nuclea r
power - ethical , social, and politic al dimensi ons' (ESP for short, availab le
from the authors ), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred
to in the referenc e list). For help with the condens ation we are very
conside rably indebted to the e~itors .
In the condens ation, we simplify the structu re of the argument and
suppres s underly ing politic al ~1nd ideolog ical dimensi ons (for example , the
large measure of respons ibilit~r of the USA for spreadin g nuclear reactor s around
the world, and thereby in enhancin g the chances of nuclear disaste rs, includin g
nuclear war).
We also considet ·ably reduce a heavy load of footnote s and
referenc es designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. · Further ,
in order to contain referenc es to a modest length, referenc e to primary
sources has often been replaced by referenc e through seconda ry sources . Little
difficu lty should be encount ered however in tracing fuller referenc es through
seconda ry sources or in filling out much importa nt backgrou nd materia l from
work cited herein. For example , virtual ly all the data cited in section s I and VII
is referenc ed in Routley . At worst ESP can always be consulte d.
2.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unneces sary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to conside r ethical and social dimensio ns of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little. The b~~sics are presente d in many texts, e.g. Nader
& Abbotts , Gyorgy.
Of course
~~n
order to assess fully reports as to such
importa nt backgrou nd and stage~,s etting matters as the likeliho od of a
core meltdown of
(lightw ater)1 reactor s, much more informa tion is require d.
For many assessm ent purpose s h~,wever, some knowledge of economic fallacie s
and decision theory is at least as importa nt aa knowledge of nuclear
technolo gy.
3.
Natural ly the effect on humans is not the only factor that has
to be taken into account in arrivln g at moral assessm ents. Nuclear radiatio n,
unlike most ethical theorie s. does not confine its scope to human life and
welfare . But since the ham nuclear developm ent may afflict on nonhuman life, for example , can hardly improve its case, it suffice s if the case
against it can be made out solely in term• of its effects on human life in the
convent ional way.
�.For refe ren ce to apd a brie f disc uss ion
of (hu man -ori ente d)
sim ulat ion models see Goodin, p.42 8.
4.
The Opp ortu nity -co st . argument is also
def ecti ve in oth er
resp ects . It pres upp ose s not mer ely
the (mi stak en) red ucti ons invo lved in
the
con trac tion of the eth ica l domain to
the economic; it also pres upp ose s tha
t the
pro per methods for dec isio n which affe
ct. the futu re, such as tha t of ene rgy
cho ice, app ly disc oun ting . But , as Goo
din arg ues , more app rop riat e dec isio n
rule s do not allo w disc oun ting .
5.
Thi s is one of the reas ons why exp ecte
d uti lity theo ry,
roug hly cos t-be nef it ana lysi s wit h pro
bab ility fril ls, is inad equ ate as a
dec isio n method in such con tex ts.
6.
App aren t exc epti on~ to the prin cip le
such as tax atio n (and
red istr ibu tion of income gen era, lly) van
ish when wea lth is con stru ed (as
it has to be if tax atio n is to be
pro per ly jus tifi ed) as at lea st par tly
a soc ial
ass et unf airl y mon opo lise d by a min orit
y of the pop ulat ion . Examples such
as tha t of mot orin g dan gero usly do not
con stit ute cou nter exa mpl es to the
prin cip le; for one is not mor ally ent
itle d to so mot or.
7.
For det ails , and as to how the off icia
l ana lys~ s become argu men ts
aga inst nuc lear dev elop men t whe.p some
atte mpt is made to tak e the -ign ored
cos ts into acc oun t, see Shr ade r-Fr ech
ette , p. 55 ff.
8.
See Rou tley , p. 160 .
9.
For much furt her disc uss ion of the poi
nts of the prec edin g two par agrap hs, see Shr ade r-F rec het te, p. 35
ff.; and also Nader & Abbott&.
10.
Gyorgy.
Most of the rea cto rs in the wor ld are
of this typ e;
11.
See Shr ade r-Fr ech ette , cha pter 4.
see
12.
See Shr ade r-Fr ech ette . A wor thw hile
ini tia l view of the
sho rtco min gs
of the RassmutJsen rep ort may be reac hed
by com bini ng
the crit iqu e in Shr ade r-Fr ech et~e wit
h tha t in Nader & Abb otts .
13.
The re are var iati on$ on Ai and Aii
which mul tipl y cos ts
aga inst numbers such as pro bab ilit ies.
In this way risk s, con stru ed as
pro bab le cos ts, can be take n into acc
oun t in the asse ssm ent. (Al tern ativ
ely .
risk .a may be aaaeaaed thro ugh •~e h fam
ilia r aeth oda •• inau ran ce).
�•
A princ iple varyi ng Aii, and formu lated as follow s:
Aii'. a is ethic ally accep table if {for some b) a inclu des
no more
risks than band bis socia lly accep ted,
was the basic ethic al princ iple in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of . Inqui ry recen tly decid ed that nucle ar power
devel opme nt
in Saska tchew an is ethic ally accep table : see Cluff Lake
Board of Inqui ry
Final Repo rt, Department of Envir onme nt, Government of Saska
tchew an, 1978,
p. 305 and p. 288. In this repor t, a is nucle ar power and
b is eithe r
activ ities clear ly accep ted by socie ty as alter nativ e power
sourc es. In
other appli catio ns b has b•en taken as cigar ette smoki ng,
motor ing,
minin g and even the Vietnam ~ar (!).
The point s made in the text do not exhau st the objec tions
to
princ iples Ai - Aii'. The princ iples are certa inly ethic
ally subst antiv e,
since an ethic al conse quenc e canno t be deduced from nonet
hical prem isses,
but they have an inadm issibl e conve ntion al chara cter. For
look at the
origi n of b
b may be socia lly accep ted thoug h it is no longe r socia
lly
accep table , or thoug h its socia l accep tibili ty is no longe
r so clear cut
and it would not have been socia lly accep ted if as much as
is now known
had been known when it was introd uced. What is requi red
in Aii', for
insta nce, for the argument tQ begin to look convi ncing is
that b is
'ethic ally accep table ' rath, r than 'soci ally accep ted'.
But even
with the amendments the princ iples are inval id, for the reaso
ns given in
the text, and other s.
It is not disco neert ing that princ iples of this type do not
work.
It would be sad to see yet anoth er area lost to the expe
rts, ethic s to
actua ries.
14.
See Shrad er-Fr echet te, p. 15.
15.
Goodin . p. 433.
16.
The argum ent is elabo rated in ESP.
17.
For some of the more philo sophi cally impor tant mate rial on
alter nativ e nonco nsum eristi c
$OCi al arran geme nts and lifes tyles , see
work cited in V. and R. Routl ey, 'Soci al theor ies, self manag
ement and
envir onme ntal probl ems' in M,nni son et al, where a begin ning
ia made
on worki ng out ~
of alter nativ ••• thoaa of a plura listic anarchism.
••t
�flA-t fn
18.
l ·.:.
The~
situa tion of the world 's tropi cal rainf orest s is
expla ined in, for insta nce, My~ra; the reaso ns are untan gled
in R. and V.
Routl ey 'World rainf orest destr uctio n - the socia l cause s'
(avai lable from
the autho rs).
19·.
For a fulle r accou nt of the Dominant Socia l Parad igm and
its
rival , the Alter nativ e Envir onme ntal Parad igm, see Cotgr
ovean d Duff, espec ially
the table on p. 341 which encap sulate s '
' the main
assum ption s
of the respe ctive parad igms; compare also Catto n and Dunla
p, espec ially p. 33.
Contemporary varia nts on the Dominant Socia l Parad igm are
consi dered in ESP •
..,
The shallo w/dee p contr ast as appli ed to ecolo gical posit ions,
which
is an impor tant component of the parad igm conf lict, was introd
uced by Naess .
For furth er expla natio n of the contr ast and of the large r
array of ecolo gical
posit ions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routl ey, 'Huma
n chauv inism and
~
envir onme ntal ethic s' in Mannison '------'"'et al, and the refer
ences there cited ,
espec ially to Rodman's work.
20.
The more elabo rate afgum ent of ESP sets the nucle ar debat
e in the
conte xt of parad igm confl ict. But it is also argue d that,
even withi n
assum ptions framework of the ~,min ant Socia l Parad igm and
its varia nts,
Ti. Nucle ar develo pmen t is no,~ the ratio nal choic e among
energ y optio ns.
The main argument put up for n\Jcle ar devel opme nt withi n the
framework of
the dominant parad igm is an Ec~,nomic growth argum ent. It
is the follow ing
I'
versi on of the Light s-goin g-ou~; argument (with economic growt
h duly stand ing
in for mate rial wealt h, and fo~r what is valua ble!) :- Nucle
ar power is
neces sary to susta in economic $rowt h. Economic growt h is
desir able (for
all the usual reaso ns, e.g. to incre ase the size of the pie,
to postp one
redis tribu tion probl ems, etc.) . There fore nucle ar power
is desir able.
The first premi ss is part of US energ y polic y (see Shrad
er-Fr echet te, p.111 ),
and the secon d prem iss ia suppl ied by stand ard economics
textb ooks. But both
premi sses are defec tive, the secon d becau se what is valua
ble in economic
growth can be achie ved by (not witho ut growt h but) selec tive
economic
growt h, which jettis ons the heavy socia l and envir onme
ntal costs carri ed
by unqu alifie d economic growt h. More to the point , since
the secon d premi ss
is an assum ption of the Dominant Parad igm, the first premi
ss (or rathe r an
appro priate and less vulne rable restat emen t of it) fails
even by Dominant
Paradigm stand ards. For of cours e nucle ar power is not neces
sary given
that there are other , perha ps costl ier alter nativ es. The
premi ss usual ly
defen doJ is some elabo ration of the prem iae: Nucle ar power
is the
econo mical ly beat way to auata in economic arowth. 'econ omica
lly beat'
�be ing fill ed out as 'mo at eff icie nt',
'che ape st', 'hav ing the most favo urab
le
ben efit -co st rat io', etc~ Unf oitu nate
ly for the argu men t, and for nuc lear
development sche mes , nuc lear power is
none of thes e thin gs dec isiv ely (un
less a
good dea l of economic che atin g - easy
to do - is don e).
Tii .
'
pro per Dominant Para digm acc oun ting ,
nuc lear cho ices sho uld
gen era l ly be reje cte d, both as priv ate
uti lity inve stm ents and as
pub lic cho ices .
On
Nuc lea r dev elop men t is not eco nom ical
ly via ble but has bee n kep t goin g, not
by cle ar economic via bili ty, butr by mas
sive sub sidi zati on of sev era l typ es
(dis cus sed in Shr ade r-Fl ech ette ~, Gyorgy
and Nader & Abb otts ).
Even on var ian ts of ~;he Dominant Para
digm , nuc lear dev elop men t is
not jus tifi ed, as con side rati on of dec
isio n theo ry methods wil l rev eal:
Til i.
rej cted ,
Whatever reas ona ble 4ec iaio n rule is
ado pted , the nuc lear cho ice is
as the argu men ts of Goodin on alte rna
tive dec isio n rule s help to show.
What sus tain s the nuc lear jug ger nau t
is not the Dominant Para digm
~r i ts var ian ts, but con tem pora ry cor
por ate cap ital ism (or its sta te ent erp
rise
image ) and as soc iate d thir d wor ld imp
eria lism , aa the his tor ica l det ails of
nuc lear
<lev elopmen t both in dev elop ed cou ntri
es and in less dev elop ed cou ntri es mak
es pla i .
(for main det ails , see Gyorgy p. 307
ff.) . And the pra ctic es of con tem pora
ry
corp ora te cap ital ism and ass oci ated imp
eria liam are not acc epta ble by the
sta nda rds of eith er of the Paradigms
or the ir var ian t&: they are cer tain
ly
no t eth ica lly acc epta ble.
�•
.• .
·•
REFERENCES USED
Works esp eci ally use ful for fur the
r inv est iga tion of the e.th ica l issu
ea
rais ed by nuc lea r dev elop men t are
ind ica t_ed wit h an ast eri sk (*) .
S. Cot gro ve and A. Duf f, "En viro nme
ntal ism , mid dle -cla ss rad ica lism and
po liti cs' , Soc iolo gic al Review 28(
2) (1980), 333 -51 .
W.R . Cat ton , Jr. , and R. E. Dun lap,
'A new eco log ica l par adig m for pos
t
exu ber ant soc iolo gy' American Beh avi
ora l Sci ent ist 24 (19 80) .
15- 47.
For Rep ort : Ranger Uranium Env iron
men tal Inq uiry Fir st Rep ort,
Au stra lian Government Pub lish ing Ser
vic e, Can ber ra, 1977.
*R. E. Goodin, "No moral nuk es', Eth
ics 90 (19 80) , 417-49.
*A. Gyorgy and fri' end s,
No Nukes : eve ryo ne's gui de to nuc
lea r pow er,
Sou th End Pre ss, Bos ton , Ma ss., 197
9.
*n .
Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Rou tley
(ed ito rs) , Env iron men tal Phi los~ phy
,
RSSS, Au stra lian Nat ion al Un ive rsit
y, 198 0.
N. Myers, The Sin kin g Ark,
Pergamon Pre ss, Oxf ord , 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abb otta , The Menace
of Atomic Ene rgy ,
Me lbou rne, 1977.
Outback Pre ss,
*K. S. Shr ade r-F rec het te, Nuclear
Power and Pub lic Pol icy ,
1980.
Rei del , Dor dre cht ,
R. and V. Rou tley , 'Nu clea r energy
and obl igat ion tJ to the fut ure ', Inq
uiry
21 (19 78) , 133-79.
�
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Richa rd and Val Rout ley
1.
NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS 1
One hardl y needs initi ation into the dark myst eries
of
nucle ar phys ics to cont ribut e usefu lly to the deba
te now
wide ly ragin g over nucle ar powe r. While many impo
rtant
empi rical ques tions are still unres olved , these do
not
reall y lie at the centr e of the contr over sy. Inste
ad,
it is a deba te abou t value s .•.
many of the ques tions which arise are socia l and
ethic al
ones .2
I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.
A long dista nce coun try
trai n has just pulle d out. The train which is crowd
ed carri es both
passe ngers and freig ht. At an early stop in the
journ ey someone consi gns as
fr e ight, to a far dista nt desti natio n, a packa ge
which conta ins a highl y
toxic an d explo sive gas. This is packe d in a very
thin conta iner which , as
t he consi gner is awar e, may well not conta in the
gas for the full dista nce
f or whi ch it is consi gned , and certa inly will not
do so if the train shou ld
s t r i ke any real troub le, for exam ple, if the train
shou ld be dera iled or
i nvo l ved in a colli sion , or if some passe nger sh:>u
ld inter fere inad verte ntly
or de liber ately with the freig ht, perha ps tryin g
to stea l some of it. All
o f these sorts of thing s have happe ned on some previ
ous journ eys~ If the
co ntain er shoul d break the resu lting disa ster would
proba bly kill at least
some of the peop le on the train in adjac ent carri
ages , while othe rs could
be maimed ~or poiso ned or soon er or later incur serio
us disea ses.
Most of us would round ly condemn such an actio n.
What migh t the cons igner
of the parc el say to try to justi fy it? He migh
t say that it is not certa in
that the gas will escap e, or that the world needs
his prod uct and it is his
duty to supp ly it, or that in any case he is not
respo nsibl e for the train
or the peop le on it. These sorts of ~xcu ses howe
ver would norm ally be seen
as ludic rous when set in this conte xt. Unfo rtuna
tely, simi lar excu ses are
o ;,...:'. ~ f'\ o t- s "
99• ole~~ seen when the cons igner , again a
(resp onsib le) busin essm an.pu ts his
wor kers' healt h or other peop les' welf are at risk.
Suppo se he says that it is his own and othe rapr essin
g needs which justi fy
his actio n. The company he cont rols, which produ
ces the mate rial as a by-p rodu ct,
i s in bad finan cial stra its, and could not affor d
to produ ce a bette r cont ainer
even if it knew how to make one. If the company
fails , he and his famil y
wi ll suffe r, his empl oyees will lose their jobs and
have to look for othe rs,
aP.d the whole company town, throu gh loss of spend
ing, will be worse off. The
poor and unem ploye d of the town, whom he would other
wise have been able to help ,
will suffe r espe ciall y. Few peop le would acce pt
such groun da as justi ficat ion.
Even where there are serio us risks and costs to ones
elf or some group for whom
one is conce rned one is usua lly cons idere d not to
be entit led to simp ly
trans fer the heavy burde n of those risks and costs
onto othe r uninv olved parti es,
espe ciall y where they arise from one's own, or one's
grou p's chose n life- style .
The matte r of nucle ar waste has many mora l featu res
which resem ble the
train case. How fitti ng the analo gy is will becom
e appa rent as the argum ent
prog resse s. There is no known prove n safe way to
packa ge the high ly toxic
waste s gene rated by the nucle ar plan ts that will
be sprea d aroun d the world as
large -scal e nucle ar devel opme nt goes ahead .
The waste probl em will be much
more serio us than that gene rated by the 50 or so
react ors in use at prese nt,
with each one of the 2000 or so react ors envis aged
by the end of the centu ry
produ cing, on avera ge, annu al waste s conta ining 1000
times the radio activ ity
of the Hiros hima bomb. Much of this waste is extre
mely toxic . For exam ple,
a milli onth of a gramme of pluto nium is enoug h to
induc e a lung canc er. A leak
of even a part of the waste mate rial could invol ve
much loss of life, wide sprea d
disea se and gene tic dama ge, and conta mina tion of
innnense areas of land. Wast es
will inclu de the react ors them selve s, which will
have to be aband oned after their
expe cted life times of perha ps 40 year s, and whic
h, some have estim ated, may
requ ire U~ milli on y~ars to reach safe leve ls of
radio activ ity.
Nucl ear waste s must be kept suita bly isola ted from
the envir onme nt for
their entir e activ e lifet ime. For fissi on prod ucts
the requ ired stora ge perio d
avera ges a thous and years or so, and for trans uran
ic elem ents, which inclu de .
pluto nium, there is a half milli on to a milli on year
stora ge probl em. Serio us
probl ems have arise n with both shor t-term and propo
sed long- term metho ds of
stora ge , even with the comp arativ ely ~mal l quan tities
of waste produ ced over
th last twent y years . Shor t-term metho ds
of stora ge requ ire conti nued human
inter vent ion, while propo sed longe r term metho ds
are subje ct to both human inter feren ce and risk of leaka ge throu gh non-human facto
rs.
No one with even a sligh t know ledge of
the geolo gical and clim atic histo ry
of the earth over the last milli on year s, a perio
d whose fluct uatio ns in clim ate
we are only just begin ning to guage and which has
seen four Ice Ages , could be
confi dent that a rigor ous guara ntee of safe stora
ge could be provi ded for
the vast perio d of time invol ved. Nor does the histo
ry of human affa irs over the
last 3000 years give groun d for confi denc e in safe
stora ge by metho ds requ iring
human inter vent ion over perha ps a milli on year s.
Propo sed long- term stora ge meth ods
such as stora ge in gran ite form ation s or in salt
mine s, are large ly spec ulati ve
and relat ively unte sted, and have alrea dy prove d
to invol ve diffi culti es with
attem pts made to put them into prac tice. Even as
regar ds expe nsive recen t
prop osals for first embe dding conc entra ted wast es
in glass and enca psula ting the
resu lt in mult ilaye red meta l conta iner• befor e rock
depo sit, aimu latio n mode l•
,
J,
3.
revea l that radio activ e mate rial may not remai n suita bly
isola ted from human
envir onm ents. - In short , the best prese nt stora ge propo
sals carry very real
poss ibilit ies of irrad iatin g futur e peopl e and damaging
their enviro nmen t. 3
Given the heavy costs which could be invol ved for the
futur e, and given
the known limit s of techn ology , it is metho dolog ically unsou
nd to bet, as
nucle ar natio ns have, on the disco very of safe proce dures
for stora ge of waste s.
Any new proce dures (requ ired befor e 2000) will proba bly
be but varia tions on
not. only have
prese nt propo sals, and subje ct to the same inade quaci_e s.
For insta nce,/ none
of the propo sed metho ds for safe stor age~ been prope
rly teste d, but they
may well prove to invol ve unfor eseen diffi culti es and risks
when an attem pt is
made to put them into pract ice on a comm ercial scale .
Only a method that
could provi de a rigor ous guara ntee of safet y over the stora
ge perio d, that
place d safet y beyond reaso nable doubt , would be accep table
. It is diffi cult
to see how -such rigor ous guara ntees could be given conce
rning eithe r the
geolo gical or futur e human facto rs. But even if an econo
mical ly viabl e,
rigor ously safe long term stora ge met~ d could be devis ed,
there is the proble m
of guara nteein g that it would be unive rsally and invar iably
used. The
assum ption that it would be (espe cially if, as appea rs
likel y, such a method
prove d expen sive econo mical ly and polit icall y) seems to
presu ppose a level of
effic iency , perfe ction , and conce rn for the futur e which
has not previ ously
been encou ntered in human affai rs, and has certa inly not
been consp icuou s in
the nucle ar indus try.
The risks imposed on the futur e by proce eding with nucle
ar devel opme nt are,
then, signi fican t. Perha ps 40,00 0 gener ation s of futur e
peopl e could be force d
to bear signi fican t risks resul ting from the provi sion
of the (extra vagan t)
energ y use of only a small propo rtion of the peopl e of
10 gener ation s.
Nor is the risk of direc t harm from the escap e or misus
e of radio activ e
mate rials the only burde n the nucle ar solut ion impos es
on the futur e. Becau se
the energ y provi ded by nucle ar fissio n is merel y a etop
gap, it seems proba ble
that in due cours e the same proble m, that of making a trans
ition to renew able
sourc es of energ y, will have to be faced again by a futur
e popu lation which will
proba bly, again as a resul t of our actio ns, be very much
worse place d to cope
with it.
Their world will most likel y be a world which is serio usly
deple ted
of non-r enewa ble resou rces, and in which such renew able
resou rces as fores ts
and soils as remai n, resou rces which inevi tably form an
impo rtant part of the
basis of life, are run-down or destr oyed. Such point s
tell again st the idea
that futur e peopl e must be, if not direc t bene ficiar ies
of energ y from nucle ar
fissio n, at least indir ect bene ficiar ies.
(
The "solu tion" then is to buy time for conte mpora ry socie
ty at a price
.which not only creat es serio us proble ms for futur e peopl
e but which reduc es
their abili ty to cope with these probl ems. Like the consi
gner in the train
parab le, conte mpora ry indus trial socie ty propo ses, in order
to get itsel f out
of a mess arisin g from its own life- style - the creat ion
of econo mies
depen dent on an abund ance of non-r emwa ble energ y, which
is limit ed in suppl y to pass on costs and risks of serio us harm to other s who
will obtai n no
corre spond ing bene fits. The "solu tion" may enabl e the
avoid ance of some
uncom fortab le chang es in the lifeti me of those now livin
g and their imme diate
desce ndant s, just as the consi gner• • actio n avoid s uncom
foriab le chang es for
him and those in his imme diate surro undin gs, but at the
expen se of passi ng
heavy burde ns to other uninv olved parti es whose oppo rtunit
y to lead decen t
lives may be serio usly jeopa rdise d.
If we apply to the nucle ar situa tion the stand ards of behav
iour and moral
princ iples gener ally ackno wledg ed (in princ iple, if not
so often in fact) in
the ·conte mpora ry world , it is not easy to avoid the concl
usion that nucle ar
devel opme nt invol ves injus tice with respe ct to the futur
e on a grand scale .
There appea r to be only two plaus ible ways of tryin g to
avoid such a concl usion .
First , it might be argue d that the moral princ iples and
oblig ation s which we
ackno wledg e for the conte mpora ry world and perha ps the
imme diate futur e do not
apply to those in the non-im media te futur e. Secon dly,
an attem pt might be
made to appea l to overr iding circu mstan ces; for to rejec
t the consi gner' s
actio n in the circum stanc es outlin ed is not to imply that
there are no
circum stanc es in which such an actio n might be justi fiabl
e. As in the case
of the consi gner .of the packa ge there is a need to consi
der what these
justif ying circum stanc es might be, and wheth er they apply
in the prese nt case.
We consi der these possi ble escap e route s for the propo
nent of nucle ar
develo pmen t in turn.
l
II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
./
I
I
The espec ially probl emati c area
is that of the dista nt (i.e. non-im media te) futur e, the
futur e with which
peopl e alive today will have no direc t conta ct; by comp
arison , the imme diate
futur e gives fewer proble ms for most ethic al theor ies.
In fact the quest ion
of oblig ation s to futur e peopl e prese nts tests which a
number of ethic al theor ies
fail to pass, and also has serio us reper cussi ons in polit
ical philo sophy as
regar ds the adequ acy of accep ted (demo cratic and other )
insti tutio ns which do
not take due accou nt of the inter est• of futur e creat ures.
\ r
Moral phil osop hers have , pred icta bly, diff
ered on ques tion s of obli gati ons
to dist ant futu re crea ture s. A good many
of the phil osop hers who have exp lici tly
cons ider ed the ques tion have come down in
favo ur of the same cons ider atio n
bein g give n to the righ ts and inte rest s of
futu re peop le as to thos e of
cont emp orary or imm edia tely futu re peop le.
Othe rs fall into thre e cate gori es:
thos e who ackn owle dge obli gati ons to the futu
re but who do not take them
seri ousl y or who assi gn them a less er weig
ht, thos e who deny , or who are
com mitte d by thei r gene ral mora l posi tion
to deny ing, that ther e are mor al
obli gati ons beyond the imm edia te futu re, and
thos e who come down, with
adm irab le phil osop hica l caut ion, on both side
s of the issu e, but with the
weig ht of the argu men t favo urin g the view
unde rlyin g prev ailin g economic
and poli tica l inst itut ions , that ther e are
no mora l obli gati ons to the futu re
beyond thos e perh aps to the next gene ratio
n.
Acco rdin g to the most extre me of thes e posi
tion s agai nst mora l obli gati ons to
the futu re, our beha viou r with resp ect to
the futu re is mor ally unco nstra ined ~
ther e are no mora l rest rict ions on acti ng
or fail ing to act deri ving from the
effe ct of our acti ons on futu re peop le. Of
thos e phil osop hers who say, or whose
view s impl y that we do not have obli gati ons
to the (non -imm edia te) futu re, many
have base d this view on acco unts of mora l
obli gati on which are buil t on
rela tion s which pres uppo se some degr ee of
temp oral or spa tial con tigu ity. Thus ,
mora l obli gati on is seen as pres uppo sing vari
ous rela tion s whic h coul d not hold
betw een peop le wide ly sepa rate d in time (or
some time s in spac e). Let us call
the posi tion that we have no obli gati ons to
(dis tant ) futu re peop le the Nocon stra ints posi tion .
Among sugg este d base s or grou nds of mora l
obli gati on for the pos itio n,
which would rule out obli gati ons to the nonimm edia te futu re, are thes e.
Firs tly. ther e are thos e acco unts whic h requ
ire that someone to whom a mora l
obli gati on is held be able to claim his righ
ts or enti tlem ent. Peop le in the
dist ant futu re will not be able to claim righ
ts and enti tlem ents agai nst us,
and of cour se they can do noth ing to enfo rce
any claim s they migh t have
agai nst us. Seco ndly , ther e are thos e acco
unts whic h base mora l obli gati ons
on soci al or lega l conv enti on, for exam ple
a conv entio n whic h would requ ire
puni shm ent of offe nder s or at leas t some kind
of soci al enfo rcem ent. But
plai nly thes e and othe r conv entio ns will not
be inva rian t over chan ge in soci ety
and amendment of lega l conv enti ons; henc e
they will not be inva rian t over time .
Also futu re peop le have no way of enforcin
& thei r inte rest s or puni shin g
off~ ndin g pred eces aora .
\
I
i
_L
The No-cons traints view is a very difficu lt one to sustain . Conside r, for
example , a scienti fic group which, for no particu lar reason other than to test a
particu lar piece of technolo gy, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a
triggeri ng device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its
despatch .
No present ly living person and none of their immedia te descend ants
would be affected , but the populat ion of the earth in the distant future would
be wiped out as a direct and predicta ble result of the action. The ·Ho-con straints
position clearly implies that this is an accepta ble moral enterpr ise, that
whateve r else we might legitim ately criticiz e in the scienti sts' experim ent
(perhaps its being over-ex pensive or badly designed ) we cannot lodge a moral
protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-cons traints
position also endorse s as morally accepta ble the followin g sorts of policy: I
A firm discove rs it can make a handsome profit from mining, process ing and
manufac turing a new type of materia l which, although it ca~ses no problem for
present people or their immedia te descend ants, will over a period of hundred s
of years decay into a substan ce which will cause an enormous epidemi c of cancer
among the inhabita nts of the earth at that time. Accordi ng to the Ko-con straints
view the firm is free to act in its own interes ts, without any conside ration
for the harm it does remote future people.
Such countere xamples to the NQ-con straints position , which are easily
varied and multipl ied, might seem childlis hly obvious . Yet this view is far
from being a straw man; not only have several philosop hers endorsed this
position , but it is a clear implica tion of many current ly popular views of the
basis of moral obligat ion, as ~eli as of prevaili ng economic theory. It seems
that those who opt for the No-con straints position have not conside red such
example s, despite their being clearly implied by their position . We suspect
that {we certain ly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits
such countere xamples , that without any constra ints we are free to cause
pointles s harm for example , most of those who opted for this position would
want to assert that it was not what they intended . What many of those who have
put forward the No-con straints posit ion~ to have had in mind (in denying
moral obligat ion) is rather that future people can look after themsel ves, that
we are not respons ible for their lives. The popular view that the future can
take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally indepen dent of the
present . But it is not. It is not as if, in the countere xample cases or in
the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself.
Present people are influenc ing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of
the same sorts of moral respons ibilitie s as they do in causally affectin g the
present and immediate future, a.oat notably the obligat ion to take account in
7.
'what they do of peop le affec ted and their inter ests,
to be care ful in their
ac tions , to take accou nt of the genu ine prob abili ty
of their actio ns causi ng
harm, and to sec that they do not act so as to rob
futur e peop le of the chnnc c
of a good life.
Furth ermo re, to say that we are not resp !~ibl e for
the lives of futur e
peop le does not amount to the same thing as sayin g
that we are free to do as we
like with respe ct to them. In just the same way,
the fact that one does not
have or has not acqu ired an oblig ation to some stran
ger with whom one has neve r
been invol ved does not imply that one is free to do
what one likes with respe ct
to him, for example to rob him or to serio usly harm
him when this could be
avoid ed.
V
These diffi culti es for the No-c onstr aints posi tion
resu lt in part
becau se of a failu re to make an impo rtant disti nctio
n. Some of our
oblig ation s to othe rs arise becau se we have volu ntari
ly enter ed into some
a greem ent with them - for exam ple, we have made a
prom ise. Othe r oblig ation s,
howe ver, such as our duty not to damage or harm some
one, do not assume that
an agree ment has been struc k betwe en us. Let us call
oblig ation s of the
f ormer kind acqu ired oblig ation s and those of the
latte r unac quire d oblig ation s.
There is a cons idera ble diffe renc e in the type of
resp onsi bilit y asso ciate d with
each. In the case of acqu ired oblig ation s resp onsi
bilit y arise s becau se one
s hould do some thing which one can fail to do, e.g.
keep a prom ise. In the
case of unac quire d dutie s resp onsi bilit y arise s as
a resu lt of being a caus al
ag ent who is aware of the conse quen ces or prob able
conse quen ces of his actio n,
a resp onsi bilit y that is not depen dent on one's havin
g perfo rmed some act in
the past (e.g. , made a prom ise).
Our oblig ation s to futur e peop le clear ly
are ,una cqui red. not acqu ired oblig ation s, a fact
the No-c onstr aints posi tion
~
simpl y fails to take into acco unt. These oblig ation
s arise as a resu lt of our
abili ty to produ ce caus al effec ts of a reaso nably
pred ictab le natu re, whet her
on our cont emp orar ies~ on those in the dista nt
futur e.
Thus , to retur n to
the train para ble, the cons igner cann ot argue in justi
ficat ion of his actio n
that he has. for exam ple, neve r assumed or acqu ired
resp onsi bilit y for the
passe ngers . that he does not know them and there fore
has no love or symp athy for
them and that they are not part of his mora l comm
unity; in shor t, that he has
acqu ired no oblig ation , and baa no apec ial oblig ation
• to help them. All that
v
t '
r .
".
one needs to argue conce rning the train , and in the nucle
ar case, is that there
are moral oblig ation s again st impos ing harm ~ ~ ~·~
which are not speci ally
oblig atiq9 s to the dista nt
acqui red. Nor can this claim be rebut ted by the all
prete nce tha:,( tutur e i~vo1 ve
heroi c self sacri fice, somet hing "abov e and beyon d" what
is norm ally requi red.
One is no more engag ing in heroi c self sacri fice by not
forcin g futur e peopl e
into an unvia ble life posit ion or by refra ining from causi
ng them direc t harm
than the consi gner is resor ting to heroi c self sacri fice
in refra ining from
shipp ing the dange rous packa ge on the train .
V
III.
ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evadi
ng these
diffi culti es the No-c onstr aints posit ion may be quali fied
rathe r than wholl y
aband oned. Accor ding to the Quali fied posit ion we are
not entir ely uncon strain ed
wi th respe ct to the dista nt futur e. There are oblig ation
s, even to dista nt futur e
peopl e, but these are not so impor tant as those to the
prese nt, and the inter ests
of dista nt futur e peopl e canno t weigh very much in the
scale again st those of
the prese nt and imme diate futur e. The inter ests of futur
e peopl e then, excep t
in unusu al cases , count for very much less than the inter
ests of prese nt
peopl e. Hence such thing s aa nucle ar devel opme nt and vario
us explo itativ e
activ ities which bene fit prese nt peopl e shoul d proce ed,
even if peopl e of the
dista nt futur e are (somewhat) disad vanta ged by them.
The Quali fied posit ion appea rs to be widel y held and is
impli cit in
preva iling economic theor ies, where the posit ion of a decre
ase in weigh t of
futur e costs and bene fits (and so of futur e inter ests)
is obtai ned by
appli catio n over time of a disco unt rate, so disco untin g
costs and risks to
.
aM- a...-pi~ ~ \ -4 .
futur e peopl e. The attem pt to apply econo mics as a moral
theor y, -eeme th'-t
that is becoming incre asing ly common, can lead the~ to
the Quali fied posit ion.
What is objec tiona ble in such an appro ach is that econo
mics must opera te withi n
the bounds of ackno wledg ed non-a cquir ed moral cons train
ts, just as in pract ice
it opera tes withi n legal const raint s. What econo
mics canno t legiti mate ly do is
determ ine what these const raint s are. There are, moreo
ver, alter nativ e econo mic
theor ies and simpl y to adopt . witho ut furth er ado, one which
disco unts the futur e,
givin g much less impor tance to the inter ests of futur e
peopl e, is to beg all
the quest ions at issue .
Among the argum ents that econo mists offer for gener ally
disco untin g
the futur e, the most threa dbare is based on the Rosy -futur
e assum ption , that
futur e gener ation s will be bette r off than prese nt ones
(and so bette r place d
to handl e the waste probl em). Since there is moun ting
evide nce that futur e
gener ation s may wel l~ be bette r off th,Z prese nt ones,
espec ially in thing s
that matte r, no argum ent for disco untin g the inter ests
of futur e gener ation s
on this basis can carry much weigh t. For the waste proble
m to be hande d dovn
V
I
to the futur e gener ation s, it would have to be shown, what
recen t economic
progr ess hardl y justi fies, that futur e gener ation s will
be not just bette r off
but so much bette r off that they can (easi ly)ca rry and
contr ol the nucle ar
freig ht.
A more plaus ible argum ent for disco untin g, the Oppo rtunit
y-cos t argum ent,
build s direc tly
on the notio n of oppo rtunit y cost. It is argue d from the
fact
that a dolla r gaine d now is worth much more than a dolla
r receiv ed in the nonimme diate futur e (beca use the first dolla r could meanw hile
be inves ted at
compound inter est}, that disco untin g is requi red to obtai
n equiv alent mone tary
value s. This same line of reaso ning is then appli ed to
the alloc ation of
re sourc es. Thus, comp ensati on - which,___1s what the waste
proble m is taken to come
to econo mical ly - cost~ much less now than later , e.g. a
few penni es set aside
1-1:>V
(e.g. in a trust fund ).the futur e, if need be, will suffi
ce to comp ensate
event ually for any ~ctim s of remot e radio activ e waste
leaka ge. Two proble ms
~ First , there are,
beset this appro ach.
prese ntly at least , insurm ounta ble
pract ical diffi culti es about apply ing such disco untin g.
We simpl y do not know
how to determ ine appro priate futur e disco unt rates . A
more serio us objec tion is
that the argum ent depen ds on a false assum ption. It is
not true that value , or
damages, can alway s be conve rted into mone tary equiv alent
s. There is no clear
"mon etary comp ensati on" for a varie ty of damag es, inclu ding
cance r, loss of
life, a lost speci es.
The disco untin g theme , however argue d for, is inade quate
, becau se it
leads back in pract ice to the No-c onstr aints posit ion.
The reaso n is that
disco untin g impos es an" economic horiz on"
beyond which nothi ng need be
consi dered , since any costs or bene fit which might arise
are, when disco unted
back to the prese nt, negli gible .
A diffe rent argum ent fot the Quali fied posit io~. the Prob
abilit ies argum ent,
avoid s the objec tions from cases of certa in damage throu
gh appea l to proba bility
consi derat ions. The dista nt futur e, it is argue d, is much
more uncer tain than the
prese nt and imme diate futur e, so that prob abili ties are
conse quent ly lower ,
perha ps even appro achin g or coinc iding with zero for any
hypot hesis conce rning
the dista nt futur e. Thus, the argum ent conti nues, the -inter
ests of futur e
peopl e must (apar t from excep tiona l cases where there is
an unusu ally high degre e
of certa inty} count for (very much) less than those of
prese nt and neigh bouri ng
peopl e where (much') highe r prob abili ties are attac hed.
So in the case of
confl ict betwe en the prese nt and the futur e, where it is
a quest ion of weigh ing
certa in bene fits to the peopl e of the prese nt and the imme
diate futur e again st
a much lower proba bility of indet ermin ate coats to an indet
ermin ate number of
V
assuming anything like similar costs and benefit s were involve d.
is however
badly flawed.
The argumen t
Firstly , probab ilities involvin g distant
future situatio ns are not always less than those concern ing the immedia te
'"'tt..N ~ ~ -~ -q Nat l'-.Now wJ~a..+. ~,NA. «f ~~e J~N f2.(;.~ ~L of. ~~ft.. - ~ t~( _d-'z..,ve.. , ~ 1t:e..
future in the way the argumen t suppose s.AMor eove)th e outcome s of some moral
problem s often
do not depend on a high level of probabi lity.
.
In many cases it
is enough, as the train parable reveals , that a signific ant risk is created ;
such cases do not depend critica lly on high probabi lity assignm ents.
Nor,
of course, can it be assumed that anything like similar ly weighte d costs and
benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especia lly if it is a question of
risking poisonin g some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequ ent risk of serious harm to· thousand s of generat ions of future people,
in order to obtain quite doubtfu l, or even trivial , benefit for some present peopl
jin the shape of the opportu nity to continu e (unnece ssarily) shigh
energy use.
And even
if
the costs and benefit s were compara ble or evenly weighte d, such
an argumen t would be defectiv e, since an analogo us argumen t would show that
the consign er's action in the train parable , is accepta ble provided the benefit
(e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposin g signific ant risks on ·
other people) was sufficie ntly large.
Such a cost-be nefit approac h to moral and decisio n problem s, with or
without the probabi lity frills,
is quite inadequ ate when differe nt parties
are involved or when cases of conflic t of interes t involvin g moral obligat ions
are at issue.
permiss ible
s
For example , such a cost-be nefit approac h would imply that it is
for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocen t party
provided only that the company stands to make a sufficie ntly large gain from it,
that costs to some
group
are more than morally
larger benefit s to another group.
compens ated for by
But costs or benefit s are not legitim ately
transfer red in any simple way from one group to another .
The often
appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefit s . you have to accept
the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefit •
then~ have to accept the coat• (or aome of theDJ at leaat)"
i• another an_d_ _ __
//
very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is
not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significa nt kind arising
fro~ an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties whQ are not involved
in the activity and are not beneficia ries. 6 This Transfer -limiting principle
is especiall y clear in cases
of whiea e
thalidomide rnaoufact u~ias and
mark.eti.Ag eompany J:9 or.a.,.. where the significa nt costs include an effect
on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitti qg
-
e. -1, J
-tt.. e ~ ~ "" {
party is of a noncrucia l or dispensib le nature/\ The principle is of
o ~f'(.,v,._{ ,~
fundamen tal importanc e in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again
~
c.
ta
it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other
liabiliti es of nuclear developm ent, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter
of reactor meltdown.
ln particula r, the principle invalidat es the compariso n,
heavily relied on in building a case for the ~cceptab ility of the nuclear risks,
\
between nuclear risks and those from such activitie s as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedl y benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelm ing extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficie aries
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily , their own
lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficia ries at allwho may be just the opposite!
More generally , the distribut ion of costs and damage in such a fashion,
i.e. on to non-bene ficiaries, is a characte ristic of certain serious forms of
po llution, and is among its morally objection able features.
productio n, from nuclear or fossil
pollution .
i mportant necessary condition for energy options:
~
energy option
risks of harm
Large-sca le energy
fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious
Thus from the Transfer -limiting
principle emerges an
To be morally acceptab le
should not involve the transfer of significa nt costs or
~
parties who .!!!.
~
involved,
benefit correspon dingly from!!!.!, energy source.
~
do
~ ~ ~
do
n_
~ ~ ~
t::.-L-~
~
Included in the acope of
c~ @.
this cond ition , which nucl ear deve lopm ent viol
ates , are futu re peop le, i.e.
not mere ly peop le livin g at the pres ent time but
also futu re gene ratio ns (tho se
of the next town s). A furth er coro llary of the
prin cipl e is the Tran smis sion
Prin ciple , that we shou ld not hand the worl d we
have so expl oited on to our
succ esso rs in subs tant ially wors e shap e than we
"rec eive d" it. For if we did
then that would be a sign ifica nt tran sfer of cost
s.
The Tran sfer- limi ting prin cipl e can be deriv ed
from cert ain ethi cal
theo ries (e.g . thos e of a deon tic cast such as
Kan t's and Raw ls') and
from common prec epts (such as the Golden Rule ),
where one serio usly cons iders
putt ing ones elf in anot her's posi tion . But the
prin cipl e is perh aps best
defe nded , on a broa der basi s, indu ctive ly, by
way of exam ples. Supp ose, to
embr oider the train para ble, the company town
deci des to solv e its
disp osal prob lem by ship ping its noxi ous wast e
to anot her town down the line ,
which (like futu re towns) lack s the means to ship
it back or to regi ster due
prot est. The inha bitan ts of this town are then
force d to face the prob lem
eith er of unde rtaki ng the expe nsive and diff icul
t disp osal proc ess or of sustaini ng risk s to thei r own live s and heal th.
Most of us would rega rd this kind
of tran sfer of cost s as mora lly una~ cept able ,
however much the cons igne r's company
town flou rish es.
IV.
UNCERTAINTY AND
INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSI
BILITY.
Many of the argu ment s desig ned to show that we
cann ot be expe cted to take too
much acco unt of the effe cts of our actio ns on
the dist ant futu re appe al to
unce rtain ty. Ther e are two main components to
the Gene ral Unc ertai nty
argu ment , capa ble of sepa ratio n, but freq uent ly
tang led up. Both argu ment s
are mist aken , the firs t, an argum ent from igno
ranc e, on.! prio ri grou nds, the
seco nd on a post erio ri grou nds. The Argument
from igno ranc e conc erned runs as
foll ows :/ In cont rast to the exac t info rmat ion
we can obta in abou t the pr;s ent,
the infor mati on we can obta in abou t the effe cts
of our actio ns on the dist ant
futu re is unre liab le, wool ly and high ly spec ulati
ve. But we cann ot base
asse ssme nts of how we shou ld act on info rmat ion
of this kind , espe ciall y when
IE
accurate informati on is obtainabl e about the present which would indicate
different action.
Therefore we must regretful ly ignore the · uncertain effects of
our actions on the distant future.
ignorance
A striking example of the argument from
at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear
developm ent, which ignore (the extensive ) costs of
7
grounds of uncertain ty. More formally and crudely
waste control on the
the argument concerned is this:
One only has obligatio rts to the future if these obligatio ns are based on
reliable informati on.
distant future.
There is no reliable informati on at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligatio ns to the distant future.
This argument is essential ly a variant on a sceptical argument concernin g
our knowledge of the future (formally , replace 'obligati ons' by 'knowledg e'
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considera bly
overestim ate and overstate the degree of certainty available
with respect to
the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is - required
as the basis for moral considera tion both with respect to the present and with
respect to the future.
Associate d with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp
division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the
adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constrain ts. We can an~ constantl y
such
do act on the basis ofj"unre liable" informati on, which the sceptic as regards the
future convenien tly labels "uncerta inl,,'.
In moral situation s in the present,
assessmen ts of what to do often take account of risk and probabil ity, even quite
low probabil ities.
Consider again the train parable.
We do not need to know
for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact
it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable
than not, in order for us to condemn the consigne r's action.
that there is a significa nt risk of harm
.
It is enough
in this sort of case.
It does not
matter if the decreased well-bein g of the consigner ia certain and that the
......
prospects of the passenger s quite uncertain .
It is wrong to ship the gas.
But
if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constrain ts in contempo rary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
The unwarrant ed insistenc e on certainty as a ·necessary condition before moral
considera tion can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double
standard.
According to the second argument, the Practical -uncertai nty
argument.
even if in theory we have obligatio ns to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future peopl~ into account because uncertain ty about .
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequen ces of actions on it will be.
Therefore , however good our intention s
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests .
Given that moral principle s are characte ristically
of universal implicati onal form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character
then
x
is wrong, for every (action)
sharply thus:
x",
h
the argument may be stated more
We can never obtain the informati on about future actions whicl\.
~
t-~
,< tt a.s c t..tu._ a.. ~~
h J•
would enable us to iea ■ Jh the anteceden t of the implicati on/\ Therefore , even
r.r;
c
if in theory moral principle s do extend to future people, in practice they cannot
be applied to obtain clear conclusio ns.
It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain
that in every case it was impossibl e to determine in any way better than
chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action
would help or hinder future people, then moral principle s, although applicab le
in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusio ns
about how to act.
In this event the distant future would impose no practica l .
moral constrain ts on action.
~
However. the argument is factually incorrect in
as s uming that the future always is ao grossly uncertain or indeterm inate.
Admittedl y -there is often a high degree of uncertain ty concernin g the distant
future, but as a matter of (continge nt) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping •• the argument ha• to •••um•.
There are aome areas where uncertain ty ia
-
not so great as to exclud e const raints on action . For examp le,
we may have
little id ea what the fashio ns will be in a hundre d years or, to
take anothe r
morally -irrel evant factor , what brands of ice cream people will
be eating , if any,
but we do have excel lent reason to believ e, espec ially if we consid
er 3000 years
of histor y, that what people there are in a hundre d years are
likely to have
mater ial and psych ic needs not entire ly unlike our own, that they
will need
a health y biosph ere for a good life; that like us they will not
be immune
to radiat ion; that their welfa re will not be enhanc ed by a high
incide nce of
cancer or geneti c defec ts, by the destru ction of resou rces, or
the elimin ation
from the face of the earth of that wonde rful variet y of non-human
life which at
presen t makes it such a rich and intere sting place. The case
of nuclea r waste
storag e, and of uncer tainty of the effec ts of it on future people
, is onearea where uncer tainty in moral ly releva nt ~espe cts is not so
great as to
preclu de moral const raints on action .
For this sort of reason , the
Pract ical uncer tainty argum ent should be reject ed.
Through the defec ts of the prec~d ing argum ents, we can see the
defec ts in
a number of widely employed uncer tainty argum ents used to write
off proba ble harm
to future people as outsid e the scope of prope r consid eratio n.
Most of these
popula r moves employ both of the uncer tainty argum ents as suits
the case,
switch ing from one to the other.
For examp le, we may be told that we
canno t really take accou nt of future people becaus e we canno t
be sure that they
will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be compl etely
differ ent from
our own, to the point where t.hey will not suffer from our exhau
stion of reso\l rces
or from the things that _would affec t us. But this is to insist
upon compl ete
-
certai nty of a sort beyond what is requir ed for the presen t and
immed iate future ,
where there is also commonly no guaran tee that some disas ter will
not overta ke
those to whom we are moral ly comm itted. Again we may be told
that there is no
guaran tee that future people will be worthy o( any effort s on
our part, becau se
,a-
MOc-CJ. , Ne,,.,i
~v
-fl~ ,v-
they may be morons o/ foreve r plugge d into/\Emjoyment.,
_/--
ef othe
·,
±-ultiR ea
Even
if one is prepar ed to accep t the elitis t approa ch presup posed
- accord ing to which
only those who meet certai n prope rly civili zed or intell ectua l
standa rds are
l
eligib le for moral consid eratio n - what we are being handed in
such argum ents
V
... ..,.
i s again a mere outside possibility.
.
Neither the contemporary nor the historical
situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal
moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility.
We can
contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically
supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline
of
a civilisation through
destruction of its resource base.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
For example, according to the tndeterminacy argument,
the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will
prevent the interest of future peopie being taken into account where there is a
conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less
accurate form?
The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed
quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the
numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but
they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
of the future.
Nor are distributional
problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class
of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would
suggest.
It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the
-
indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to
resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise
answer to every
ethical question.
But, as the train parable again illustrates,
there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder
resolution,
and
cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers
of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The case of nuclear power is like that.
The failure of these various arguments reveals, what can be iodependently
-+- '-"
thelr placement . does noL
ar gued from the universalisability features of moral principles, 8 thatf
disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claimsr ,
tllUU' ,.., ') \trt2r /
below the claima of present people. That ia, we hav, "tbe ••m•
ions
V
/1
to future people as to the presen t;
1
thus there is the same obliga tion to take
accoun t of them and their intere sts in what we do, to be carefu l in our
action s,
to take accoun t of the probab ility (and not just the certain ty) of our action
s
causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do
not act
so as to rob them of what is necessa ry for the chance of _a good life. Uncert
ainty
_,,
and indeter minacy do not relieve us of these obliga tions.
v.
PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION
REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN.
The ethica l problem s with nuclea r power are by no means confine d to waste
storag e
and future creatu res.
entitle ment
Just as remote ness in. time does not er~de obliga tions or
to just treatm ent, neithe r does locatio n in space, or a partic ular
geogra phical positio n.
Hence severa l furthe r problem s arise, to which princip les
and argume nts like those already arrived at in consid ering the waste problem
apply.
For exampl e, if one group (socia l unit,
or state) decide s to dump its
radioa ctive wastes in the territo ry or region of anothe r group, or not to
preven t
its (radioa ctive) polluti on enterin g the territo ry of anothe r group, then
it
impose s risks
and costs on presen tly existin g people of the second group, in
much the way that presen t nuclea r develop ments impose costs and risks on
future people .
There are differe nces howev er:
spatia lly
distan t people
cannot be discou nted in quite the way that future people can be, though
their
Jiie ~~~ o·F-tu
~t..+
.
intere sts and objecti ves/\Nt ?Wlc ignored or overrid den.
People living in the vicini ty of a nuclea r reacto r are subjec t to specia
l
costs and risks.
One is radioa ctive pollut ion, becaus e reacto rs routin ely dischar 1
radioa ctive materi als into the air and water near
Emissio n problem .
the plant : hence the
Such "norma l" emissio n during plant operat ion of low level
radiati on carrie s carcino genic and mutage nic costs.
While there are undoub tedly
costs, the number of cancer s and the precis e extent of geneti c damage induced
by exposu re to such radiati on are both uncert ain.
If our
ethica l princi ples
permit ted free transfe r of coata and riaka from one person to anothe r,
the
ethica l iaaue direct ly raised by nuclea r ••miaa ion•wo uld be:
what extent of
Q__
.......-
.....
cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of
nuclear power, and unde{ what conditions?
Since, however, risks and benefits
are NOT {morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limit ing
principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses
-
for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion~ >
And these risks are
real!
v
In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclea ·
power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage/as much as 50 times that
borne by the population at large.
✓
And children living in this region are even more
vulnerable, since they ar~ several times more likely to contract cancer through
exposure than normal adults.
The serious costs to these people cannot be
justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could
be obtained without these costs.
Thus it is not just complacent to say 'It's
a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioner s
' make life comfprtable'.
~~e+,~
For such benefits to some as airconditioner~
provide,~which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of
buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer.
Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the
+£«-0:sc w~ \,14 e close ~ Nu<.. (e..a.,R,. pt~~
imposition of radiation ~ d i H - most of whom have no genuine voice
in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without
~\ \
serious losses - is really quite ,'right is the Doubling argument. ~ccording
I
to the US Atomic Energy Commission, "ho dcployud dU.&i nr• it is pennissfble
to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a
population ha$
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument
bei ng that the additional amount (being equivalent
is also
likely to have negligible consequences.
to the "natural" level)
The increased amounts of
radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal,
and, its; claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
;-tTb1s
::J
,"6r
argument is sound.
I,
~er.c
of eh@ seeps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no
ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person'• well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become norm.al for the person, the larger
one will, under euch conditiona, not be.
Finally, what ia or has become norcna_l_, _ _ _~ .
e.g.
two murders or twenty canc ers a day in a give
n city , may be far from
acce ptab le.
/
IJ \
In fact , even the USA, which has very stri ct
stan dard s by compar_ison with
most othe r cou ntrie s with planned nucl ear reac
tors , perm its radi atio n emis sion s
very sub stan tiall y in exce ss of the stan dard
s laid down; so the emis sion
situ atio n is much worse than what cons ider atio
n of the stan dard s would
disc lose . Furt herm ore, the mon itori ng of the
stan dard s "imp osed " is entr uste d to
the nucl ear oper ator s them selv es, scar cely
disi nter este d part ies. Thus pub lic
poli cy is dete rmin ed not so as to guar ante e
pub lic hea lth, but rath er to serv e
as a "pub lic pac ifie r" whil e pub licly -sub sidi
zed priv ate nucl ear oper atio ns
proc eed rela tive ly unhampered? ·
While radi oact ive emis sion s are an ordi nary
feat ure of reac tor ope ratio n,
reac tor breakdown is, hop eful ly, not: offi cial
repo rts even try to make an
acci dent of mag nitud e, as a mat ter of defi niti
on, an 'ext raor dina ry nucl ear
occu rren ce'. But "def init ions " notw iths tand
ing, such acci dent s can happ en,
and almo st have on seve ral occa sion s (the most
noto riou s bein g Thre e Mile Isla nd):
henc e the Core-meltdown prob lem.
If the cool ing and emergency core cool ing syst
ems fail in American (lig ht
wate r) reac tors ,
then the core melt s and 'con tain men t fail ure'
is like ly,
with the resu lt that an area of 40,0 00 squa
re mile s coul d be radi oact ivel y
10
cont amin ated . In the even t of the wors t type
of acci dent in a very sma ll
reac tor, a steam expl osio n in the reac tor vess
el, abou t 45,0 00 peop le would be
kill ed inst antl y and at leas t 100, 000 would
die as a resu lt of the acci den t,
prop erty damages would exce ed $17 bill ion and
an area the size of Penn sylv ania
would be dest roye d. Modern nucl ear reac tors
are abou t five time s the size of
the reac tor for which thes e cons erva tive US
figu res (sti ll the best avai labl e from
11
offi cial sour ces) are give n:
the cons eque nces of a sim ilar acci dent with
a
modern reac tor would acco rdin gly be much grea
ter.
The cons igne r who risk s the live s and well -bei
ng of pass enge rs on the
trai n acts .i nadm issib ly. A government or
gove rnm ent- endo rsed util ity
appe ars to act in a way that doe• not diff er
in mor all;y aign ifica nt resp ect• in
-------~
siti ng a nuc lear rea cto r in a commun
ity, in pla ntin g such a dan gero us pac kag
e on
the "community trai n". More dir ect ly,
the loc atio n of a nuc lear rea cto r in
a
community, even if it sho uld hap pen to
rec eiv e a fav our able ben efit -co st
ana lysi s and oth er economic app rais al,
would vio late such eth ica l requ irem ents
~
as the Tra nsf er-l imi ting prin cip le.
The adv oca tes of nuc lear power hav e,
in eff ect , end eav oure d to avo id
que stio ns of cos t-tr ans fer and equ ity,
by shi ftin g the disp ute out of the
extr aor din ary imp rob abil it't, , V
e thic al aren a and into a tech nol ogi cal
disp ute abo ut eaau~ theJ
of
· 0
r eac tor mal fun ctio n. They hav e argu ed,
in par ticu lar, what con tras ts with the
trai n par able , tha t the re is no rea l
pos sib ilit y of a cata stro phi c nuc lear
v
acc iden t.
Inde ed in the infl uen tial Rassmussen
rep ort - which was ext ens ive ly
used to sup por t pub lic con fide nce in
US nuc lear fiss ion tech nolo gy - an even
stro nge r, an inc red ibly stro ng, imp rob
abil ity clai m was stat ed: nam ely, the
' like liho od of a cata stro phi c nuc lear
acc iden t is so rem ote as to be (alm ost)
imp ossi ble. However, the mat hem atic
al models reli ed upon in this rep ort,
var iou sly call ed "fa ult tree ana lysi s"
and "re liab ilit y esti mat ing tech niq ues
".
are unso und , bec aus e, among oth er thin
gs, they exc lude as "no t cre dib le"
tha t the
pos sib ilit ies tha t may wel l happen in
the rea l wor ld. It is not sur pris ing
, the n,/
methodology and dat a of the rep ort hav
e bee n sou ndly and dec isiv ely crit icis
ed,
or tha t off icia l sup por t for the rep
ort has now been with draw n.12 Mor eov er,
use
of alte rna tive methods and data ind icat
es tha t the re is a rea l pos sib ilit y,
a
non -ne glig ible pro bab ility of a · seri
ous acc ide nt.
In resp ons e it is con tend ed tha t, even
if the re is a non -ne glig ible
\
pro bab ility of a rea cto r acc ide nt. sti
ll tha t is acc epta ble, bein g of no
gre ater ord er than risk s of acc iden ts
tha t are alre ady soc iall y acc epte d.
Here
we enc oun ter aga in tha t insi dio us eng
inee ring app roac h to mor alit y bui lt into
dec isio n models of an economic cas t,
e.g . ben efit -co st bala nce she ets, risk
asse ssm ent mod els, etc . Ris k asse ssm
ent, a sop his tica tion of tran sac tion
or
trad e-o ff mod els, pur por ts to pro vide
a com pari son betw een the rela tive riak
a
atta che d to diff ere nt opt ion s, ••I• ene
rgy otp ion a, whi ch aet tlea the ir
eth ica l stat us.
The foll owi ng assu mpt ions are enc oun
tere d in risk asse ssm ent
as app lied to ene rgy opt ion s:
A
·
If o~io n'.J t_im pos es (co mpa rab le)B osts
B
on few er peo ple than op tio n~
then opt ion ,i_
pre fera ble to opt ion . ;
AL
is
,,_....,_,, .
AH.
Op tion iinv olv es a tota l net cos t in
term s of cos t to peo ple (e.g .
t3J
dea ths, inju ries , etc .) which is less
than tha t of opt ion .wh ich is •~re
ady
acc epte d; the refo re opt ion ~is acc ept
abl ef 3
These assu mpt ions are then app lied as
foll ows .
\....--"
Sin ce 't he number like ly to
eve ntu all' i'
by nuc lear power sta tion cata stro phe
is less !ha n the like ly number
I
kill ed by cig are tte smoking, and sinc
e the risk s of cig are tte smoking are
acc epte d;
it foll ows tha t the risk s of nuc
lear power are acc epta ble. A litt le
refl ect ion
rev eals tha t this sor t of risk asse ssm
ent argument gro ssly vio late s the Tra
nsfe r~
lim itin g prin cip le. In ord er to obt ain
a pro per eth ica l asse ssm ent we need
be kill ed
J
a much full er pic ture , and we need to
know at lea st thes e thin gs: / Do the
cos ts and ben efit s go to the same par
ties ; and is the pers on who vol unt aril
y
und erta kes the risk s also the pers on
who prim aril y rece ives the ben efit s,
as in
driv ing or cig are tte smoking, or are
the cos ts imposed
on oth er par ties who do
not ben efit ? It is only if the par ties
are the same in the cas e of the opt ion
s
l
S vC-t...
compared, and the re are no ~d ist rib
uti on al prob lem s, tha t a com pari son
8ft •-•h
~
would be sou ndly bas ed. Thi s is rare
ly the cas e, and it is not ao in
the case of risk asse ssm ents of ene rgy
opt ion s.
VI.
OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS
AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The prob lem s
alre ady disc uss ed by no means exh aus
t the
env iron men tal, hea lth and safe ty risk
s and cos ts in, or aris ing from , the
nuc lear
fue l cyc le. The ful l fue l cyc le incl
ude s many stag es both bef ore and afte
r
rea ct or ope rati on, apa rt from was te disp
osa l, nam ely, min ing, mil ling , con ver
sion ,
enri chm ent and pre par atio n, rep roc essi
ng spe nt fue l, and tran spo rtat ion of
materia ls. Sev eral of thes e stag es inv
olv e haz ard s. Unl ike the spe cial
"
risk s in the nuc lear cyc le
- of sab otag e of pla nts , of the ft of
fiss ion abl e
mat eria l, and of the furt her pro life rati
on of nuc lear armaments - thes e haz ards
µ
have para llels . if not exac t equi vale nts, in othe
r high ly poll utin g methods of
gene ratin g powe r. e.g. 'wor kers in the uran ium
mini ng indu stry sust ain "the same
risk" of fata l and nonf atal inju ry as work ers
in the coal indu stry '.14 The
prob lems are not uniq ue to nucl ear deve lopm ent.
Othe r soci al and envi ronm enta l prob lems -
thou gh endemic wher e dang erou s
larg e-sc ale indu stry oper ates in soci etie s that
are high ly ineg alita rian and
inclu de sect ors that are far from afflu ent - are
more intim ately linke d with the
nucl ear power cycl e. Though poll utio n is a comm
on and gene rally unde sirab le
component of larg e-sc ale indu stria l oper ation ,
rad~ oact ive poll utio n .suc h
as urani um mini ng for insta nce prod uces . is espe
ciall y a lega cy of nucl ear
deve lopm ent. and a spec ially unde sirab le one,
as rect ifica tion cost s for dead
radi oact ive land s and wate rway s reve al. Though
sabo tage is a thre at to many
larg e indu strie s, sabo tage of a nucl ear reac tor
can have dire cons eque nces ,
of a diffe rent orde r of magn itude from most indu
stria l sabo tage (where core
meltdown is not a poss ibili ty). Though thef t
of mate rial from more dubi ous
ente rpris es such as mun ition s works can pose thre
ats to popu latio ns at larg e
and can assi st terro rism , no thef ts for alleg edly
peac eful ente rpris es pose
prob lems of the same orde r as thef t of fissi onab
le mate rial. No othe r indu stry
prod uces mate rials which so read ily perm it fabr
icati on into such mass ive
expl osiv es. No othe r indu stry is, to sum it up,
so vuln erab le on so many fron ts.
In part to redu ce its vuln erab ility , in part beca
use of its long and
cont inuin g asso ciati on with mili tary acti viti es,
the nucl ear indu stry is subj ect
to, and enco urag es, seve ral prac tices whic h (give
n thei r scal e) run coun ter to
basi c featu res of free and open soci etie s, cruc
ial featu res such as pers onal
libe rty, freedom of asso ciati on and of expr essio
n,an d free acce ss to info rmat ion.
Thes e prac tices inclu de secr ecy, rest ricti on of
info rmat ion, form ation of
spec ial poli ce and guar d forc es, espio nage , curt
ailm ent of civi l libe rtie s.
Alre ady oper ators of nucl ear inst alla tion s are
give n extr aord inar y
powe rs, in vett ing empl oyee s, to inve stiga te the
back grou nd and
acti vitie s not only of empl oyee s but also of thei
r fami lies and
sometimes even of thei r frien ds. The inst alla
tion s them selve s
become armed camps, whic h espe ciall y offe nds Brit
ish sens ibili ties .
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Spe cial Con stab les) Act
of 1976 crea ted a
spec ial armed forc e to guar nucl ear inst alla tion
s aud..made it
answ erab le • • • to the U.K. .. dAtom
ic En• ·
~
'
These devel opme nts, and worse ones in West Germany
and elsew here, presa ge along
with nucle ar devel opme nt incre asing ly auth orita rian
and anti- demo crati c
soci eties . That nucle ar devel opme nt appe ars to force
such poli tical
conse quen ces tells heav ily again st it. Nucl ear devel
opme nt is furth er indic ted
poli tical ly by the direc t conn ectio n of nucle ar powe
r with nucle ar war. It ia
true that ethic al ques tions conc ernin g nucle ar war
- for exam ple, whet her a
nucle ar war is justi fied , or just, unde r any circu msta
nces, and if so what
circu msta nces - are disti ngui shab le from those conc
ernin g nucle ar power.
Undo ubted ly, however, the sprea d of nucle ar power is
subs tanti ally incre asing
the techn ical means for engag ing in nucle ar war and
so, to that exte nt, the
oppo rtuni ty for, and chanc es of, nuc~ ear engagement.
Since nucle ar wars are
neve r accou nted
posi tive good s, but are at best the lesse r of majo r
evils ,
nucle ar wars are alway s high ly ethic ally unde sirab le.
The sprea d of nucle ar
power acco rding ly expan ds the oppo rtuni ty for, and
chanc es of, high ly unde sirab le
conse quen ces. .,.fina l:½) the lac cet, sb irlete a&In g r.huuw
cbancac i'itid Opt111c I Oil I I te:::s,
is Heal f unda sha~ h,
■Rd 'lber efore )wha t
.
leads to it;nu clea r devel opme ntA is
unde sirab le.
This is, in outli ne, the argum ent from nucle ar war
again st
large -scal e nucle ar devel opme nt. 16
t5 F ·~ , ~
ATl"
VII. ,\CONFLICT ARGUMENTS~ JND R5Ila ff!f~ ~1 JN C~
THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF
NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. Much as with _nucle ar war, so
given the cumu lative caTe
again st nucle ar deve lop~e nt, only one
justi ficat ory route rema ins open ,
that of appe al to over ridin g circu msta nces. That appe
al, to be ethic ally
acce ptabl e; must go beyond mere ly economic cons idera
tions . For, as obse rved,
the cons igne r's actio n, in the train para ble, cann ot
be juati fied by pure ly
econ omis tic . argum ents, such as that his prof its would
rise, the company or the
town would be more prosp erous , or by appe aling to the
fact that some poss ibly
unco mfor table chang es would other wise be neede d. So
it is also in the nucle ar
½-12.,
case: ./Tra nsfe r-lim iting princ iple appl ies. But
suppo se now the cons igner argue s
that his actio n ia justi fied becau ae unlea a it 1• taken
the town will die. It ia
✓
i
l
by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient,
especia lly where the risK5 to the passengers is high, since the case still
to
A
amo~ntsione of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict
situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is
alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan c~ses
atica;(where v~fer-limitin g principle is clearly violated. Nuclear development is often defended
in this way, through Conflict arguments, to
the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features,
nevertheless the alternatives are worse.
Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on
competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
i mpose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such
conflict arguments requirESthe presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only
al ternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the
action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument
(for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another
option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in
the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are
even worse than the option itself.
A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of industrialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimer,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating
the Transfer-limit ing principle through nuclear development.
The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the
poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is
good evid ence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment
and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of
direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging
substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear energy
is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both
politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires
massive amounts of capital, require• number• of imported acientiata and en2ineera.
---------
~cr eate s negl igibl e loca l employment, and depen
ds for its feas ibili ty upon
large ly non- exist ent utili ty syste ms - e.g. estab
lishe d elec trici ty
trans miss ion syste ms and back- up faci litie s, and suffi
cien t elec trica l
appli ance s to plug into the syste m. Poli tical ly it
incre ases forei gn
depen dence , adds to cent ralis ed entre nche d power and
reduc es the chanc e for
chang e in the oppr essiv e poli tical struc tures which
are a large part of the
probl em.
The fact that nucle ar energ y is not in the inter ests
of the peop le
of the third world does not of cours e mean that it
is not in the inter ests of,
and wante d (ofte n for milit ary purpo ses) by, their
ruler s, the west ernis ed and
often milit ary elite s in whose inter ests the econo
mies of these coun tries are
usua lly organ ised. But that does not make the pove
rty argum ent anyth ing othe r
than what it is: a fraud .
There are well- know n energ y-con servi ng alter nativ es
and the prac tical optio n of deve lopin g furth er alter
nativ e energ y sourc es,
alter nativ es some of which offe r far bette r prosp ects
for helpi ng the poor ,
both in the third world and in indu stria l coun tries
: coal and othe r foss il fuels ,
geoth erma l, and a range of solar optio ns (incl udin
g as well as narro wly sola r
sourc es, wind , wate r and tidal powe r).
Anot her majo r argum ent advan ced to show conf lict,
the Ligh ts-go ingout argum ent, pppe als to a set of supp osedl y over ridin
g and comp eting oblig ation s
to futur e peop le. We have , it is said, a duty to
pass on the immensely
valua ble thing s and insti tutio ns which our cultu re
has devel oP,ed . Unle ss our
high- techn ology , high- energ y indu stria l socie ty is
conti nued and foste red, our
valua ble insti tutio ns and tradi tions will fall into
decay or be swep t away.
The argum ent is esse ntial ly that witho ut nucle ar powe
r, witho ut the conti nued
level of mate rial weal th it alone is assumed to make
poss ible, the light s of
our civil izati on will go out.
Futu re peop le will be the loser s.
The argum ent does raise impo rtant ques tions abou t
what is valua ble in
our socie ty and what char acte risti cs are nece ssary
for a good socie ty. But for
the most part these large ques tions can be by-p assed
. The reaso n is that the
argum ent adop ts an extre mely uncr itica l attit ude to
prese nt high- techn ology
soci eties , appa rentl y assum ing that they are unifo
rmly and uniqu ely valu able.
it
It assum es that techn olog ical socie ty is unmo difia
ble, thaic anno t be chang ed in
the direc tion of energ y cons ervat ion or alter nativ
e.(pe rhap s high techn ology )
energ y sourc es witho ut colla pse.
These assum ption s are all hard to acce pt. The assum
ption that
techn olog ical soci ety's energ y patte rns are unmo difia
ble is espe ciall y so;
after all, it has survi ved even ts such as world wars
which requ ired majo r
socia l and techn olog ical restr uctu ring and consu mptio
n modi ficat ion. If
west ern soci ety's demands for energ y were (con trary
to the evide nce) total ly
unmo difia ble witho ut colla pse, not only would it be
comm itted to a progr am
of incre asing destr uctio n, but much of ita cultu re
would be of dubio us value to
future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction , lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporar y society.
The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. Since hightechnology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central
question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled
is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a
society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is
valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably ,that we have a duty to pass on to
the future.
The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence
or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good
reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource
consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even
if a radical change in these directions is independen tly desirable, it is
unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of
the Lights-goin g-out argument are wrong. The consumption of less energy than at
present need involve no reduction of well-being: and certainly a large increase
over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear
energy, is quite unnecessary .
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do
then is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisatio n, but to
enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase
the wattage output of the Energy Extravagan za.
~
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from~hig h energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by means of nuclear fission,be positively inimical to it. A society
which has become heavily dependent upon a highly centralised , controlled and
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-i ntensive e~ergy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchmen t of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucrati c, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people's lives, even more
then they do at present. Such a society would almost inevitably tend to
become authoritati an and increasingl y anti-democ ratic, as an outcome, among
other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the
nuclear situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism , alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritaria nism - while many valuable aspects, such as
the degree of political freedom and those opportuniti es for personal and
collective autonomy which exist, would be loat or diminished:
political fr eedqp
for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and.#ener gy extravagenc e.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternative s,
a lternative social and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptabl e consequence s, are available. The alternative to _the high
technology- nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is
valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for
power or, better,the development of alternative technologie s and lifestyles which
offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what
is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The
Li ghts-going -out~umen t, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails.
Thus the fttrther escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the
appeal t ~ futurity, closed. If tbea we apply, as we have argued we should, the
~ 1, t.
same standards ef ■eral1t¥ to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
;present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape
routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.)
for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptab le. In sum, nuclear
development is morally unacceptabl e on several grounds.
SOCIAL OPTIONS: SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option
that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no
·doubt preferable to nuclear power. is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it
VIII.
the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as
acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliatio n caused by
extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very
high projected consumption figures. Such an option would,more over, also violate
the Transfer-li miting principle: for it would impose widespread costs on
nonbenefic iaries for some concentrate d benefits to some profit takers and to
some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacemen t.
To these main conventiona l options a third is often added which
emphasizes softer and more benign technologie s, such as those of solar energy and
hydroelec tricity. Such softer options - if suitably combined with energy
conservatio n measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of
energy extravaganc e and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no
genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power. The deeper
8
choice is not however technolo~ic al,
nor merel~Jindi vidua1}' 6fifrtocial, and
involves the restructuri ng of production away from energy intensive uses and,
v
at a more basic level, a change to nonconsum eristic, less consumptive lifestyles and social arrangem~n ts} 7 Thes.e iore fundamental choices between social
+"f? "'- •• t tt ti, fll ~ ~ t- e ,, ., , ~ f'I t- ~l.al t e rna t 1v e s,""convent i ona 1 technologic a~ly-orient ed discussion of energy options, ~
teod• to e&acur•. It ie not juet • utter of decidina in which way to meet the
v
1
unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of
examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the
question of comparing different technologie s for meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption , and of trying to see how best to meet these;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged
needs and the cost of a society that creates them.
It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolle d energy consumption and demands. Even more benign
technologie s may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and
~
,~hich are.....,
__, likely to result in a deteriorate d world being handed on to
them. In short, even more benign technologie s may lead to violation of the
Transmissio n ~equirem ent. Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world's
forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used
for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchippin g. While few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the
unrestricte d exploitatio n of forests - whether it goes under the name of
"solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be
the final indignity for the world's already hard-presse d natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests
are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label
"renewable resources". Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true,
given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitatio n, but in fact there are now
very few forestry operations anywh~re in the world where the forests are treated
as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values. In
many regions too the rate of exploitatio n which would enable renewal has already
been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent. It
certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rainforest types,are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future;s The addition of
a major further and not readily !imitable demand pressure
for energy on top
of
the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciatio n
of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term
conservatio n of the forests and remaining natural conununities must regard with
alarm. The result of massive deforestati on for energy purposes, resembling
the deforestati on of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion
in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertifica tion in more arid regions,
possible climatic change, and massive impoverishm ent of natural ecosys~ems,
including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on,
and by the Transmissio n principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested
world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear
29.
produ cts or pollu ted by coal prod ucts. In abor t,
as the fores t situa tion
illus trate s, a mere switc h to
more benig n techn olog ies - impo rtant thoug h this
is - witho ut any more basic struc tural and soci al
chang e1 is inade quate .
The deep er socia l optio n invol ves chall engin g and ·begi
nning to alter
a socia l .stru cture which prom ote, consu meris m, consu
mptio n far beyond genu ine needs
and an economic struc ture which enco urage s incre asing
use of high ly ener gy-in tensi ~e_
modes of prod uctio n. The socia l chang e optio n tends
to be obscu red in most
dis cussi ons of energ y optio ns and of how to meet energ
y ~eed s, in part becau se
it does ques tion unde rlyin g value s of curre nt socia
l arran geme nts. The
conv entip nal discu ssion proce eds by takin g alleg ed
demand (ofte n conf lated with
e ::s<.)..,..J1.~
f,. ~ants or need s) as unch allen geab le, and the
issue to be one ,',If which techn ology
V
can be most prof itabl y employed to meet.llhetft. This
effec tivel y prese nts a
(
"'"tt--~ ~ cJL.t ~ J.. ....~4'-- l~..,, wL., c
v .~ ~.:i.4~ - <e ---4(\ 1 >-..~ wt:S,;....,..1~ ,.s l r N Cl'-'~ r
false choic e. M\-d is the reett l-~-ef -t-ald'--:rigC. needs
and='
CQRt ext
IJl.h-.-t'f--
'"ft~
so that
d'etnamt=-n--bek-i ftt-a- &&&, i-a.J-
~
.
the.--ao,Q,:l:-a-1- ·etrt:t et·ttr-e,--wMeh-p-tt&titte-ee--the-,
,:nead&---i&- •&im-i-l&r-l-y-·
t aken as unch allen geab le and unch angea ble. The poin
t is read ily illus trate d.
I t is commonly argue d by repre senta tives of such
indu strie s as trans porta tion
and petro leum , as for exam ple by McGrowth of the XS
Consumption Co., that
peop le want deep freez ers, air cond ition s, power gadg
ets, •••• It would be
auth orita rian to preve nt them from satis fyin g these
want s. Such an argum ent
from creat ed wants
conv enien tly ignor es the socia l framew-0rk in which
~uch
\ " N ~c..;'2,... f -t1,.Q. ~ft:. plA,.i--1~<'
needs and wan~ arise or are produ ced. 'I:..+To
pe~ n~ . th ~ dat.e i;m-~
&~
~:::,... t >-.irl "'(At.J c" .... c..!,,..~, (IC . ~N t\ f1..,e_ ~~ '
f''-'l ~~t'. ...~ tN tu 9A-( C2..... o!&n,-J
ma"n¥- sueh-warrt s· a c rhe "'fl"'~Trnrk- ieve-1-- ia.:.
no,.t....,.,.•how e\t~t o., assum e .,tha.t, ...-t,h&y-.
~ c l-«:i , c...12.o
,J'!:', ~-ft. -.<./ t..-f 4'}. c.. ,._
1.1 ..+ e.
bF.
~t"
1£~
~
:i~
~
~
~:~
~~
:;;;
;a
:
:
h
se
~ -.,~ft~
.....__ ~-~; ,.; ;~
2 ~eval.-<a--e--~
l ~'
tdal _w;g_ ;!_nf, _!!_at
~
~hing as ·-tndi~ .tl!u arcir o-i-e ~••t~ i.nat io.n -at.._jl_ll...
~ t
..
is
1Te--- ao£ ial framework as a majo r facto r in deter mini
ng~c e~tai n kinds
................
.,,....,.....,.... ,••
of choic es, such as those -.. ·fo.t_ _~rav el, and k.inds ---~ f
. ,...:1-nf-r·a struc ture, and to see
appa rentl y indiv idua l choic es ~~:i°~') .n :,.'8uch':·;;~; ers
as being chan nelle d and
direc ted by a soci al fr,amework deter mine d large ly
"' 1n ·· th&.-. .inter ests of corp orate
...,,
and priva te prpf~-t" -~nd adva ntage .
The soci al chang e optio n ia a hard optio n, inso far
as it will be diffi cult
to imple ment poli tical ly; but it ia ultim ately the
only way of avoid ing the
passi ng on of serio us costs to futur e peop le. And
there are othe r sorts of
reaso ns than such ethic al ones for takin g it: it
is the main , indee d the only
sort of optio n,ope n to those who adop t what is now
calle d a deep ecolo gical
persp ectiv e, as cont raste d with _a shall ow ecolo gical
outlo ok which regar ds
the natu ral world and its nonhuinan deniz ens as not
worth while in them selve s but
only of value in as much as ther answ er back to human
inter ests. The .deep
ecolo gical persp ectiv e is an integ ral part of the
Alte rnati ve Ecol ogica l
Parad igm and is incom patib le wi;~h cent ral these s of
the Dominant Soci al Parad igm
(whic h is esse ntial ly the ideol pgy of claa aica l and
neoc lassi cal econo mics)
_·-~
.
,.....,,, ,......... ,....
•,
• c..-,.t. ... ,
•
30.
and its vari ants (rou ghly , what are calle d Stat
e Soci alism , and Dem ocrat ic
\/,-tu JtN,k
Soci alism ).19 It is inco mpa tible with &w&h
.
a&Fhmptiafts as •h•• the n~tu ral
l( N ~0.S k.Mlt- JL,..
a..~
°'M.A ~ " " Co.. I ~ ~
envir onme nt '" "' va'1u,e .9nly as a reso urce , ~b
y And la~ hos tile /\~. .>
~ vM~ ~ .s -to ' t«. A~ ~~
o :r
9'\ d 11\.J , ~ -tt. «... o-t\...va...
~ u~
le ee11 tnlla hle :f:n ht1 11a
~a, e 1 a,ul uhAl ~
· r t h e • A.do mina tion- over wkt ,~ '-'4..
/2.42.A
....
''
natu re themes ~th e Dominant Parad igm and its
vari ants .
The conf lict betw een Alte rnat ive and Dominant Para
digm s, which is fast
incr easi ng, exte nds of cour se far beyond attit udes
to the natu ral worl d, sinc e
core valu es of the Dominant Par,~digm such as the
meri ts of unimpeded economic
growth and mate rial prog ress ar ~ at stak e; the
conf lict invo lves fund amen tal
1
diffe renc es over the whole fron t of econ omic al,
poli tica l and soci al arra ngem ents.
The conf lict unde rlies much of ;the nucl ear deba
te, inso far as it is not
spec ifica lly limi ted to questio1~s of tech nolo gica
l fixe s, but take s up the
basi c ethi cal issu es and the so ~ial ques tions to
which they lead .20 The
1
ethi cal requ irem ents alrea dy de1fended and appl ied
brin g us out, when follo wed
throu gh, on the Alte rnat ive sid1~ of the parad igm
conf lict, and acco rdin gly
lead to the diff icul t soci al ch1nge optio n.
The soci al chan ges that the deep alte rnat ive requ
ires will be stron gly
resis ted beca use they mean chan ges in curr ent soci
al orga nisa tion and power
stru ctur e. To the exte nt that the optio n repr esen
ts some kind of thre at to
part s of pres ent poli tica l and economic arran gem
ents, it is not surp risin g that
offi cial ener gy ppti on disc ussi on proc eeds by misr
epre sent ing and ofte n
obsc uring it. But diff icul t as it is to suita bly
alte r "the syste m,"
espe ciall y one with such far-r each ing effe cts on
the prev ailin g power stru ctur e,
it is impe rativ e to try: we are all on the nucl
ear train .
w
•
FOOTNOTES
1.
This paper is a condens ation of an early version of our 'Nuclea r
power - ethical , social, and politic al dimensi ons' (ESP for short, availab le
from the authors ), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred
to in the referenc e list). For help with the condens ation we are very
conside rably indebted to the e~itors .
In the condens ation, we simplify the structu re of the argument and
suppres s underly ing politic al ~1nd ideolog ical dimensi ons (for example , the
large measure of respons ibilit~r of the USA for spreadin g nuclear reactor s around
the world, and thereby in enhancin g the chances of nuclear disaste rs, includin g
nuclear war).
We also considet ·ably reduce a heavy load of footnote s and
referenc es designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. · Further ,
in order to contain referenc es to a modest length, referenc e to primary
sources has often been replaced by referenc e through seconda ry sources . Little
difficu lty should be encount ered however in tracing fuller referenc es through
seconda ry sources or in filling out much importa nt backgrou nd materia l from
work cited herein. For example , virtual ly all the data cited in section s I and VII
is referenc ed in Routley . At worst ESP can always be consulte d.
2.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unneces sary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to conside r ethical and social dimensio ns of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little. The b~~sics are presente d in many texts, e.g. Nader
& Abbotts , Gyorgy.
Of course
~~n
order to assess fully reports as to such
importa nt backgrou nd and stage~,s etting matters as the likeliho od of a
core meltdown of
(lightw ater)1 reactor s, much more informa tion is require d.
For many assessm ent purpose s h~,wever, some knowledge of economic fallacie s
and decision theory is at least as importa nt aa knowledge of nuclear
technolo gy.
3.
Natural ly the effect on humans is not the only factor that has
to be taken into account in arrivln g at moral assessm ents. Nuclear radiatio n,
unlike most ethical theorie s. does not confine its scope to human life and
welfare . But since the ham nuclear developm ent may afflict on nonhuman life, for example , can hardly improve its case, it suffice s if the case
against it can be made out solely in term• of its effects on human life in the
convent ional way.
.For refe ren ce to apd a brie f disc uss ion
of (hu man -ori ente d)
sim ulat ion models see Goodin, p.42 8.
4.
The Opp ortu nity -co st . argument is also
def ecti ve in oth er
resp ects . It pres upp ose s not mer ely
the (mi stak en) red ucti ons invo lved in
the
con trac tion of the eth ica l domain to
the economic; it also pres upp ose s tha
t the
pro per methods for dec isio n which affe
ct. the futu re, such as tha t of ene rgy
cho ice, app ly disc oun ting . But , as Goo
din arg ues , more app rop riat e dec isio n
rule s do not allo w disc oun ting .
5.
Thi s is one of the reas ons why exp ecte
d uti lity theo ry,
roug hly cos t-be nef it ana lysi s wit h pro
bab ility fril ls, is inad equ ate as a
dec isio n method in such con tex ts.
6.
App aren t exc epti on~ to the prin cip le
such as tax atio n (and
red istr ibu tion of income gen era, lly) van
ish when wea lth is con stru ed (as
it has to be if tax atio n is to be
pro per ly jus tifi ed) as at lea st par tly
a soc ial
ass et unf airl y mon opo lise d by a min orit
y of the pop ulat ion . Examples such
as tha t of mot orin g dan gero usly do not
con stit ute cou nter exa mpl es to the
prin cip le; for one is not mor ally ent
itle d to so mot or.
7.
For det ails , and as to how the off icia
l ana lys~ s become argu men ts
aga inst nuc lear dev elop men t whe.p some
atte mpt is made to tak e the -ign ored
cos ts into acc oun t, see Shr ade r-Fr ech
ette , p. 55 ff.
8.
See Rou tley , p. 160 .
9.
For much furt her disc uss ion of the poi
nts of the prec edin g two par agrap hs, see Shr ade r-F rec het te, p. 35
ff.; and also Nader & Abbott&.
10.
Gyorgy.
Most of the rea cto rs in the wor ld are
of this typ e;
11.
See Shr ade r-Fr ech ette , cha pter 4.
see
12.
See Shr ade r-Fr ech ette . A wor thw hile
ini tia l view of the
sho rtco min gs
of the RassmutJsen rep ort may be reac hed
by com bini ng
the crit iqu e in Shr ade r-Fr ech et~e wit
h tha t in Nader & Abb otts .
13.
The re are var iati on$ on Ai and Aii
which mul tipl y cos ts
aga inst numbers such as pro bab ilit ies.
In this way risk s, con stru ed as
pro bab le cos ts, can be take n into acc
oun t in the asse ssm ent. (Al tern ativ
ely .
risk .a may be aaaeaaed thro ugh •~e h fam
ilia r aeth oda •• inau ran ce).
•
A princ iple varyi ng Aii, and formu lated as follow s:
Aii'. a is ethic ally accep table if {for some b) a inclu des
no more
risks than band bis socia lly accep ted,
was the basic ethic al princ iple in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of . Inqui ry recen tly decid ed that nucle ar power
devel opme nt
in Saska tchew an is ethic ally accep table : see Cluff Lake
Board of Inqui ry
Final Repo rt, Department of Envir onme nt, Government of Saska
tchew an, 1978,
p. 305 and p. 288. In this repor t, a is nucle ar power and
b is eithe r
activ ities clear ly accep ted by socie ty as alter nativ e power
sourc es. In
other appli catio ns b has b•en taken as cigar ette smoki ng,
motor ing,
minin g and even the Vietnam ~ar (!).
The point s made in the text do not exhau st the objec tions
to
princ iples Ai - Aii'. The princ iples are certa inly ethic
ally subst antiv e,
since an ethic al conse quenc e canno t be deduced from nonet
hical prem isses,
but they have an inadm issibl e conve ntion al chara cter. For
look at the
origi n of b
b may be socia lly accep ted thoug h it is no longe r socia
lly
accep table , or thoug h its socia l accep tibili ty is no longe
r so clear cut
and it would not have been socia lly accep ted if as much as
is now known
had been known when it was introd uced. What is requi red
in Aii', for
insta nce, for the argument tQ begin to look convi ncing is
that b is
'ethic ally accep table ' rath, r than 'soci ally accep ted'.
But even
with the amendments the princ iples are inval id, for the reaso
ns given in
the text, and other s.
It is not disco neert ing that princ iples of this type do not
work.
It would be sad to see yet anoth er area lost to the expe
rts, ethic s to
actua ries.
14.
See Shrad er-Fr echet te, p. 15.
15.
Goodin . p. 433.
16.
The argum ent is elabo rated in ESP.
17.
For some of the more philo sophi cally impor tant mate rial on
alter nativ e nonco nsum eristi c
$OCi al arran geme nts and lifes tyles , see
work cited in V. and R. Routl ey, 'Soci al theor ies, self manag
ement and
envir onme ntal probl ems' in M,nni son et al, where a begin ning
ia made
on worki ng out ~
of alter nativ ••• thoaa of a plura listic anarchism.
••t
flA-t fn
18.
l ·.:.
The~
situa tion of the world 's tropi cal rainf orest s is
expla ined in, for insta nce, My~ra; the reaso ns are untan gled
in R. and V.
Routl ey 'World rainf orest destr uctio n - the socia l cause s'
(avai lable from
the autho rs).
19·.
For a fulle r accou nt of the Dominant Socia l Parad igm and
its
rival , the Alter nativ e Envir onme ntal Parad igm, see Cotgr
ovean d Duff, espec ially
the table on p. 341 which encap sulate s '
' the main
assum ption s
of the respe ctive parad igms; compare also Catto n and Dunla
p, espec ially p. 33.
Contemporary varia nts on the Dominant Socia l Parad igm are
consi dered in ESP •
..,
The shallo w/dee p contr ast as appli ed to ecolo gical posit ions,
which
is an impor tant component of the parad igm conf lict, was introd
uced by Naess .
For furth er expla natio n of the contr ast and of the large r
array of ecolo gical
posit ions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routl ey, 'Huma
n chauv inism and
~
envir onme ntal ethic s' in Mannison '------'"'et al, and the refer
ences there cited ,
espec ially to Rodman's work.
20.
The more elabo rate afgum ent of ESP sets the nucle ar debat
e in the
conte xt of parad igm confl ict. But it is also argue d that,
even withi n
assum ptions framework of the ~,min ant Socia l Parad igm and
its varia nts,
Ti. Nucle ar develo pmen t is no,~ the ratio nal choic e among
energ y optio ns.
The main argument put up for n\Jcle ar devel opme nt withi n the
framework of
the dominant parad igm is an Ec~,nomic growth argum ent. It
is the follow ing
I'
versi on of the Light s-goin g-ou~; argument (with economic growt
h duly stand ing
in for mate rial wealt h, and fo~r what is valua ble!) :- Nucle
ar power is
neces sary to susta in economic $rowt h. Economic growt h is
desir able (for
all the usual reaso ns, e.g. to incre ase the size of the pie,
to postp one
redis tribu tion probl ems, etc.) . There fore nucle ar power
is desir able.
The first premi ss is part of US energ y polic y (see Shrad
er-Fr echet te, p.111 ),
and the secon d prem iss ia suppl ied by stand ard economics
textb ooks. But both
premi sses are defec tive, the secon d becau se what is valua
ble in economic
growth can be achie ved by (not witho ut growt h but) selec tive
economic
growt h, which jettis ons the heavy socia l and envir onme
ntal costs carri ed
by unqu alifie d economic growt h. More to the point , since
the secon d premi ss
is an assum ption of the Dominant Parad igm, the first premi
ss (or rathe r an
appro priate and less vulne rable restat emen t of it) fails
even by Dominant
Paradigm stand ards. For of cours e nucle ar power is not neces
sary given
that there are other , perha ps costl ier alter nativ es. The
premi ss usual ly
defen doJ is some elabo ration of the prem iae: Nucle ar power
is the
econo mical ly beat way to auata in economic arowth. 'econ omica
lly beat'
be ing fill ed out as 'mo at eff icie nt',
'che ape st', 'hav ing the most favo urab
le
ben efit -co st rat io', etc~ Unf oitu nate
ly for the argu men t, and for nuc lear
development sche mes , nuc lear power is
none of thes e thin gs dec isiv ely (un
less a
good dea l of economic che atin g - easy
to do - is don e).
Tii .
'
pro per Dominant Para digm acc oun ting ,
nuc lear cho ices sho uld
gen era l ly be reje cte d, both as priv ate
uti lity inve stm ents and as
pub lic cho ices .
On
Nuc lea r dev elop men t is not eco nom ical
ly via ble but has bee n kep t goin g, not
by cle ar economic via bili ty, butr by mas
sive sub sidi zati on of sev era l typ es
(dis cus sed in Shr ade r-Fl ech ette ~, Gyorgy
and Nader & Abb otts ).
Even on var ian ts of ~;he Dominant Para
digm , nuc lear dev elop men t is
not jus tifi ed, as con side rati on of dec
isio n theo ry methods wil l rev eal:
Til i.
rej cted ,
Whatever reas ona ble 4ec iaio n rule is
ado pted , the nuc lear cho ice is
as the argu men ts of Goodin on alte rna
tive dec isio n rule s help to show.
What sus tain s the nuc lear jug ger nau t
is not the Dominant Para digm
~r i ts var ian ts, but con tem pora ry cor
por ate cap ital ism (or its sta te ent erp
rise
image ) and as soc iate d thir d wor ld imp
eria lism , aa the his tor ica l det ails of
nuc lear
<lev elopmen t both in dev elop ed cou ntri
es and in less dev elop ed cou ntri es mak
es pla i .
(for main det ails , see Gyorgy p. 307
ff.) . And the pra ctic es of con tem pora
ry
corp ora te cap ital ism and ass oci ated imp
eria liam are not acc epta ble by the
sta nda rds of eith er of the Paradigms
or the ir var ian t&: they are cer tain
ly
no t eth ica lly acc epta ble.
•
.• .
·•
REFERENCES USED
Works esp eci ally use ful for fur the
r inv est iga tion of the e.th ica l issu
ea
rais ed by nuc lea r dev elop men t are
ind ica t_ed wit h an ast eri sk (*) .
S. Cot gro ve and A. Duf f, "En viro nme
ntal ism , mid dle -cla ss rad ica lism and
po liti cs' , Soc iolo gic al Review 28(
2) (1980), 333 -51 .
W.R . Cat ton , Jr. , and R. E. Dun lap,
'A new eco log ica l par adig m for pos
t
exu ber ant soc iolo gy' American Beh avi
ora l Sci ent ist 24 (19 80) .
15- 47.
For Rep ort : Ranger Uranium Env iron
men tal Inq uiry Fir st Rep ort,
Au stra lian Government Pub lish ing Ser
vic e, Can ber ra, 1977.
*R. E. Goodin, "No moral nuk es', Eth
ics 90 (19 80) , 417-49.
*A. Gyorgy and fri' end s,
No Nukes : eve ryo ne's gui de to nuc
lea r pow er,
Sou th End Pre ss, Bos ton , Ma ss., 197
9.
*n .
Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Rou tley
(ed ito rs) , Env iron men tal Phi los~ phy
,
RSSS, Au stra lian Nat ion al Un ive rsit
y, 198 0.
N. Myers, The Sin kin g Ark,
Pergamon Pre ss, Oxf ord , 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abb otta , The Menace
of Atomic Ene rgy ,
Me lbou rne, 1977.
Outback Pre ss,
*K. S. Shr ade r-F rec het te, Nuclear
Power and Pub lic Pol icy ,
1980.
Rei del , Dor dre cht ,
R. and V. Rou tley , 'Nu clea r energy
and obl igat ion tJ to the fut ure ', Inq
uiry
21 (19 78) , 133-79.
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Typescript (photocopy) of draft, with handwritten emendations and annotations, undated. Handwritten above title: Almost final version. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield.
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Text
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS
PETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE.
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really
lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a
debate about values ...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones.
Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily
one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do
A,
to others. They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the
'ij^nes of competing paradigms." According to the entrenched paradigm discerned,
that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant
Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm),
economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of
individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief
in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering
around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes
best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are
necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of
labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise. In particular,
there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of
scientists in particular. ...
there is an emphasis on quantification.
The rival world view, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm
(the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists,
4
in ways summarised in the following table
�Dominant
Social
Paradigm^
Alternative
Env'i ronmen tal
Paradigm
CORE VALUES
Material (economic growth,
progress and development)
Natural environment valued
as resource
Domination over nature
Non-material (self
realisation)
Natural environment
intrinsically valued
Harmony with nature
*
ECONOMY
Market forces
Risk and reward
Towards for achievement
Differentials
Individual self-help
Public interest
Safety
Incomes related to need
Egalitarian
Collective/social provision
I
POLITY
Authoritative structures
(experts influential)
Hierarchical ----.Law and order
^Action through official
institutions)
——Centralized ---------Large-scale
Associational
Ordered
Participative structures
(citizen/worker
involvement)
^■Non-hierarchical
Liberation
Direct action
/Decentralised" *
Small-scale
Communal
Flexible
NATURE
Ample reserves
Nature hostile/neutral
Environment controllable
Earth’s resources limited
Nature benign
Nature delicately balanced
KNOWLEDGE
Confidence in science
and technology
Rationality of means (only)
Limits to science
Rationality of ends
*
^tate socialism, as practiced in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs from the
Old Paradigm really only as to economic organisation, the market in particular
being replaced by central planning (a market system by a command system).
But
since there is virtually no debate over a nuclear future within the confines of
state socialism,that minor variant on the Old Paradigm need not be delineated
here.
�No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple ^and
subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements’^: and
really ^instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm).
Nonetheless it is empirically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed.
Large-
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to
the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic
practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
^instrumental details^: whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irrational.
Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails.
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism.
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured. There are two
main parts'^?:- It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project
selection).
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
�3
the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
roptions within a predetermined framework of values. ^In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian means to predetermined ends.)
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical
g
or legal or mathematical details.
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many interrelated problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
^before assembled^: establishment, on a. massive scale, of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive
wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and
economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for
its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and
restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is
the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both passengers and freight.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the
�4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
All of
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will, that the world needs his product and it is
his duty to supply it, and
that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it.
These
sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
context.
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
when the consigner, again a "responsible” businessman, puts his workers' health
or other peoples' welfare at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is his own and others1pressing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a
by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
especially.
Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification.
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one's own, or one's group's, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case.
/progresses.
How fitting the a^gwaent is will become apparent as the argument
There is no known proven safe way tjfi package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
9
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
�5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
and which, some have estimated,
may require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem.
Serious problems
have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage,
even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last
twenty years.10 Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter
vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human
affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock
deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain
suitably isolated from human environment.
In short, the best present storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
1 la
damaging their environment.
Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance, none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may
�6.
well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
provide a rigorous guarantee of
Only a method that could
safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe
long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage
sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons-
grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year
storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
(L
The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000,
/
e.
'which gets around the wast^ storage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways,
/
/'n
/an article of faith.
It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no
limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that
cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always
immediately economically feasible).
The assumption has played
an important
part in development plans and practice.
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
13
technological optimism (not to say hubris ), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution
is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the
14
form of limitation theorems ); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk
analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed
below).
The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would
provide unlimited energy (a ’clean unlimited supply of power’).
shattered.
and nuclear
That dream soon
The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power,
fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power.
�7.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
are, then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could
be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an
with it.
over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents' dreams of global
industrialisation are realised, more and more ^pf the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life,
15a
are in a run-down condition. Such points
tell against the idea that future
people muelF be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least
indirect beneficiaries.
It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only)
by nuclear power.
The 'Solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits.
The "solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
�8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
I
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
the future.There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner’s action in the circum
stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case.
Just as in the case of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the question of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop
ment.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
Ill
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due. account of the interests of future creatures.
�Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the
effect of our actions on
future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive.
Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or
entitlement.
People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
enforce any claims they might have for their rights
Secondly, there
are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement.
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them.
�10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one. has little or no sympathy.
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).^ Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable.
Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
�11.
the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
result of the action.
direct and predictable
The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is
an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately
criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to future people.
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable
the following sort^ of policy:-
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants,
will
over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests,
without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as
well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the
unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such
counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many
of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in
/mind^denying moral obligation is rather that future people can look after
themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counter-
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so
thereby acquire many ^Jf the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to
take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be
careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
�12.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired
or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or
assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which
require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone,
and for which no act of acquisition is required.
There is a considerable
difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved.
In the first case
one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g.
In the second case responsibility arises
I have loves, sympathy, be contracted.
as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable
consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied.
They apply as a result
of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably
predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not
(yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist.
While
it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed
obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make
special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
from harming them.
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
�13.
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner
resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package on the train.
The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both
to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something
which has to be assumed or required.
The conflation is encouraged by reductionist
positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly
endeavour to collapse all obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
*
of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral
constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter
examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;17
there are in practice no obligations to the distant future.
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through
the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which
each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the
succeeding generation.
account.
There are at least three objections to this chain
First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future
as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of
constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals
can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create
individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire
generation.
Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the
responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility.
Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to
the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be
adequate, as examples again show.
For the picture is unable to explain several
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence matters.
�14.
Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of
disadvantages to people of the more distant future.
Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances
be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors.
Such
cases can hardly be written off as ’’never-never land" examples since many cases
of environmental exploitation might be. seen as of just this type. e.g. not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the
long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overuse.
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECQNQMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While there are grave difficulties for the
unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future.
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people.
The
attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position.
objectionable in such an approach is that
What is
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are.
There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
�15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
18
the waste problem.
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations
may well not
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
can carry much weight.
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
developments as nuclear power.
sacrifice argument.
That is, it depends on the already scotched
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economically - costs much less now than later.
Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes,
what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into
monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss
of life.
There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species.
In fact
the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed:
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
19
monetarily,
but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value.
It is also
presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
�16.
are bound to apply discounting.
This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and
discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly
inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined
x 20
and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.).
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrained position.
If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a
sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints.
In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of
discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
21
more than about 15 years,
and application of such rates would simply beg
the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method
of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral
constraints.
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.
The distant
future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate
future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching
or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.
But
then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying
them against costs and benefits, it is evident that the interests of future
people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people
where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of conflict
between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much
lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent
risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity
to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy
use.
And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or unevenly weighted,
�17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision
problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from
it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way
related to a person’s extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian’s
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability
argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the wa/ the argument supposes,
and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway.
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
reveals, that a significant risk is created^ such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments.
�18.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to taj^ke serious account of the effects of our actions on the
distant future.
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of
separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments are mistaken, the first
on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument
is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to
the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can
obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable,
fuzzy and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should
act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain
able about the present which would indicate different action.
Therefore we must
regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
More formally and
crudely:
One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the
distant future.
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by
’knowledge’ in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to
considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with
respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which
is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest
and with respect to the future.
a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we
suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant
future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those
things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints.
We can
and constantly do act on the basis of such ’’unreliable" information, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic
proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the,,
present and immediate future.
In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for certain that the
container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not even have
to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consigner’s action.
risk of harm in this sort of case.
It is enough that there is a significant
It does not matter if the decreased well
being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
of the so-called "speculative" and "unreliable".
But if we do not require
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why
�19.
should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration
can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference
between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples'
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them.
this way:-
The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every
(action) x", then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
information about future actions which would enable us to detach the
antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the "It is
wrong to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about
how to act.
on action.
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
�20.
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
Again there is considerable
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or
that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
�21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a
sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there
is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are
morally committed to.
Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that
future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be
r
I morons o^ forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines.
/prepared to accent the elitist approach presupposed p
Even if one is
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments
as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility -
like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn’t looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline
of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
p
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
/sceptical character are not ^feal possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that
future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such cases before such actions could
�22.
be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe
The
'that they are any more than that^ that is they are not live possibilities.
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future yis so great
as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action.
A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the
application of moral constraints.
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form?
The question is raised
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
�23.
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and
representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest.
It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve^ or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict
cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
n
e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular,
there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of
interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then?: are there any features of
future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or
reduce their claims to such below those of present people?
principle None.
The answer is?: in
Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike,
in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present?: in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white
skinned) humans, etc.
The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way.
These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determination of best probable ol
*
present information).
practical course of action given only
In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort
being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain
information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
7/
consideration;
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
�23a.
universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as
to the present;
and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them
and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
Uncertainty
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
�harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN. The
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in spa^e, or a particular geographical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time,1 across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
I another state’s or region’s (or waters^ yar<^
When that region receives no due
compensation (whatever that would amount to , in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the
arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive
wastes upon future people.
But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan
cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can
discount people of two centuries hence.
(But what this consideration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can
(be discounted over time)L
Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only
the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the
assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of
f
kood'
those in the neighbouij/ of reactors, and, differently, as regards the
distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations.
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that
reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant,
�25.
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor.
An
immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any
ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs” of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other largescale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The "normal” emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
(A
'carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers
and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over
the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under
what conditions?
Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into
decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an
26
acceptable level of risk/safety for the public.
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner
working in summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
27
compensate for the agony of cancer.
The point is that the costs to one party
are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being
imposed.
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a
�26.
particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults).
In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly,
for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent
majority).
Whatever i-ktr charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even
under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of
radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable.
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US
28
Atomic Energy Commission,” is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the ’’natural” level) is also likely
to have negligible consequences.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course,
so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-
effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose.
Furthermore, the
monitoring of the standards ’’imposed” is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Public policy is determined not so
as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a ’public pacifier' while
29
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered.
�27.
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an 'extraordinary nuclear occurrence
.
*
But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island).
30
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
30a
reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the
result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident ini a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000l people would be killed instantly
•and at least 100,000 would die as a result of: the accident, property damages
would exceed $17 billion and an area the sizei of Pennsylvania would be destroyed,
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
31
-k
the
consequences ofr a
these conservative US government figures are given :
similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still.
V
The consigner in risking the li^es, well-being and property of the
/ passengers
on the train has acted inadmissibly.
Does a government-sponsored
private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train,
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners' action is, as we would ordinarily
•suppose, inadmissible and irrespon-
The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
&
(while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out if the ethical arena
/
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
sible.
0
It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
Indeed in the
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
32
influential Rassmussen report
- which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
CO
jstrong, imp?yjbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be Almost) impossible.
The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself.
These
assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents
and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual,
a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear
�28.
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof
and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different.
But we do not live in such a world.
According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodologically sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and
"reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as "not
credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
In fact the methodology and data of the report
33
has been soundly and decisively criticized.
And it has been shown that there
eliminations that are otherworldly.
is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater
order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here we
encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment
models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off
models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to
different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
rV\
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in ter^s of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
34
therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number lively to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
k
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are
<
'accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable.^ little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional
and other relevant aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical
assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or
�29.
primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other
parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of
the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a
35
comparison on such a basis would be valid.
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes
in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk,
etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant
activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
A risk that is ethically
acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify
nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i)
and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the
or
nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs” is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the
costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing.
It is
a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and
already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other
37
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to
the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g.
it can be substituted for or done without.
Thus, for instance, one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
oneself.
Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which
J
!is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
service, on the train, to the next village.
The inhabitants of this village are
then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult
disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else
leaving the village and their livelihoods.
transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
Most of us would see this kind of
�30.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world
countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one
of its most objectionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the tramsmission
principle.
For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories).
VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
^environmental, health and safety risks and costs in^or arising from
the
*
fuel cycle.
nuclear
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
,
5
materials.
Several of these stageyf involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material,
and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have
parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating
power, e.g. ’’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’the same risk’ of
38
ffatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry^.
Furthermore, the
Various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectoj^ of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive
material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation: with where
one already lives things are very different.
The uranium miner’s choice of
occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific
Islander’s ’’fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue of arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations.
�Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors
/that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of
large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a
specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio
active lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many large
industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown),
Though theft of material from more
dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at
large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such
/massive explosives/
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so
many fronts.
/
/
5
In part to reduce it/ vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to
information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information,
formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil
liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends.
The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it
^nswerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.^9
developments
the Uni-ted Kingdom; and worse i-R Weot Germany
presage
along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
societies.
That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences
tells heavily against it.
/•fS
j2a?c
bEHmR
- - *. i »
/> .
.
Bvhi nd what mirt bv one of the most impregnable fortifications this side of
the East-West German border, work has just begun on building West
Gerpianv’s latest nuclear power station.- Much of the perimeter of the
75-acre site, at Brokdorf m the marshlands of the lower Elbe, is screened by a
concrete wall io feet high, surmounted by coils of barbed wire. I he rest,
regarded as ‘strategic ally observable.' is girdled by a ditch io feet wide and
fill ed with water. Approach roads to the site arc patrolled by dozens of
policemen and the compound itself is guarded by 6oo men from a private
security organization and b\ jg dogs.
'*
-4?
�32.
Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct
connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is fortunately true that
ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war
is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however,
the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and
chances of, nuclear engagement.
Since nuclear wars are never accountable
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread
of nuclear power accordingly
expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself
undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also
undesirable.
The details and considerations that fill out this argument,
from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many.
They are firstly
technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to
make nuclear explosives given access to, a nuclear power plant, secondly' political,
A
that nuclear engagements once instituted likely to escalate and that those
A
who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants
do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with
A
nuclear engagement (up to "strategic nuclear strikes” at least), and thirdly
**
,
$
A
/ethical, that warj( invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive
5
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is.
Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted
than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations.
The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
yare designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself
y
undesirable.
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is
O
.
27
ya case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular /f the gross
uncertainties involved in nuclear development.
In cases of this type the
appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each
alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst
5
/ consequence^ (this is a pretty un con troversial part of the maxim'nw rule which
enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences).
The
nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable
alternative.
�33.
/VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS^ AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
I DEVELOPMENT♦
As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed,
the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments,
such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more
prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed.
The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious
risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
particular, applied to the nuclear case.
For this reason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote
nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity
utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and
will ensue.
For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his
village will starve.
It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others;
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some, of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on
/
/competing^to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
o
I significant risk ^f serious harm.
The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
�34.
I to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living i/' some
other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than
the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments
In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of
as well.
false dichotomies.
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination
either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase
unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally
poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through
40
encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear
energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is
both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it
requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists
and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its
feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission
systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into
the system.
Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised
entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political
41
structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy
is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course
mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the
westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these
countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes.
It
is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
�35.
The poverty argument is then a fraud.
help the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries
there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of
developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better
prospects for helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear
development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap,
procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development.
And there are various
alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar
options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
42
each possibly in combination with conservation measures;
Despite the availability
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups).
Such an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickle-
down argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
runs:-
For the argument
Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing)
affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
development benefits the poor.
anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy’
is substituted for ’nuclear’.
It has also to be shown, what the next major
argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
alternatives in increasing affluence.
The second assumption, that affluence
inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical
data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and
developed, and through economic models which reveal how "affluence" can increase
without redistribution occurring.
Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set
of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have,
it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions
which our culture has developed.
Unless our high-technology, high energy
industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and
traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth
it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
4
�36.
The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller
examination, can be avoided.
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
It assumes that technological
society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse.
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish -
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
Xz
The assumption that technological
^soc^ety's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technological
restructuring and consumption modification.
If western society’s demands for energy
are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could
be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction,
lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things.
While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at
�37.
present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
/assumption which
44
is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy,
6©'
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the
lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on
burning all the time
to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
the Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
thingsJof its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear
'
45
situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable
aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high technology-
nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
�38.
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
appeal to futurity, closed.
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other arguments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future.
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of market-
centred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice.
Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy.
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic
ends. Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission
^research and development, in marke^T contrast to other newer rival sources of
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs. The reasons can be
'divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
^(out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm p^gcepts, publicly
economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real
reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social
control.
�39.
The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
valuable!):-
Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth.
Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social
Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is
46
part of US energy policy,
and the second premiss is supplied by standard
unrest, etc.).
economics textbooks.
But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified
47
economic growth.
More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less
vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards.
For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alternatives.
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, 'economically
best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having most favourable
benefit-cost ratio', etc.
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
^development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things
a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done.
decisively, unless
Much data, beginning with
/the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can\be assembled to show as much.
Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true
premissiFve** /f the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments.
Virtually all available data
/concerns the USA; in Euro^ _e, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly/controlled” nuclear power are generally not divulged.
/
A
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants.
Ka-emanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
49
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985.
And
I capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell^ rather decisively
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants.
Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators.
Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were
designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative
fcosts of nuclear and coal/, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design
capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more
�40.
expensive than estimated.The discrepancy between actual and estimated
‘ capacity is especially important because a plant with an actual1/factor of 55%
produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
y
The low reliability
/ of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the
coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
/reliability of
y
/grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nucleai/'.
/
These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account.
The main subsidies are through research and development, by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
/kct^S, in enrichment, and in waste management,
It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more).
When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public
costs involved in producing nuclear power,
For example, the analyses ignore
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently
what the costs involved are.
o
4
But even using actual waste handling costs (while
/wastes await storage) is enough to show that coa ljjis preferable to nuclear.
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in
✓
y / ^ / favo ur of alternatives
to nuclear and against nucleaj/.
In short,, even on p/per
'r
Q1& Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be
j ze-
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been
/kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public
subsidization, of several types.
In USA, to take a main example where
information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through
s
heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, ■through the
^Price-Anderson Act/ which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear
development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all
radioactive wastes.
While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical
developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for
uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
/social welfare.
Duly admitting social welfare and some
principles
�41.
6t
/
/in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leads/the modern
//version of the Old Paradigm, called the Modified Old Paradigm. The main
/changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) a^emphasis of
economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated
or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism).
Now it
has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power
ll«
is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends , for example,
As (j&lj 45
•
from those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap
e,
./electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance
/use, avoidance of shortages, rationing,
C2 -outs and the like.
Since
/alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve
ends given power was
/supplied with suitable extravagance, the d^eement has again to show that the
choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite
respects, in serving the public interest.
Such an argument is a matter for
decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives
also fall as special cases.
Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice
between alternatives; it is presented as the
theory which ’deals with the
53
problem of choosing one course of action among several possible courses’.
Thus the choice of alternati’ve modes of energy production, the energy choice
^problem, becomes an exercise -arrrd decision theory; and the nuclear choice is
of ten ’5 us tified" in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory.
But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put
to work in such practical cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronted with is
theory drastically
/pruned
down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic
theory.
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one
important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where
uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the
5
expected utility model.
The general model for best choice among alternatives
/specified maximisation of expected value subject to
constraints, which may
include
ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given
/conditions.
models demote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate
constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a
high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless).
Thus, in
�particular,
ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage
sustained.
Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical)
economic
assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of
everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms : everything w^Lth account^n^/has a price), and as to the legitimacy
of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty.
It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable),
because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them,
Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear 1war and core meltdown
54
[of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development/
widespread radio
active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain.
The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy
/choice, maximum, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended.
In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected.
f Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same
for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected.
All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option.
t
z
A further convergence can be effected
also, L'tbecause
ci LiO
Lthe
best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as
Ci .r D l/ j,
[coal and^hydroO
Celectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated).
Under these
conditions complex decision rules (^such as the Arrow-H^^wicz rule) which take
£
/account of both best possible and
/reduce to the maxim^in rule.
possible outcomes under wfk
*ch
option^
Whichever energy option is selected under the
/maximwffi rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since/(eere options
where worst outcomes are
than that of the nuclear
option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear
dream, is realised).
Further application of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects
on the earth's climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels.
�HHHB
43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with
enjoys a privileged
several rivals to maximise for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
proposed,
rules, such as the risk- AdkW
Some of these
reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
which ’
risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of
the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly
decision procedure appears to
and rather than offering a
dubious,
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
What will be argued, or rather
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these
rules is applicable. and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option.
For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility rule
(not an entirely unquestionable rule/ ’of strictly limited applicability’)
excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have
a nuclear reactor
ran air of irreversibility ... "One cannot pimply
a coal-fired plant'”
(p.506).
The compare-the
/alternatives rule, in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit
assessments, which,
as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-sustainable-benefits rule,
which 'directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net
benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable
sources', ruling out the nuclear option.
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
^further from the Old Paradigm ie framework ^arm-avoidance and protecting-the-
vulnerable^also yieldj/ the same nuclear-excluding results.
Harm-avoidance,
in particular, points ’decisively in favour of "alternative" and "renewable"
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
(p.442).
the result is the same, a^ nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
standards.
Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with
probabilities duly multiplied in, and the
is as before from
cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut: nor does its Modification.
The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached.
It is, in any case,
sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical, economic
�/theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social
1 theory.
There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one:
corporations so committed are understandably
keen to realise returns on capital already invested.
There are also typical
self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on.
There are
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief
in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith
in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular,
so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
governing and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs.
It is then, contemporary corporate capitals^m, along with its state
enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure, corporate
capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice.
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future, confirms this diagnosis. This diagnosis can be
/split into two main cases, the national development of nuclear power in the
/US^ and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible.
By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in
/the Eastern bloc is
which had in 1977 only
nuclear plants.
II
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
oneCj-5^
-**
the wattage output of U/
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else
where to any great extent.
American technology has.
�45.
The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of
great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US.
These companies were
encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlled or influenced reasons:-
Firstly, owing to
governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one.
Secondly,
the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively
encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development.
In particular, state
limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear
accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear
4
/investment.
In the 70s, though the state subsidization
picture changed :
continued, the private
’high costs of construction combined with low capacity
//factors and poor reliability have wiped out the
advantage that nuclear/
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few
corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly
and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies,
Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
technology. "
These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for
Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology,
/research, enriched uranium and financial capital.
(The US offered a jstate
/subsidized) nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the
' British could not compete’.
In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common
Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies
/held
dcadSjig with relevant governments) substantial interests in European
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for
X
example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel,
/ Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa,
,
/Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam.
The US proceeded?in their way, to ship
nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic
Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations,
but most of whose *
budget
activities’.
and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear
�A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
Less developed countries
markets for reactors.
2
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safety regulations
are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition
is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
/ easy sales.
fForJ
... the US has considerable leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet
. would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support.
' Many of those
are now^ y?ocrinithe
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons.
'
J
It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor
proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and
social Modification, but that the practices (of
corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much
that is ethically unacceptable,
by o^rfer, modified, or alternative
percepts;^
for principles such as
assembled.
viyxAi/r
and self-determination are grossly violated.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it
ii
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated
phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the
despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use
in meeting very high projected consumption figures.
Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
1
58
and replacement.
To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroelectricity.
The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both
conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet
�47.
given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter
of examining the goals.
That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates
them.
It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these
I alleged needs conceived of ps inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.)
Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are
superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed
on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of
electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and
contemplated by many other energy organisations).
While few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s
already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
expedient of waving around the label ’renewable resources’.
Many forests are
in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
59
of the renewal of all their values.
In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced.
It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future.
The addition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must
regard with alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
�48.
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid
regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural
ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one
poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any
more basic structural and social change is inadequate.
Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved.
It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear
program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
way pressure appeared
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely
given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsorinanuclear
,
.
, 60
development.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and
an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force
are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control
and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive
very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods
and services.
A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction
in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non-
genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently
becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of
adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the
move away
from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism
and materialist values.
The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does
question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The conventional
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
needs ^) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can
�49.
be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a false
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
I
/'of
The point is readily illustrated.
such industries as
f
transportation
It is commonly argued by representatives
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying
these wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level
(e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual
choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social framework as a major
factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel,
and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
corporate and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of reasons than
such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective0 , a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option represents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such
far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is
imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train.
�FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
compare also
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34.
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1
Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue both from one’s own position against the other, and in the
other’s own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
what, suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclusion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g.,
�2
10. z
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11a.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation, unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional
(Old Paradigm) way.
11.
See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 42^?
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote
7.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
13.
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
power.
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology,
[ability to manage technology r&a/esents the past]
On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and voting "paradoxes" on the
other.
Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81.
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
necessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
/
the his
histo^ of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p. 34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
/15a.
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
.
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
.
’What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed'
T-
re
(Barry, p.243).
re~ a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice.
�3
16.
For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers'
positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a).
17.
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls’ position.
18.
For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
Goodin, pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
satisfactory fashion.
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p).
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error”.
Furthermore the different
I mote
rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of
' "possible" outcomes.
Goodin's point can be alternatively stated however.
are really two points.
The first trouble is that such
There
alternative^
cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is
at that point that applications of the models breaks down.
The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making
under risk.
Secondly, many influential Applications of decision theory methods,
I the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible
X
/alternatives from their
21.
Discount, or bank, rates in the economists’ sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, TfoCTZCWWS., 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1967, p.351.
22.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
The contrast is with mere logical possibility.
�4
24.
Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and
•-jtA?
>v
/ Rousseau to Rawls (p. 293).
How
the principle is
will depend
' heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the
Poverty argument.
26.
SF, p. 27. Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat crritical of the
/carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that^whoever affirm^
denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree,
/symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and culture
/
*
(p. 28).
27.
The example parallels the sorts of
utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible
»unterexamples often advanced to
I of an innocent person because
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
For the more general case
against utilitarianism, see ...
28.
US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of
Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing
Office, Washington,
29.
, December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail.
As she remarks,
... since standards need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the
licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them,
current policy allows government regulators to trade
.■ human health and welfare for the [apparent] good.
E^j/ch]
/ intentions of the promotors of technology.
/ good intentions have never been known to be sufficient
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very
X
/demanding, and
the alliance of regulators with
they are supposed to be
regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just
of (nuclear) pollution control.
30.
�The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report:
31.
possibilities and consequences of major
’Theoretical
accidents in large nuclear plants’,
USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957.
This report was requested in the first place because the
^n Atomic Energy
wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the
private insurance companies" so that they would provide
coverage for the nuclear industry.
Since even the
conservative statistics of the report were alarming it
was
suppressed and its data were not made public until
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of
the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9).
Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of
32.
Accident Risks in US Commercial. Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office,
Washington, D.C., 1975.
This report, the only allegedly complete study,
concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the
public.
Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant
organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew
its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive
analysis of nuclear power approved by the US Government.
32a.
Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy.
33.
34.
Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected.
35.
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against
numbers such as probabilities.
In this way risks, construed as probable
costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment.
(Alternatively, risks may
be assessed through such familiar methods as msuranc^Ly
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b
and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which
the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
�in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final-
Report , Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and
p. 288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly
accepted by society as alternative power sources,
In other applications b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!)
points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii’).
The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissible conventional character.
For look at the origin of b: b may be
socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially
^accepted if as much as is nc^ known had been known when it was introduced.
What
is required in (ii'), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing
is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with
the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the troub|le/with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features,
involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an uncon-
strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation:
see R. and
V. Routley 'An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’.
37.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be
taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p. 15, where references are also cited.
39.
Goodin, p. 433.
40.
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
Energy3 Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner-,
well
the absorption off available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
e-'/
On the mployment issues, see too
idd, p. 149.
A
Z|.
K-ola&Az,
-fl
'(La. j>o/'-bics d
�A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illicit,
Energy and Equality, Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of
what the poor need.
For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher,
Small is Beautiful, Blond, and Briggs, London, 19 73.
o
As_to the capital and
<o
other requirements, see/£2J, p. 48, and also
For an illuminating look at the sort o
technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see
the paper of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Environment (edited
J.H. Winslow), ^usp/alian National University Press, Canberra, 1977.
42.
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not
Taken, Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs,
October 19 76); see alsod^tT'J,p. 233«r-ff^ and Schumacher, op. cit.
43.
An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question
saving resources.
In Passmore this argument
for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned
fl
by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics
that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of the present and immediate future.
The argument has all
the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
cK
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commor^.
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil
liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White,
Nuclear Prospects.
A comment on the individual^ the State
and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
46.
’US energy policy, fo^ example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
/ Energy Act, has been that/nuclear power is necessary to provide "an economical
/and reliable basis" r^te'ded "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p.lll, and
references there cited).
�7
47.
There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the
literature.
n
X
For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms
of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see
- ■
—
'■
Routley (b) , and alsoj'Berkley and Seckier.
To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion
lZ-lof soiief discussions of nuciear power, c,f/ Elster, is to leave out
crucial
X
/alternatives; the
of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial
interests in main nuclear involved companies.
Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
/
I
it is difficult to obtain comprehensive
Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the
samp 1p of plants chosen and the assumptions made
concerning the measurement of plant performance
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49.
See Kalmanoff, p.
50.
See Comey.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price
52.
Full ref to ^F
from ignorance etc.
53.
These e.g. Elster, p. 377.
On decision theory see also,
I
f54.
A recent theme iyymuch economic literature is that
theory and risk analysis can be universally applied.
The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines.
y
£
/within these confines there is no
decision
In any case, even
at all on, and few (and
^widely diverging) figures for> the probability of a reactor core meltdown,
and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation,
Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that ’such uncertainties plague energy theories’
utility calculations impossible”.
as to ’
55.
For details see Gyorgy, P. 398 ff., from which presentation of the
international story is adapted.
�Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308.
56.
For elaboration of some of the important
points, see Chesrmsky and Hermann.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old
57.
Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many
J
people
respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism.
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and
58.
^v\
limited use of unacceptable long ter^ commodities such as coal, but in
presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic
social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such
measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an
equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production.
Other
(sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should
also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers
to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and
power industries.
Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that
59.
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did
the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than
they already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g.
the argument in L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for portable
fuels’
9
60.
and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also
.
The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b),
and
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature),
61.
V
Gyorgy-.'
62.
by
The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised
For its environmental importance see Routley (c) (where
further references are cited).
�/references.
primary
General
the
For t
the reader ca
ext that over
er...ref^ences wilt—unS'"by
consulting the latter ■
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review 2$ (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E. Goodin, ’No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends, No Nukes: everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne,
1977.
R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980 (referred to as SF).
W.R. Catton, Jr., and R.E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant
sociology’, American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47.
United States Interagency Review group on Nuclear Waste Management, Report
to the President, Washington. (Dept, of Energy) 1979.
(Ref. No. El. 28. TID-
29442) (cited as US(a)).
L,
A.B. Covins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco, 1975.
R. Routley, ’On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems’, Logique et Analyje,
,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routley, ’Necessary limits for knowledge: unknowable truths’, in Essays in
honour of Paul Weing^T^^
(ed. E. 'tforsc^er) , Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, D^ckwairth, London, 1974.
Passmore,
�2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Edition, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
J)
3fid ^/s^ckler
o
i/i_ t~ot^/c\
l
*
_
J. Elster, 'Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power’, Social Science Information
18 (3) (1979) 371-400.
£,
£
J. Robinson, Economic Heresies, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
/
Barry, ’Circumstances of Justice and future generations' in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. ^
.1.
*
Si^rrj^and B. Barry), Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, 19 78.
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Alternative Environmental
�Dominant Social Paradigm
Alternative Environmental
Paradigm
Domination over nature
Non-material (self-realisation)
Natural environment intrinsically
valued
Harmony with nature
*
ECONOMY
Market forces
Risk and reward
Rewards for achievement
Differentials
Individual self-help
Public interest
Safety
Incomes related to need
Egalitarian
Collective/social provision
POLITY
Authoritative structures (experts influential)
Hierarchical
Law and order
Action through official institutions
Participative structures (citizen/
worker involvement)
Non-hierar chical
Liberation
Direct action
SOCIETY
Centralised
Large-scale
Associational
Ordered
Decentralised
Small-scale
Communal
Flexible
NATURE
Ample reserves
Nature hostile/neutral
Environment controllable
Earth’s resources limited
Nature benign
Nature delicately balanced
KNOWLEDGE
Confidence in science and technology
Rationality of means (only)
Limits to science
Rationality of ends
CORE VALUES
Material (economic growth, progress and development)
Natural environment valued as resource
State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs
as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced
system by a command system).$ But since there is virtually no debate
confines of state socialism, that minor variant on the Old Paradigm
from the Old Paradigm really only
by central planning (a market
over a nuclear future within the
need not be delineated here.
�
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SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS
PETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE.
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really
lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a
debate about values ...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones.
Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily
one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do
A,
to others. They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the
'ij^nes of competing paradigms." According to the entrenched paradigm discerned,
that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant
Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm),
economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of
individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief
in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering
around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes
best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are
necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of
labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise. In particular,
there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of
scientists in particular. ...
there is an emphasis on quantification.
The rival world view, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm
(the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists,
4
in ways summarised in the following table
Dominant
Social
Paradigm^
Alternative
Env'i ronmen tal
Paradigm
CORE VALUES
Material (economic growth,
progress and development)
Natural environment valued
as resource
Domination over nature
Non-material (self
realisation)
Natural environment
intrinsically valued
Harmony with nature
*
ECONOMY
Market forces
Risk and reward
Towards for achievement
Differentials
Individual self-help
Public interest
Safety
Incomes related to need
Egalitarian
Collective/social provision
I
POLITY
Authoritative structures
(experts influential)
Hierarchical ----.Law and order
^Action through official
institutions)
——Centralized ---------Large-scale
Associational
Ordered
Participative structures
(citizen/worker
involvement)
^■Non-hierarchical
Liberation
Direct action
/Decentralised" *
Small-scale
Communal
Flexible
NATURE
Ample reserves
Nature hostile/neutral
Environment controllable
Earth’s resources limited
Nature benign
Nature delicately balanced
KNOWLEDGE
Confidence in science
and technology
Rationality of means (only)
Limits to science
Rationality of ends
*
^tate socialism, as practiced in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs from the
Old Paradigm really only as to economic organisation, the market in particular
being replaced by central planning (a market system by a command system).
But
since there is virtually no debate over a nuclear future within the confines of
state socialism,that minor variant on the Old Paradigm need not be delineated
here.
No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple ^and
subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which
softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements’^: and
really ^instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a
cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster
marked out as the Old Paradigm).
Nonetheless it is empirically investigable,
and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed.
Large-
scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world,
runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm.
Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear
power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and
efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm.
For
under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to
the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic
practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed
economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other
^instrumental details^: whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as)
irrational.
Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents
of the Old Paradigm.
Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set
within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these
assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed
to fails.
But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm
is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise
economic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of
advanced (corporate) capitalism.
The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future
(a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured. There are two
main parts'^?:- It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that
nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from
within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development
is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict
with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development
and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project
selection).
It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only
because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the
Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice,
3
the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate
capitalism.
It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the
framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about
values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not
just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means
to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy
roptions within a predetermined framework of values. ^In this corner belong,
as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often
considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best
utilitarian means to predetermined ends.)
For another leading characteristic
of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it
from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical
g
or legal or mathematical details.
The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems
nuclear development poses.
There are many interrelated problems, and the
argument is further structured in terms of these.
For in the advancement and
promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never
^before assembled^: establishment, on a. massive scale, of an industry which
involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of
production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive
wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and
economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry
and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for
its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and
restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order
to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and
intervention.
with problems.
It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset
A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify
ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is
the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes.
II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE.
A long distance country train has just pulled out.
crowded carries both passengers and freight.
The train which is
At an early stop in the journey
someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which
contains a highly toxic and explosive gas.
This is packaged in a very thin
container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the
4
full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train
should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the
interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
All of
these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys.
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some
of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed
or incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the
He might say that it is not
certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it
will, that the world needs his product and it is
his duty to supply it, and
that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it.
These
sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this
context.
What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen
when the consigner, again a "responsible” businessman, puts his workers' health
or other peoples' welfare at risk.
Suppose he ways that it is his own and others1pressing needs which
justify his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a
by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a
better container even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and
his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look
for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the
cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off.
The poor and unemployed
of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer
especially.
Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification.
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer
the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto
other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one's own, or one's group's, chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble
the train case.
/progresses.
How fitting the a^gwaent is will become apparent as the argument
There is no known proven safe way tjfi package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
9
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with
5.
each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing,
on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example, a
millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after
their expected life times of perhaps 40 years,
and which, some have estimated,
may require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem.
Serious problems
have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage,
even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last
twenty years.10 Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter
vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic
history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations
in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice
Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be
provided for the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human
affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by
methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed
long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines,
are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to
involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as
regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in
glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock
deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain
suitably isolated from human environment.
In short, the best present storage
proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and
1 la
damaging their environment.
Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance, none of
the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may
6.
well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made
to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
provide a rigorous guarantee of
Only a method that could
safety over the storage period, that placed
safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult to see
how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological
or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe
long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing
that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it
would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive
economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency,
perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered
in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry.
Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage
sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons-
grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year
storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it.
(L
The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000,
/
e.
'which gets around the wast^ storage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem)
is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways,
/
/'n
/an article of faith.
It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no
limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that
cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always
immediately economically feasible).
The assumption has played
an important
part in development plans and practice.
It has not only encouraged an unwarranted
13
technological optimism (not to say hubris ), that there are no limits to what
humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation
on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution
is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably
controlled.
It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters.
There are severe
limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the
14
form of limitation theorems ); and in addition there are human limitations
which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk
analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed
below).
The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would
provide unlimited energy (a ’clean unlimited supply of power’).
shattered.
and nuclear
That dream soon
The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power,
fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power.
7.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development
are, then, significant.
Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for
a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an
energy source for only perhaps 150 years.
It will do nothing for the energy
problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously
affected by the wastes.
Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could
be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the
(extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an
with it.
over-populated world
not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes,
but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents' dreams of global
industrialisation are realised, more and more ^pf the global population will have
become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable
resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain,
resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life,
15a
are in a run-down condition. Such points
tell against the idea that future
people muelF be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least
indirect beneficiaries.
It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot
be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the
nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only)
by nuclear power.
The 'Solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society
at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which
reduces their ability to cope with those problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a
mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on
an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on
costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding
benefits.
The "solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes
8.
in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as
the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate
surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved
parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised.
I
Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it
will be argued -
clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing
corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of
those comparatively few who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of
behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps
often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the
conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to
the future.There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable
the avoidance of such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral
principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and
the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel
are in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal
to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner’s action in the circum
stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in
which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less
clearcut.
It is the same with the nuclear case.
Just as in the case of the
consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying
circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider
these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn,
beginning with the question of our obligations to the future.
Resolution of
this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop
ment.
It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether
there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII).
Ill
OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question of
obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due. account of the interests of future creatures.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue.
A good
many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down
in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of
future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people.
Other
philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge
obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them
a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral
position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate
future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both
sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view
underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no
moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations
to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained,
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the
effect of our actions on
future people.
Of those philosophers who say, or
whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate)
future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view
on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose
some temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded
on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
For example, obligation is
seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also
non-transitive.
Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or
requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:-
Firstly there are those accounts which require that
someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or
entitlement.
People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and
entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to
enforce any claims they might have for their rights
Secondly, there
are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention,
for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least
some kind of social enforcement.
But plainly these and other conventions will
not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and
so will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing
their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institutions would do it for them.
10.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the
distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a
commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case
of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity
of action which cannot apply to the future.
Where the basis of moral obligation
is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside
because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract.
The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from
those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations
of short duration such as sympathy and love.
As well there are difficulties
about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about
whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one. has little or no sympathy.
On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future
people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had
no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them.
What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as
something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which
is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating
in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can
fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).^ Because obligation therefore
becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise
obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding
features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the
thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it.
The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the
distant future.
The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future
people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not
however sustainable.
Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no
particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places
in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several
hundred years from the time of its despatch.
No presently living person and
none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of
11.
the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a
result of the action.
direct and predictable
The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is
an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately
criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or
badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do
to future people.
The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable
the following sort^ of policy:-
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit
from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although
it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants,
will
over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an
enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests,
without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied
and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious.
Yet the unconstrained position
concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not
only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as
well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems that those who opt for the
unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being
clearly implied by their position.
We suspect that - we would certainly hope
that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such
counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to
inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained
position would want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many
of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in
/mind^denying moral obligation is rather that future people can look after
themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that
the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counter-
example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone
to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so
thereby acquire many ^Jf the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in
causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to
take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be
careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their
actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future
people of the chance of a good life.
12.
Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action
involving them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not
acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that
one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do
what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some
course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
(sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired
or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or
assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which
require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone,
and for which no act of acquisition is required.
There is a considerable
difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved.
In the first case
one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g.
In the second case responsibility arises
I have loves, sympathy, be contracted.
as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable
consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or
assumed.
Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints,
can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied.
They apply as a result
of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably
predictable nature.
Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not
(yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist.
While
it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed
obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make
special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them
especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained
from harming them.
Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot
argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired
responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no
love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in
short that he has no special obligations to help them.
All that one needs to
argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral
constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations
to take responsibility for the lives of people involved.
There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant
future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be
morally required.
But in view of the distinctions between constraints and
acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just
13.
to misrepresent the position of these obligations.
For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable
life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner
resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous
package on the train.
The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired
constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both
to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something
which has to be assumed or required.
The conflation is encouraged by reductionist
positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly
endeavour to collapse all obligations.
Hence the equation, and some main roots
*
of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral
constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter
examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example
the position that
our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to
improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to
our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;17
there are in practice no obligations to the distant future.
A main argument
in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be
otiose.
Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through
the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which
each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the
succeeding generation.
account.
There are at least three objections to this chain
First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future
as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of
constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals
can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create
individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire
generation.
Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the
responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility.
Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to
the distant future.
But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be
adequate, as examples again show.
For the picture is unable to explain several
of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed
which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence matters.
14.
Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of
disadvantages to people of the more distant future.
Improving the world for
immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances
be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors.
Such
cases can hardly be written off as ’’never-never land" examples since many cases
of environmental exploitation might be. seen as of just this type. e.g. not just
the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the
long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through
overuse.
If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided,
obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in
the way the chain picture suggests.
IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECQNQMISTIC UNCERTAINTY
AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS.
While there are grave difficulties for the
unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position.
According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained
with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so
important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people
cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate
future.
The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for
very much less than the interests of present people.
Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should
proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future
costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over
time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people.
The
attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming
increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position.
objectionable in such an approach is that
What is
economics should operate within the
bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within
legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are.
There are moreover
alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one
which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue.
15.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future
generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle
18
the waste problem.
Since there is mounting evidence that future generations
may well not
be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter,
no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis
can carry much weight.
Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument.
For
it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making
sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial)
developments as nuclear power.
sacrifice argument.
That is, it depends on the already scotched
In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be
legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown,
what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will
be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they
can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden.
A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of
opportunity costs.
It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth
much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first
dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is
required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation
of resources.
Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary
value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to
economically - costs much less now than later.
Thus a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to
compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about
applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes,
what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into
monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks)
can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss
of life.
There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species.
In fact
the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed:
it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately
19
monetarily,
but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and
obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value.
It is also
presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices,
16.
are bound to apply discounting.
This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that,
on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and
discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie
cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly
inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined
x 20
and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.).
As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same
result as the unconstrained position.
If, for instance, we consider the cancer
example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a
sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the
conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no
constraints.
In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off.
One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of
discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
21
more than about 15 years,
and application of such rates would simply beg
the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is
certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method
of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral
constraints.
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections
from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.
The distant
future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate
future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching
or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future.
But
then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying
them against costs and benefits, it is evident that the interests of future
people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty,
must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people
where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of conflict
between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain
benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much
lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
But of course
it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits
are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking
poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent
risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to
obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity
to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy
use.
And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or unevenly weighted,
17.
such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show
that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the
profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was
sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision
problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where
different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest
or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly
yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles
that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some
innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from
it.
But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or
general way from one party to another .
Transfers of this kind, of costs
and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g.
is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not
susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion
of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with
the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits.
The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear
risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel
or cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives
and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be
spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way
related to a person’s extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian’s
(happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties,
and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision
methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved
but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability
argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always
less than those concerning the immediate future in the wa/ the argument supposes,
and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway.
In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable
reveals, that a significant risk is created^ such cases do not depend critically
on high probability assignments.
18.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important
ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we
cannot be expected to taj^ke serious account of the effects of our actions on the
distant future.
There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of
separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments are mistaken, the first
on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds.
The first argument
is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:-
In contrast to
the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can
obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable,
fuzzy and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should
act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain
able about the present which would indicate different action.
Therefore we must
regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future.
More formally and
crudely:
One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the
distant future.
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This
first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology
concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by
’knowledge’ in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to
considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with
respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which
is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest
and with respect to the future.
a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future
on the one hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we
suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant
future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those
things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints.
We can
and constantly do act on the basis of such ’’unreliable" information, as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic
proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the,,
present and immediate future.
In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities.
Consider again the train example.
We do not need to know for certain that the
container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact it does not even have
to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for
us to condemn the consigner’s action.
risk of harm in this sort of case.
It is enough that there is a significant
It does not matter if the decreased well
being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers
quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour
of the so-called "speculative" and "unreliable".
But if we do not require
certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why
19.
should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
Why should
we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of
moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet?
The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration
can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard.
But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference
between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples'
interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences,
since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to
each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible
hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for
choosing between them.
this way:-
The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively
If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form,
that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every
(action) x", then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the
information about future actions which would enable us to detach the
antecedent of the implication.
So even if moral principles theoretically
apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear
conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the "It is
wrong to do x" type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded.
If
the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of
present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future
people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the
future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about
how to act.
on action.
Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints
However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the
future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often
a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of
(contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the
20.
argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as
to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty
is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in
Again there is considerable
some cases is the creation of a significant risk.
uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant,
but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance
to moral issues.
For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be
in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people
will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially
if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred
years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own,
that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will
not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the
elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason,
the second uncertainty argument should be rejected.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area
where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for
the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially
where spatially remote people are involved.
In particular there is not gross
indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses
about what may happen are as good as each other.
It is plain that nuclear waste
storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is
evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases
of this type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to
write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of
proper consideration.
Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty
arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again
reminiscent of sceptical moves.
For example, we may be told that we cannot really
take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or
that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the
point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the
21.
things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a
sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there
is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are
morally committed to.
Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that
future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be
r
I morons o^ forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines.
/prepared to accent the elitist approach presupposed p
Even if one is
according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments
as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility -
like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a
facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he
hasn’t looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc.
Neither the
contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing
that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is
a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility.
We can contrast with
these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks
of escape of nuclear waste or decline
of a civilisation through destruction
of its resource base.
p
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
/sceptical character are not ^feal possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future
people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case.
This is the argument that
future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for
nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material.
Let us grant
for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical
arguments may show that it is not).
This still does not affect the fact that there
is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant
risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible.
In just
the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to
be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the
action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause
cancer in future people, morally admissible.
The fact that there was a real
possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show
that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty
of harm or a very high probability of it.
In such cases before such actions could
22.
be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility,
22
real or not
- it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and
rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something
that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner
says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on
the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or
some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they
may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train
may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak.
These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe
The
'that they are any more than that^ that is they are not live possibilities.
strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false
impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real
possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as
these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future yis so great
as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the
real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action.
A
related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for
cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints.
This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty
of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action
can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of
certainty or probability cannot be attained.
That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the
application of moral constraints.
But, as we have seen, this is often not so.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy,
for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future
times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into
account where there is a conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are
indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their
competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this
information is available in a more or less accurate form?
The question is raised
particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present
and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the
claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take
account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by
23.
ignoring such factors.
Nor are distributional problems as large and
representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency
to focus on them would suggest.
It can be conceded that there will be cases
where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very
difficult to resolve^ or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will
not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict
cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue,
n
e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type.
In particular,
there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of
interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The crucial question which emerges is then?: are there any features of
future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or
reduce their claims to such below those of present people?
principle None.
The answer is?: in
Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike,
in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example.
But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories
which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present?: in other words, a
theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects
as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white
skinned) humans, etc.
The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly
rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such
as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too
sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a
general way.
These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g.
the determination of best probable ol
*
present information).
practical course of action given only
In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort
being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain
information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be
harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability
principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
7/
consideration;
inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position.
As a result of this
23a.
universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as
to the present;
and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them
and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take
account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing
harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so
as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
Uncertainty
If in a closely
comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is
enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds
for requiring greater certainty of
harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not
provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating
against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to
futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear
development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices
for future waste disposal are immoral.
Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this
conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to
pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion)
against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles
similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too
is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances.
V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN. The
ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures.
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just
treatment, neither does location in spa^e, or a particular geographical position.
First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of
distributive justice not only across time,1 across generations, but also across
space.
Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in
I another state’s or region’s (or waters^ yar<^
When that region receives no due
compensation (whatever that would amount to , in such a case), and the people
do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)?
The answer, and the
arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing
to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive
wastes upon future people.
But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan
cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose
to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can
discount people of two centuries hence.
(But what this consideration really
reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can
(be discounted over time)L
Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only
the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the
assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of
f
kood'
those in the neighbouij/ of reactors, and, differently, as regards the
distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations.
People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to
special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that
reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant,
25.
and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor.
An
immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any
ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in
their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding
the "risk/benefit tradeoffs” of nuclear technology.
That they are so imposed,
without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as
with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear
development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other largescale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental
to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are
commonly ignored or avoided.
The "normal” emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation
(A
'carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly costs,
there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers
and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over
the local health costs involved.
Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately)
permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical
issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage,
if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under
what conditions?
Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into
decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis
as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an
26
acceptable level of risk/safety for the public.
The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries
that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing
radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic
damage.
An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what
appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster.
It is a
pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner
working in summer.
Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits,
which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way
27
compensate for the agony of cancer.
The point is that the costs to one party
are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be
alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being
imposed.
People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those
who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a
26.
particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to
contract cancer through exposure than normal adults).
In USA, such people bear
a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the
population at large.
A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those
exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake
of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly,
for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent
majority).
Whatever i-ktr charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even
under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative,
and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits
involved.
There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of
radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the
location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious
losses, is quite (morally) acceptable.
One cheaper trick, deployed by the US
28
Atomic Energy Commission,” is to suppose that it is permissible to double,
through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that
the additional amount (being equivalent to the ’’natural” level) is also likely
to have negligible consequences.
The increased amounts of radiation - with
their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course,
so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-
effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most
other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very
substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is
worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose.
Furthermore, the
monitoring of the standards ’’imposed” is entrusted to the nuclear operators
themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Public policy is determined not so
as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a ’public pacifier' while
29
private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered.
27.
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official
definition, an 'extraordinary nuclear occurrence
.
*
But such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island).
30
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water)
30a
reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the
result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident ini a very small reactor, a steam
explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000l people would be killed instantly
•and at least 100,000 would die as a result of: the accident, property damages
would exceed $17 billion and an area the sizei of Pennsylvania would be destroyed,
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which
31
-k
the
consequences ofr a
these conservative US government figures are given :
similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still.
V
The consigner in risking the li^es, well-being and property of the
/ passengers
on the train has acted inadmissibly.
Does a government-sponsored
private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible
in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package
on the community train,
The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the
consigners' action is, as we would ordinarily
•suppose, inadmissible and irrespon-
The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary,
&
(while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out if the ethical arena
/
and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm).
sible.
0
It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that
Indeed in the
there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
32
influential Rassmussen report
- which was extensively used to support public
confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly
CO
jstrong, imp?yjbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic
nuclear accident is so remote as to be Almost) impossible.
The main argument for
this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself.
These
assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close
to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than
mathematical models.
As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear
reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of
technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents
and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual,
a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear
28.
catastrophe.
In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof
and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different.
But we do not live in such a world.
According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident
probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions
and is methodologically sound.
This is very far from being the case.
The under
lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and
"reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as "not
credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real
possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world.
It is the
In fact the methodology and data of the report
33
has been soundly and decisively criticized.
And it has been shown that there
eliminations that are otherworldly.
is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident.
It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater
order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here we
encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment
models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off
models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to
different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied
to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is
preferable to option b;
rV\
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in ter^s of cost to people (e.g. deaths,
injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted;
34
therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number lively to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than
k
the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are
<
'accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable.^ little reflection reveals
that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy
as transaction models.
It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional
and other relevant aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical
assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is
the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or
29.
primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other
parties who do not benefit?
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of
the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a
35
comparison on such a basis would be valid.
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly, does the
person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes
in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk,
etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant
activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason?
A risk that is ethically
acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify
nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i)
and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the
or
nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high.
The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs” is
one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the
costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing.
It is
a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and
already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs
of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other
37
parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This
transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs
include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to
the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g.
it can be substituted for or done without.
Thus, for instance, one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting
oneself.
Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a
result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which
J
!is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health
if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to
some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside,
they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery
service, on the train, to the next village.
The inhabitants of this village are
then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult
disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else
leaving the village and their livelihoods.
transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
Most of us would see this kind of
30.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be
morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or
do not benefit correspondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this
condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next
villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world
countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users.
The distribution of
costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a
characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one
of its most objectionable moral features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to
our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the tramsmission
principle.
For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical
theories).
VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
^environmental, health and safety risks and costs in^or arising from
the
*
fuel cycle.
nuclear
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
,
5
materials.
Several of these stageyf involve hazards.
Unlike the special risks
in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material,
and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have
parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating
power, e.g. ’’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’the same risk’ of
38
ffatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry^.
Furthermore, the
Various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectoj^ of
uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location
for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped.
For an occupation is, in principle at
any rate, chosen (as is occupational
relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive
material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation: with where
one already lives things are very different.
The uranium miner’s choice of
occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific
Islander’s ’’fact" of location cannot be.
The social issue of arrangements that
contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people
into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the
risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while
very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations.
Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale
industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors
/that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power
cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of
large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining
for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a
specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio
active lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many large
industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration
camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire
consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage
(consider again the effects of core meltdown),
Though theft of material from more
dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at
large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises
pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other
industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such
/massive explosives/
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so
many fronts.
/
/
5
In part to reduce it/ vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run
counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as
personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to
information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information,
formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil
liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends.
The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it
^nswerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.^9
developments
the Uni-ted Kingdom; and worse i-R Weot Germany
presage
along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
societies.
That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences
tells heavily against it.
/•fS
j2a?c
bEHmR
- - *. i »
/> .
.
Bvhi nd what mirt bv one of the most impregnable fortifications this side of
the East-West German border, work has just begun on building West
Gerpianv’s latest nuclear power station.- Much of the perimeter of the
75-acre site, at Brokdorf m the marshlands of the lower Elbe, is screened by a
concrete wall io feet high, surmounted by coils of barbed wire. I he rest,
regarded as ‘strategic ally observable.' is girdled by a ditch io feet wide and
fill ed with water. Approach roads to the site arc patrolled by dozens of
policemen and the compound itself is guarded by 6oo men from a private
security organization and b\ jg dogs.
'*
-4?
32.
Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct
connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is fortunately true that
ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war
is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however,
the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means
for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and
chances of, nuclear engagement.
Since nuclear wars are never accountable
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are
always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread
of nuclear power accordingly
expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself
undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also
undesirable.
The details and considerations that fill out this argument,
from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many.
They are firstly
technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to
make nuclear explosives given access to, a nuclear power plant, secondly' political,
A
that nuclear engagements once instituted likely to escalate and that those
A
who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants
do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with
A
nuclear engagement (up to "strategic nuclear strikes” at least), and thirdly
**
,
$
A
/ethical, that warj( invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive
5
damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is.
Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted
than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous
wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear
weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because
of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations.
The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and
yare designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself
y
undesirable.
The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be
elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is
O
.
27
ya case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular /f the gross
uncertainties involved in nuclear development.
In cases of this type the
appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each
alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst
5
/ consequence^ (this is a pretty un con troversial part of the maxim'nw rule which
enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences).
The
nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear
war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable
alternative.
33.
/VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS^ AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR
I DEVELOPMENT♦
As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear
development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to
important overriding circumstances.
That appeal, to be ethically acceptable,
must go far beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as already observed,
the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments,
such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more
prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable
changes would otherwise be needed.
The transfer principle on which this
assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious
risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in
particular, applied to the nuclear case.
For this reason the economistic
arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote
nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity
utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring
of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the
nuclear alternative is an acceptable one.
Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of
them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism
from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of
moral constraints, and not vice versa.
What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is
arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear)
alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only
possible outcome, and
will ensue.
For example, in the train parable, the
consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his
village will starve.
It is by no means clear that even such a justification
as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is
high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others;
but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps
hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances.
Some, of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on
/
/competing^to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people,
both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future
o
I significant risk ^f serious harm.
The structure of such moral conflict arguments
is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to
be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for
example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option
34.
I to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living i/' some
other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than
the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments
In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of
as well.
false dichotomies.
A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination
either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase
unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very
much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally
poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through
40
encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear
energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is
both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it
requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists
and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its
feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission
systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into
the system.
Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised
entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political
41
structures which are a large part of the problem.
The fact that nuclear energy
is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course
mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the
westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these
countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes.
It
is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may
make in the name of the poor.
35.
The poverty argument is then a fraud.
help the poor.
Nuclear energy will not be used to
Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries
there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of
developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better
prospects for helping the poor.
It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear
development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap,
procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development.
And there are various
alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar
options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power),
42
each possibly in combination with conservation measures;
Despite the availability
of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary
for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and
affluence of certain select groups).
Such an assumption really underlies part
of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickle-
down argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting).
runs:-
For the argument
Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing)
affluence.
Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor.
Therefore nuclear
First, the argument does not on its own show
development benefits the poor.
anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy’
is substituted for ’nuclear’.
It has also to be shown, what the next major
argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy
alternatives in increasing affluence.
The second assumption, that affluence
inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical
data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita)
coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and
developed, and through economic models which reveal how "affluence" can increase
without redistribution occurring.
Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set
of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have,
it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions
which our culture has developed.
Unless our high-technology, high energy
industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and
traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially
that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth
it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
4
36.
The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable
in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller
examination, can be avoided.
The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely
uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently
assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
It assumes that technological
society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy
conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without
collapse.
It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish -
are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept.
Xz
The assumption that technological
^soc^ety's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all it has
survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technological
restructuring and consumption modification.
If western society’s demands for energy
are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a
program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could
be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction,
lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness;
but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather:
what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political
institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things.
While it may be
easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it
is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably
that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of
material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and
resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should
argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least,
in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong.
No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at
37.
present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of
/assumption which
44
is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy,
6©'
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the
lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on
burning all the time
to maintain and even increase the wattage output of
the Energy Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled
and garrisoned, capital-
and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one
which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces
which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
than they do at present.
Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become
authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other
thingsJof its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear
'
45
situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation,
destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable
aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for
personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and
energy extravagance.
But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in
our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future,
and if possible enhance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high technology-
nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable,
but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or,
rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer
far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is
valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The lights-
going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it
also is based on a false dichotomy.
38.
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the
If then we apply - as we have argued we should -
appeal to futurity, closed.
the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes
to other arguments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is
not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the
present and immediate future.
In sum, nuclear development is morally
unacceptable on several grounds.
A corollary is that only political arrangements
that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future.
VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS.
The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and
defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example,
such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not
discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of market-
centred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life
cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast
to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic
theory).
To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed
to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear
future is not a rational choice.
Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it
requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy.
Such
investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on
Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic
ends. Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission
^research and development, in marke^T contrast to other newer rival sources of
power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from
requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs. The reasons can be
'divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given
^(out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm p^gcepts, publicly
economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real
reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social
control.
39.
The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which
variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument
(with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is
valuable!):-
Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth.
Economic
growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of
the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social
Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is
46
part of US energy policy,
and the second premiss is supplied by standard
unrest, etc.).
economics textbooks.
But both premisses are defective, the second because
what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth,
which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified
47
economic growth.
More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption
of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less
vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards.
For of course
nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier
alternatives.
The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, 'economically
best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having most favourable
benefit-cost ratio', etc.
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
^development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things
a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done.
decisively, unless
Much data, beginning with
/the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can\be assembled to show as much.
Yet
the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if
it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true
premissiFve** /f the argument is to be decisive.
The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental)
analyses, and private (utility) assessments.
Virtually all available data
/concerns the USA; in Euro^ _e, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly/controlled” nuclear power are generally not divulged.
/
A
Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much
more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants.
Ka-emanoff
has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity)
49
will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985.
And
I capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell^ rather decisively
against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants.
Another main factor
is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators.
Coney showed
that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were
designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative
fcosts of nuclear and coal/, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design
capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more
40.
expensive than estimated.The discrepancy between actual and estimated
‘ capacity is especially important because a plant with an actual1/factor of 55%
produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed
at the manufacturers’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%.
y
The low reliability
/ of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the
coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic
/reliability of
y
/grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nucleai/'.
/
These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective,
before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken
into account.
The main subsidies are through research and development, by way
of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson
/kct^S, in enrichment, and in waste management,
It has been estimated that
charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills
for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more).
When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over
coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public
costs involved in producing nuclear power,
For example, the analyses ignore
waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently
what the costs involved are.
o
4
But even using actual waste handling costs (while
/wastes await storage) is enough to show that coa ljjis preferable to nuclear.
When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation
damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in
✓
y / ^ / favo ur of alternatives
to nuclear and against nucleaj/.
In short,, even on p/per
'r
Q1& Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be
j ze-
Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been
/kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public
subsidization, of several types.
In USA, to take a main example where
information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through
s
heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, ■through the
^Price-Anderson Act/ which sharply limits both private and public liability,
i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear
development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all
radioactive wastes.
While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical
developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for
uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as
/social welfare.
Duly admitting social welfare and some
principles
41.
6t
/
/in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leads/the modern
//version of the Old Paradigm, called the Modified Old Paradigm. The main
/changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) a^emphasis of
economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a
small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated
or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism).
Now it
has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power
ll«
is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends , for example,
As (j&lj 45
•
from those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap
e,
./electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance
/use, avoidance of shortages, rationing,
C2 -outs and the like.
Since
/alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve
ends given power was
/supplied with suitable extravagance, the d^eement has again to show that the
choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite
respects, in serving the public interest.
Such an argument is a matter for
decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives
also fall as special cases.
Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice
between alternatives; it is presented as the
theory which ’deals with the
53
problem of choosing one course of action among several possible courses’.
Thus the choice of alternati’ve modes of energy production, the energy choice
^problem, becomes an exercise -arrrd decision theory; and the nuclear choice is
of ten ’5 us tified" in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory.
But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put
to work in such practical cases as energy choice,
it is very considerably
contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported,
and what one is confronted with is
theory drastically
/pruned
down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic
theory.
The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one
important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where
uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the
5
expected utility model.
The general model for best choice among alternatives
/specified maximisation of expected value subject to
constraints, which may
include
ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given
/conditions.
models demote value to utility, assuming thereby
measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate
constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a
high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless).
Thus, in
particular,
ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in
Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage
sustained.
Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we
are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical)
economic
assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of
everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to
monetary terms : everything w^Lth account^n^/has a price), and as to the legitimacy
of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties.
The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the
assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty.
It is not a
case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable),
because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of
risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them,
Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear 1war and core meltdown
54
[of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development/
widespread radio
active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain.
The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy
/choice, maximum, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended.
In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which
energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected.
f Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same
for
options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of
the nuclear option can be effected.
All rational roads lead, not to Rome,
but to rejection of the nuclear option.
t
z
A further convergence can be effected
also, L'tbecause
ci LiO
Lthe
best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as
Ci .r D l/ j,
[coal and^hydroO
Celectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear
option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated).
Under these
conditions complex decision rules (^such as the Arrow-H^^wicz rule) which take
£
/account of both best possible and
/reduce to the maxim^in rule.
possible outcomes under wfk
*ch
option^
Whichever energy option is selected under the
/maximwffi rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since/(eere options
where worst outcomes are
than that of the nuclear
option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear
dream, is realised).
Further application of the rejection rule will reject
the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects
on the earth's climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels.
HHHB
43.
Although the rejection rule coupled with
enjoys a privileged
several rivals to maximise for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
proposed,
rules, such as the risk- AdkW
Some of these
reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
which ’
risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of
the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly
decision procedure appears to
and rather than offering a
dubious,
afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo.
What will be argued, or rather
what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these
rules is applicable. and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear
option.
For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility rule
(not an entirely unquestionable rule/ ’of strictly limited applicability’)
excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have
a nuclear reactor
ran air of irreversibility ... "One cannot pimply
a coal-fired plant'”
(p.506).
The compare-the
/alternatives rule, in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit
assessments, which,
as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear
option when costing is done properly.
The maximise-sustainable-benefits rule,
which 'directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net
benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable
sources', ruling out the nuclear option.
Other lesser rules Goodin discusses,
which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet
^further from the Old Paradigm ie framework ^arm-avoidance and protecting-the-
vulnerable^also yieldj/ the same nuclear-excluding results.
Harm-avoidance,
in particular, points ’decisively in favour of "alternative" and "renewable"
energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’
The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted
(p.442).
the result is the same, a^ nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm
standards.
Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this
conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with
probabilities duly multiplied in, and the
is as before from
cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice.
The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear
juggernaut: nor does its Modification.
The real reasons for the continuing
development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought
elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached.
It is, in any case,
sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with
Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical, economic
/theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social
1 theory.
There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear
power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal,
and certainly profitable one:
corporations so committed are understandably
keen to realise returns on capital already invested.
There are also typical
self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to
some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits
accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political
affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on.
There are
just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of
both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief
in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than
alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith
in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular,
so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds.
Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the
governing and technocratic classes.
Within contemporary corporate capitalism,
these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because
those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development
are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs.
It is then, contemporary corporate capitals^m, along with its state
enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut.
To be sure, corporate
capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western
nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the
type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice.
But,
unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm,
it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked
on such a future.
The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced
threshold to a nuclear future, confirms this diagnosis. This diagnosis can be
/split into two main cases, the national development of nuclear power in the
/US^ and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been
largely responsible.
By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in
/the Eastern bloc is
which had in 1977 only
nuclear plants.
II
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
oneCj-5^
-**
the wattage output of U/
Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state
controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually
no public
participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else
where to any great extent.
American technology has.
45.
The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of
great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US.
These companies were
encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants,
for several state controlled or influenced reasons:-
Firstly, owing to
governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn
a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one.
Secondly,
the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation,
and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively
encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development.
In particular, state
limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear
accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made
profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear
4
/investment.
In the 70s, though the state subsidization
picture changed :
continued, the private
’high costs of construction combined with low capacity
//factors and poor reliability have wiped out the
advantage that nuclear/
had enjoyed in the US.
Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few
corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly
and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies,
Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear
technology. "
These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and
subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for
Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology,
/research, enriched uranium and financial capital.
(The US offered a jstate
/subsidized) nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the
' British could not compete’.
In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common
Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies
/held
dcadSjig with relevant governments) substantial interests in European
and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained
largely American.
Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral
agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for
X
example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel,
/ Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa,
,
/Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam.
The US proceeded?in their way, to ship
nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world.
It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic
Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations,
but most of whose *
budget
activities’.
and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear
A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World
countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world
Less developed countries
markets for reactors.
2
offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with
easy public financing, where health and safety regulations
are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition
is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer
/ easy sales.
fForJ
... the US has considerable leverage
with many of these countries. We know from painful
experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet
. would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support.
' Many of those
are now^ y?ocrinithe
nuclear path, for all the worst reasons.
'
J
It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor
proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework
of the Old Paradigm and
social Modification, but that the practices (of
corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much
that is ethically unacceptable,
by o^rfer, modified, or alternative
percepts;^
for principles such as
assembled.
viyxAi/r
and self-determination are grossly violated.
IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy
option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power,
while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it
ii
carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated
phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the
despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use
in meeting very high projected consumption figures.
Such an option would also
fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would
impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to
some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production
1
58
and replacement.
To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes
softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in
Northern Europe, hydroelectricity.
The deeper choice, which even softer paths
tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both
conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy
intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic
and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to be obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet
47.
given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter
of examining the goals.
That is, we are not merely faced with the question of
comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this
with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the
matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates
them.
It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these
I alleged needs conceived of ps inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are
solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways.)
Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are
superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options.
But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will
be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even the more benign
technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs
for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed
on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are
commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of
electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and
contemplated by many other energy organisations).
While few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation
of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet
ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s
already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple
expedient of waving around the label ’renewable resources’.
Many forests are
in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of
exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere
in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense
59
of the renewal of all their values.
In many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total
decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced.
It certainly
has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types)
which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future.
The addition of a
major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy,
on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with
long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must
regard with alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
48.
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating
erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid
regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural
ecosystems.
Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass
on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one
poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any
more basic structural and social change is inadequate.
Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved.
It is
not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear
program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the
to succeed in halting the Vietnam war.
way pressure appeared
While without
doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely
given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsorinanuclear
,
.
, 60
development.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social
structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and
an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force
are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control
and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive
very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods
and services.
A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from
products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction
in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to be
one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non-
genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption frequently
becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of
adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the
move away
from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism
and materialist values.
The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of
energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does
question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The conventional
discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or
needs ^) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can
49.
be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a false
choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
I
/'of
The point is readily illustrated.
such industries as
f
transportation
It is commonly argued by representatives
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth
of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners,
power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying
these wants.
Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in
which such needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination
of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level
(e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual
choice or determination at all.
It is to see the social framework as a major
factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel,
and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled
and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of
corporate and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult
to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding
passing on serious costs to the future.
And there are other sorts of reasons than
such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option
open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective0 , a perspective integral
with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant
paradigm.
The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires,
hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment.
The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will
be strongly resisted because they
and power structure.
mean changes in current social organisation
To the extent that the option represents some kind of
threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising
that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such
far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is
imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train.
FOOTNOTES
1.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology.
2.
As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1.
As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references
given therein.
3.
Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339.
4.
The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341;
compare also
Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34.
5.
See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8.
6.
For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at
the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1
Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and
Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff.
7.
Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another.
One can argue both from one’s own position against the other, and in the
other’s own terms against the other.
8.
As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres
favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the
alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the
information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only
what, suits them.
9.
This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is
conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite
details up to 1977 see Routley (a).
The same conclusion has been reached in
some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g.,
2
10. z
For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff.
11a.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be
taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation, unlike
most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare.
But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for
example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can
be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional
(Old Paradigm) way.
11.
See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 42^?
12.
On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry,
see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy.
On the more general
problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote
7.
Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man
13.
replacing God.
First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when
during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited
Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the
power.
position of unlimitedness.
More recently nuclear power is seen as providing
man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology,
[ability to manage technology r&a/esents the past]
On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one
side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80.
All these theorems mimic
paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and voting "paradoxes" on the
other.
Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81.
It
follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is
necessarily unknowable.
Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture.
According
the Dominant Western Worldview,
/
the his
histo^ of humanity is one of progress; for every problem
there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton
and Dunlap, p. 34).
15.
See Lovins and Price.
/15a.
The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future,
namely
.
A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities
open to future generations.
.
’What justice requires ... is that the overall range
of opportunities open to successor generations should not be
narrowed'
T-
re
(Barry, p.243).
re~ a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice.
3
16.
For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers'
positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a).
17.
Passmore, p. 91.
Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to
all appearances, inconsistent.
It is considered in detail in Routley (a),
as also is Rawls’ position.
18.
For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting,
and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see
Goodin, pp. 429-30.
19.
The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different
e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which
value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform.
20.
Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than
What he claims is that we cannot list all the
satisfactory fashion.
possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization
presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can
go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures.
But
outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by
saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p).
For example,
outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines
as "plant breakdown through human error”.
Furthermore the different
I mote
rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of
' "possible" outcomes.
Goodin's point can be alternatively stated however.
are really two points.
The first trouble is that such
There
alternative^
cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is
at that point that applications of the models breaks down.
The breakdown is
just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making
under risk.
Secondly, many influential Applications of decision theory methods,
I the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible
X
/alternatives from their
21.
Discount, or bank, rates in the economists’ sense are usually set to
follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, TfoCTZCWWS., 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1967, p.351.
22.
Thus the rates have little moral relevance.
A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could
eventuate.
A real possibility requires producible evidence for its
consideration.
The contrast is with mere logical possibility.
4
24.
Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g.
Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and
•-jtA?
>v
/ Rousseau to Rawls (p. 293).
How
the principle is
will depend
' heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use
depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
25.
The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the
Poverty argument.
26.
SF, p. 27. Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat crritical of the
/carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that^whoever affirm^
denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree,
/symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and culture
/
*
(p. 28).
27.
The example parallels the sorts of
utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible
»unterexamples often advanced to
I of an innocent person because
of pleasure given to the large lynching party.
For the more general case
against utilitarianism, see ...
28.
US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of
Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing
Office, Washington,
29.
, December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16.
As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail.
As she remarks,
... since standards need not be met, so long as the
NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the
licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them,
current policy allows government regulators to trade
.■ human health and welfare for the [apparent] good.
E^j/ch]
/ intentions of the promotors of technology.
/ good intentions have never been known to be sufficient
for the morality of an act (p. 39).
The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very
X
/demanding, and
the alliance of regulators with
they are supposed to be
regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just
of (nuclear) pollution control.
30.
The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report:
31.
possibilities and consequences of major
’Theoretical
accidents in large nuclear plants’,
USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957.
This report was requested in the first place because the
^n Atomic Energy
wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the
private insurance companies" so that they would provide
coverage for the nuclear industry.
Since even the
conservative statistics of the report were alarming it
was
suppressed and its data were not made public until
almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of
the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9).
Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of
32.
Accident Risks in US Commercial. Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office,
Washington, D.C., 1975.
This report, the only allegedly complete study,
concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the
public.
Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant
organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew
its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive
analysis of nuclear power approved by the US Government.
32a.
Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy.
33.
34.
Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected.
35.
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against
numbers such as probabilities.
In this way risks, construed as probable
costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment.
(Alternatively, risks may
be assessed through such familiar methods as msuranc^Ly
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b
and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which
the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final-
Report , Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and
p. 288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly
accepted by society as alternative power sources,
In other applications b has
been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!)
points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles
(i) - (ii’).
The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an
ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an
inadmissible conventional character.
For look at the origin of b: b may be
socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its
social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially
^accepted if as much as is nc^ known had been known when it was introduced.
What
is required in (ii'), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing
is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with
the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It would be
sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries.
36.
A main part of the troub|le/with the models is that they are narrowly
utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features,
involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an uncon-
strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation:
see R. and
V. Routley 'An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’.
37.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution
of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be
taxation
is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly
monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring
dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not
morally entitled to so motor.
38.
SF, p. 15, where references are also cited.
39.
Goodin, p. 433.
40.
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and
Energy3 Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner-,
well
the absorption off available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
e-'/
On the mployment issues, see too
idd, p. 149.
A
Z|.
K-ola&Az,
-fl
'(La. j>o/'-bics d
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illicit,
Energy and Equality, Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that
the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of
what the poor need.
For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher,
Small is Beautiful, Blond, and Briggs, London, 19 73.
o
As_to the capital and
<o
other requirements, see/£2J, p. 48, and also
For an illuminating look at the sort o
technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see
the paper of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Environment (edited
J.H. Winslow), ^usp/alian National University Press, Canberra, 1977.
42.
A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not
Taken, Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs,
October 19 76); see alsod^tT'J,p. 233«r-ff^ and Schumacher, op. cit.
43.
An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7,
with respect to the question
saving resources.
In Passmore this argument
for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned
fl
by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand
argument of economics
that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed
fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only
way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to
take proper care of the present and immediate future.
The argument has all
the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
cK
See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commor^.
Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil
liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood
and R. Grove-White,
Nuclear Prospects.
A comment on the individual^ the State
and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural
England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976.
46.
’US energy policy, fo^ example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic
/ Energy Act, has been that/nuclear power is necessary to provide "an economical
/and reliable basis" r^te'ded "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p.lll, and
references there cited).
7
47.
There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the
literature.
n
X
For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms
of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see
- ■
—
'■
Routley (b) , and alsoj'Berkley and Seckier.
To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion
lZ-lof soiief discussions of nuciear power, c,f/ Elster, is to leave out
crucial
X
/alternatives; the
of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty
case for unalleged growth.
48.
In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain,
in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial
interests in main nuclear involved companies.
Even as regards nuclear plant
operation in the US,
/
I
it is difficult to obtain comprehensive
Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the
samp 1p of plants chosen and the assumptions made
concerning the measurement of plant performance
(Gyorgy, p. 173).
49.
See Kalmanoff, p.
50.
See Comey.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price
52.
Full ref to ^F
from ignorance etc.
53.
These e.g. Elster, p. 377.
On decision theory see also,
I
f54.
A recent theme iyymuch economic literature is that
theory and risk analysis can be universally applied.
The theme is upset as
soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines.
y
£
/within these confines there is no
decision
In any case, even
at all on, and few (and
^widely diverging) figures for> the probability of a reactor core meltdown,
and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation,
Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that ’such uncertainties plague energy theories’
utility calculations impossible”.
as to ’
55.
For details see Gyorgy, P. 398 ff., from which presentation of the
international story is adapted.
Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308.
56.
For elaboration of some of the important
points, see Chesrmsky and Hermann.
Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old
57.
Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many
J
people
respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism.
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and
58.
^v\
limited use of unacceptable long ter^ commodities such as coal, but in
presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic
social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such
measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the
price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an
equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production.
Other
(sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should
also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers
to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and
power industries.
Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that
59.
forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did
the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than
they already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a
fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g.
the argument in L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for portable
fuels’
9
60.
and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy,
and also
.
The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b),
and
and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature),
61.
V
Gyorgy-.'
62.
by
The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised
For its environmental importance see Routley (c) (where
further references are cited).
/references.
primary
General
the
For t
the reader ca
ext that over
er...ref^ences wilt—unS'"by
consulting the latter ■
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review 2$ (2) (1980), 333-51.
R.E. Goodin, ’No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
A. Gyorgy and Friends, No Nukes: everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End
Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne,
1977.
R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)).
Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
K.S. Schrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980 (referred to as SF).
W.R. Catton, Jr., and R.E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant
sociology’, American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47.
United States Interagency Review group on Nuclear Waste Management, Report
to the President, Washington. (Dept, of Energy) 1979.
(Ref. No. El. 28. TID-
29442) (cited as US(a)).
L,
A.B. Covins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical
Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco, 1975.
R. Routley, ’On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an
orthodox solution to environmental problems’, Logique et Analyje,
,
23 (1980), 145-66.
R. Routley, ’Necessary limits for knowledge: unknowable truths’, in Essays in
honour of Paul Weing^T^^
(ed. E. 'tforsc^er) , Salzberg, 1980.
J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, D^ckwairth, London, 1974.
Passmore,
2.
R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Edition, RSSS, Australian
National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)).
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
J)
3fid ^/s^ckler
o
i/i_ t~ot^/c\
l
*
_
J. Elster, 'Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power’, Social Science Information
18 (3) (1979) 371-400.
£,
£
J. Robinson, Economic Heresies, Basic Books, New York, 1971.
/
Barry, ’Circumstances of Justice and future generations' in Obligations to
Future Generations (ed. ^
.1.
*
Si^rrj^and B. Barry), Temple University Press,
Philadelphia, 19 78.
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Alternative Environmental
Dominant Social Paradigm
Alternative Environmental
Paradigm
Domination over nature
Non-material (self-realisation)
Natural environment intrinsically
valued
Harmony with nature
*
ECONOMY
Market forces
Risk and reward
Rewards for achievement
Differentials
Individual self-help
Public interest
Safety
Incomes related to need
Egalitarian
Collective/social provision
POLITY
Authoritative structures (experts influential)
Hierarchical
Law and order
Action through official institutions
Participative structures (citizen/
worker involvement)
Non-hierar chical
Liberation
Direct action
SOCIETY
Centralised
Large-scale
Associational
Ordered
Decentralised
Small-scale
Communal
Flexible
NATURE
Ample reserves
Nature hostile/neutral
Environment controllable
Earth’s resources limited
Nature benign
Nature delicately balanced
KNOWLEDGE
Confidence in science and technology
Rationality of means (only)
Limits to science
Rationality of ends
CORE VALUES
Material (economic growth, progress and development)
Natural environment valued as resource
State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs
as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced
system by a command system).$ But since there is virtually no debate
confines of state socialism, that minor variant on the Old Paradigm
from the Old Paradigm really only
by central planning (a market
over a nuclear future within the
need not be delineated here.
Dublin Core
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Box 97, Item 2: Draft of Nuclear power - ethical, social and political dimensions
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Typescript of draft, with handwritten emendations and corrections with whiteout, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield.
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Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/3d6f700c4d63dddd9b3a3db43b54391a.pdf
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Text
Richard and Vai Routley
1.
NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
1
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely raging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not
really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead,
it is a debate about values...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical
ones.
I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.
train has just pulled out.
passengers and freight.
The train which is
A long distance country
crowded carries both
At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as
freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly
toxic and explosive gas.
This is packed in a very thin container which, as
the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance
for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should
strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys.
All
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least
some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could
be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain
that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his
duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not
or the people on it.
These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen
as ludicrous when set in this context.
not
responsible for the train
Unfortunately, similar excuses are often
so seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his
workers1 health or
other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify
his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product,
is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container
even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and his family
will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others,
and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off.
The
poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help,
will suffer especially.
Few people would accept such grounds as justification.
�2.
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply
transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the
train case.
How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument
progresses.
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present,
with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century
producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity
of the Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example,
a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
A leak
of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread
disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their
expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may
require 1-1 million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem.
Serious
problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of
storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over
the last twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human
intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative
and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with
attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as regards expensive recent
proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the
result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models
�3.
reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human
environments.10 In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real
possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environment.
Given the
3
heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
r
not only have
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,^/none
of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested,
but they
may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
geological or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem
of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The
assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of
efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously
been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are,
then, significant.
to bear
Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant)
energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it.
Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted
of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests
and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the
basis of life, are run-down or destroyed.
Such points tell against the idea
that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear
fission, at least indirect beneficiaries.
�The "solution" then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price
which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces
their ability to cope with these problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out
of a
mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies
dependent on an abundance of non-rerewable energy, which is limited in supply to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no
corresponding benefits.
The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some
uncomfortable changes in the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate
descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for
him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing
heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent
lives may be seriously jeopardised.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in
the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear
development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale.
There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not
apply to those
in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be
made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner’s
action in the circumstances outlined is not to imply that there are no
circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable.
As in the case
of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these
justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear
development in turn.
I
II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question
of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
�5.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations
to distant future creatures.
A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly
considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration
being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of
contemporary or immediately future people.
Others fall into three categories:
those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them
seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are
committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral
obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the
weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic
and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future
beyond those perhaps to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained',
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving
effect of our actions on future people.
from the
Of those philosophers who say, or whose
views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many
have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on
relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus,
moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold
between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
Let us call
the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the
No
constraints position.
Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position,
which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these.
Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral
obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement.
People in the
distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us,
and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have
against us.
Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligations
on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require
punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement.
But
plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society
and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing
offending predecessors.
�6.
The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain.
Consider, for
example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a
particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its
despatch.
No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants
would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would
be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action.
The no-constraints
position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that
whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment
(perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral
protest about the damage it will do to future people.
The no-constraints
position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy:A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and
manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for
present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds
of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the no-constraints
view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration
for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily
varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious.
Yet this view is far
from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this
position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the
basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems
that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such
examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position.
We suspect
that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits
such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause
pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would
want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many of those who have
put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying
moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can
take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in
the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of
the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the
present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in
�7.
what they do of people affected and their interests,
to be careful, in their
actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing
harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the. chance
of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not
have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never
been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect
to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be
avoided.
These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part
because of a failure to make an important distinction.
Some of our
obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some
agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise.
Other obligations,
however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that
an agreement has been struck between us.
former kind acquired obligations
Let us call obligations of the
and those of the latter unacquired obligations.
There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with
each.
In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one
should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise.
In the
case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal
agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action,
a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in
the past (e.g., made a promise).
Our obligations to future people clearly
are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position
simply fails to take into account.
These obligations arise as a result of our
ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether
on our contemporaries or
on those in the distant future.
Thus, to return to
the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action
that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the
passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for
them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has
acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them.
All that
�8.
one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there
are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially
,
, . ,
,
, ,
,
all obligat
to the distant
acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence th
uture involve
heroic self sacrifice, something "above and beyond" what is normally required.
One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people
into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm
than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from
III.
ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE.
In evading these
difficulties the No-constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly
abandoned.
According to the Qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
There are obligations, even to distant future
with respect to the distant future.
people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests
of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of
the present and immediate future.
The interests of future people then, except
in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present
people.
Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative
activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the
distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by
application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to
future people.
The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something
that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the Qualified position.
What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within
the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice
it operates within legal constraints.
What economics cannot legitimately do is
determine what these constraints are.
There are, moreover, alternative economic
theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future,
giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all
the questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that
future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed
to handle the waste problem).
generations may well not
Since there is mounting evidence that future
be better off then present ones, especially in things
that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations
on this basis can carry much weight.
For the waste problem to be handed down
�9.
to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic
progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off
but so much better off that they can
(easily) carry and control the nuclear
freight.
A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument,
builds directly
It is argued from the fact
on the notion of opportunity cost.
that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the nonimmediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at
compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary
values.
This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of
resources.
Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come
to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate
eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
beset this approach.
Two problems
First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable
practical difficulties about applying such discounting.
how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
that the argument depends on a false assumption.
We simply
do not know
A more serious objection is
It is not true that value, or
damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents.
There is no clear
"monetary compensation" for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of
life, a lost species.
The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it
leads back in practice to the No-constraints position.
discounting imposes an " economic horizon"
The reason is that
beyond which nothing need be
considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are,
when discounted
back to the present, negligible.
A different argument for the Qualified position, the
Probabilities argument,
avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability
considerations.
The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower,
perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning
the distant future.
Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future
people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree
of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring
people where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of
conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing
certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against
a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of
�10.
distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
Firstly, probabilities involving distant
badly flawed.
is however
The argument
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes.
problems often
Moreover the outcomes of some moral
do not depend on a high level of probability.
In many cases it
is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created;
such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Nor,
of course, can it be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and
benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of
risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
in order to obtain quite doubtful, or even trivial, benefits for some present people,
fin the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use.
And even
the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such
if
an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that
the consigner’s action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit
(e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on <
other people) was sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision, problems, with or
is quite inadequate when different parties
without the probability frills,
are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations
are at issue.
permissible
5
For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is
for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party
provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it,
that costs to some
group
are more than morally
larger benefits to another group.
transferred in any
compensated for by
But costs or benefits are not legitimately
simple way from one group to another.
The often
appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept
the costs” is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits
then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)"
is another and
�11.
very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is
not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising
from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved
£
in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This Transfer-limiting principle
is especially clear in cases
of which a thalidomide manufacturing and
marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect
on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
The principle is of
fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again :
it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other
liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter
of reactor meltdown.
In particular, the principle invalidates the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks,
between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own
lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all—
who may be just the opposite!
More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion,
i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of
pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features.
production, from nuclear or fossil
pollution.
fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious
Thus from the Transfer-limiting
important necessary condition for energy options:
an energy option
Large-scale energy
principle emerges an
To be morally acceptable
should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not
benefit correspondingly from the energy source.
Included in the scope of
�12.
this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e.
not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those
of the next towns).
A
further corollary of the principle is the Transmission
Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our
successors in substantially worse shape than we "received” it.
For if we did
then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical
theories (e.g. those of a
deontic cast such as Kant’s and Rawls’) and
from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers
putting oneself in another’s position.
But the principle is perhaps best
defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples.
embroider the train parable, the
company
town decides to
Suppose, to
solve
its
disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line,
which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due
protest.
The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus
taining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us would regard this kind
of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company
town flourishes.
IV.
UNCERTAINTY AND
INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY.
Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be expected to take too
much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to
uncertainty.
There are two main components to the
General Uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments
are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on ai priori
second on a posteriori grounds.
follows:-
grounds, the
The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as
In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present,
the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant
future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative.
But we cannot base
assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when
�13.
accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate
Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of
different action.
our actions on the distant future.
ignorance
A striking example of the argument from
at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear
development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of
waste control on the
7
grounds of uncertainty.
the argument concerned is this J-
More formally and crudely
One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reliable information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning
our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by ’knowledge’
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available
with respect to
the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required
as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with
respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp
division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the
adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly
such
do act on the basis of^"unreliable" information, which the sceptic as regards the
future conveniently labels "uncertainty".
In moral situations in the present,
assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite
low probabilities.
Consider again the train parable.
We do not need to know
for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact
it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable
than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action.
that there is a significant risk of harm
It is enough
in this sort of case.
It does not
matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the
�14.
prospects of the passengers quite uncertain.
It is wrong to ship the gas.
But
if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral
consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double
standard.
According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty
argument,
even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be.
Therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Given that moral principles are characteristically
of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character
then
x
is wrong, for every (action)
sharply thus:
x”,
h
the argument may be stated more
We can never obtain the information about future actions which
would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication.
Therefore, even
if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot
be applied to obtain clear conclusions.
It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain ,
that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than
chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action
would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable
in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions
about how to act.
In this event the distant future would impose no practical
moral constraints on action.
However, the argument is factually incorrect in
assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant
future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is
�15.
not so great as to exclude constraints on action.
For example, we may have
little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another
morally-irrelevant factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years
of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have
material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need
a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune
to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one
area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to
preclude moral constraints on action.
For this sort of reason, the
Practical uncertainty argument should be rejected.
Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in
a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off pxQhabLe. harm
to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these
popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other.
For example, we may be told that we
cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they
will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from
our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources
or from the things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete
certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future,
where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those to whom we are morally committed.
Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because
they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment
of other machines.
Even
if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments
�16.
is again a mere outside possibility.
Neither the contemporary nor the historical
situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal
moronity or universal-pleasure—machine escapism is a serious possibility.
We can
contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically
supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through
destruction of its resource base.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument,
the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will
prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a
conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less
accurate form?
The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed
quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the
numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but
they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
Nor are distributional
of the future.
problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class
of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would
suggest.
It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the
indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to
resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise
answer to every
ethical question.
But, as the train parable again illustrates,
there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder
resolution,
and
cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers
of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The case of nuclear power is like that.
The failure of these various arguments reveals, what ca^e independentlys
•
argued from the universalisability features of
•
1
moral principles,
8
K
/
thatA
disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims
below the claims of present people.
That is, we have the same general obligations
�17.
to future people as to the present;
thus there is the same obligation to take
account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions,
to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions
causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act
so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
Uncertainty
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
V.
PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN.
The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or
and future creatures.
entitlement
to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular
geographical position.
Hence several further problems arise, to which principles
and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem
apply.
For example, if one group (social unit,
or state) decides to dump its
radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent
its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it
imposes risks
and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in
much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on
future people.
There are differences however :
distant people
spatially
cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their
interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden.
People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special
costs and risks.
One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharge
radioactive materials into the air and water near
Emission problem.
the plant : hence the
Such ’’normal” emission during plant operation of low level
radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly
costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced
by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain.
If our
ethical principles
permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the
ethical issue directly raised by nuclear
emissions would be :
what extent of
�18.
cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of
nuclear power, and under what conditions?
Since, however, risks and benefits
are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting
principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses
for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion
And these risks are
real!
In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclear
power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that
borne by the population at large.
And children living in this region are even more
vulnerable, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through
exposure than normal adults.
The serious costs to these people cannot be
justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could
be obtained without these costs.
Thus it is not just complacent to say
It s
a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioners
make life comfortable’.
For such benefits to some as airconditioners
provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of
buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer.
Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the
imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice
in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without
serious losses — is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. According
to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable
to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a
population has
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument
being that the additional amount (being equivalent
is also
likely to have negligible consequences.
to the "natural" level)
The increased amounts of
radiation — with their large man-made component — are then accounted normal,
and, it si claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no
ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
�19.
e.g.
two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from
acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with
most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions
very substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission
situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would
disclose.
Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to
the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Thus public
policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve
as a "public pacifier" while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations
a
proceed relatively unhamperedi
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an
accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear
occurrence’.
But "definitions" notwithstanding, such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island):
hence the Core-meltdown problem.
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light
water) reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely,
with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively
10
contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small
reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be
killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident,
property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania
would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of
the reactor for which these conservative US figures (still the best available from
official sources7 are given :
the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly be much greater.
The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the
train acts
inadmissibly. a government or government-endorsed utility
appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in
�20.
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the ’’community train”.
More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a
community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost
analysis and other economic appraisal, would violate such ethical requirements
as the Transfer-limiting principle.
The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured
to avoid
questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the
extraordinary improbability
ethical arena and into a technological dispute about about the^
of
reactor malfunction.
They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the
train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear
accident.
indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively
used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even
stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the
likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost)
impossible.
However, the mathematical models
relied upon in this report,
variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques",
are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible"
possibilities that may well happen in the real world.
that the
It is not surprising, then,y
methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised,
or that official support for the report has now been withdrawn.
12
Moreover, use
of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a
non-negligible probability of a
serious accident.
In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no
greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here
we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk
assessment models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or
trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks
attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their
�21.
ethical status.
The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment
as applied to energy options:
Ai.
If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option
Aii.
b ;
Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g.
deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already
13
accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
These assumptions are then applied as follows.
be killed
Since the number likely to
eventually
by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number
killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted;
it follows that the risks of ntaclear power are acceptable.
A little reflection
reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer
limiting principle.
In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need
a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:costs and benefits go to the same parties;
undertakes
and is the person who voluntarily
the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in
driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed
not benefit?
Do the
on other parties who do
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options
compared, and there are no such distributional problems,
a basis would be soundly based.
that a comparison on such
This is rarely the case, and it is not so in
the case of risk assessments of energy options.
VI.
OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely,mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
risks in the nuclear cycle
Unlike the special
- of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable
material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards
�22.
have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of
generating power, e.g.
’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain "the same
14
risk" of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The
problems are not unique to nuclear development.
Other social and environmental problems -
though endemic where dangerous
large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and
include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the
nuclear power cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable
component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution , such
as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear
development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead
radioactive lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many
large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences,
of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core
A
meltdown is not a possibility). Though theft of material from more dubious
enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large
and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose
problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other industry
produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive
explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts.
In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to
basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal
liberty, freedom of association and of expression,and free access to information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of
special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations ancl made it
answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
�23.
These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along
with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
That nuclear development appears to force such political
societies.
consequences tells heavily against it.
Nuclear development is further indicted
politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is
true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a
nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what
circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing
the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the
opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement.
never accounted
Since nuclear wars are
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils,
nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread of nuclear
power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable
consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities,
is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development is
undesirable.
This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear war against
large-scale nuclear development.
VII.
16
CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING QN
NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT.
UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF
Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case
against nuclear development, only one
justificatory
that of appeal to overriding circumstances.
route remains open,
That appeal, to be ethically
acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as observed,
the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely
economistic
arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the
town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly
uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
case:
a Transfer-limiting principle applies.
So it is also in the nuclear
But suppose now the consigner argues
that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die.
It is
�by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still
amountsjjone of transfer of costs and risks onto others.
But such a conflict
situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is
alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases
aticaJVwhere Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated,. Nuclear develop
ment is often
defended
in this way, through Conflict arguments,
to
the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features,
nevertheless the alternatives are worse.
Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on
competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm.
The success of such
conflict arguments requires the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the
action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument
(for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has
another
option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in
the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are
even worse than the option itself.
A first argument, the Poverty argument,
is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indus
trialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating
the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development.
The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the
poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is
good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment
and poverty
in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of
direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging
substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear energy
is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is both
politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires
massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
�25.
—-creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon
largely non-existent utility systems - e.g.
established electricity
transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical
appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the
problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people
of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of,
and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and
often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are
usually organised.
than what it is:
But that does not make the poverty argument anything other
a fraud.
There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives
and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources,
alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor,
both in the third world and in industrial countries:
coal and other fossil fuels,
geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar
sources, wind, water and tidal power).
Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-going-
out argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations
to future people.
We have, it is said, a
duty to pass on the immensely
valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed.
Unless our
high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our
valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in
our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
the most part these large questions can be by-passed.
But for
The reason is that the
argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology
societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
/ it:
It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that/cannot be changed in
the direction of energy conservation or
alternative (perhaps high technology)
energy sources without collapse.
These assumptions are all hard to accept.
The assumption that
technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so;
after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major
social and technological restructuring and consumption modification.
If
western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally
unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program
of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to
�26.
future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
Since high-
The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged.
technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central
question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled
is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a
society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is
valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably,that we have a duty to pass on to
the future.
The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence
There is good
or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource
consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is
unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of
the Lights-going-out argument are wrong.
present
The consumption of less energy than at
need involve no reduction of well-being
*
and certainly
a
large increase
over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear
energy, is quite unnecessary.
then
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do
is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to
enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase
the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza .
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by means of nuclear fission, be positively inimical to it.
which has become heavily dependent upon a
A society
highly centralised, controlled and
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
then they do at present.
Such a society would
almost inevitably tend to
become authoritatian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among
other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the
nuclear situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as
the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and
collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom
�27.
for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high
technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is
valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for
power or, better,the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which
offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what
is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The
Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails.
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the
appeal to futurity, closed.
If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the
same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape
routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.)
for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable.
In sum, nuclear
development is morally unacceptable on several grounds.
VIII.
SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy option
that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no
doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it carries with it
the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as
acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by
extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very
high projected consumption figures.
the Transfer-limiting principle :
Such an option would, moreover, also violate
for it would impose widespread costs on
nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to
some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
To these main conventional options a third is often added which
emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and
hydroelectricity.
Such softer options - if suitably combined with energy
conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of
energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no
genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power.
choice is not however technological,
The deeper
nor merely/individual/ but Social, and
involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and,
at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life
styles and social arrangements^ These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the
�28.
unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of
examining the goals themselves.
That is, we are not merely faced with the
question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged
needs and the cost of a society that creates them.
It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even more benign
technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and
which are^'
them.
^likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
In short, even more benign technologies may lead to violation of the
Transmission
^Requirement.
Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s
forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used
for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping.
While few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the
unrestricted exploitation of forests —
whether it goes under the name of
"solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be
the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests
are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label
"renewable resources".
Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true,
given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now
very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated
as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values.
In
many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already
been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent.
It
certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain-
forest types, are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future.
The addition of
a major further and not readily limitable demand pressure
for energy on top
of
the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term
conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling
the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion
in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions,
possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems,
including enormous loss of natural species.
Some of us do not want to pass on,
and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested
world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear
�29.
products or polluted by coal products.
illustrates, a mere switch to
In short, as the forest situation
more benign technologies - important though this
is - without any more basic structural and social change, is inadequate.
The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter
a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs,
and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
The social change option
tends to be obscured in most
discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because
it does question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The
conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with
wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a
false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context
so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that
people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, ....
authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants.
from created wants
It would be
Such an argument
conveniently ignores the social framework in which such
needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of
many such wants at the framework level is not
however to assume that they
are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation)
and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all.
It
is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds
of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds of infrastructure, and to see
apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and
directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate
and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult
to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the
passing on of serious costs to future people.
reasons than such
ethical ones for taking it:
And there are other sorts of
it is the main, indeed the only
sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological
perspective, as contrasted with a shallow
ecological outlook which regards
the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but
only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests.
The deep
ecological perspective is an integral part of the Alternative Ecological
Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm
(which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics)
�30.
and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic
Socialism)^ It is
incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural
environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but
is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over
nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants.
The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is
fast
increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since
core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic
growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental
differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements.
The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not
specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the
20
basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The
ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed
through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly
lead to the difficult social change option.
The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power
structure.
To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to
parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that
official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult as it is to suitably
alter "the system,”
especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure,
it is imperative to try:
we are all on the nuclear train.
�FOOTNOTES
This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear
1.
power - ethical, social, and political dimensions’
(ESP for short, available
from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred
For help with the condensation we are very
to in the reference list).
considerably indebted to the editors.
In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and
suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the
large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around
the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including
nuclear war).
We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and
references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims.
Further,
in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary
sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Little
difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through
secondary sources or in filling out much important background material from
work cited herein.
For example, virtually all the data cited in sections I and VII
is referenced in Routley.
2.
At worst ESP can always be consulted.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of
(lightwater) reactors, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear
technology.
3.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has
to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation,
unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and
welfare.
But since the harm
'nuclear development may afflict on non
human life, for example, can hardly improve
its case, it suffices if the case
against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the
conventional way.
�For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented)
simulation models
4.
respects.
see Goodin,
p.428.
The Opportunity-cost
argument is also defective in other
It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the
contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the
proper methods for decision which affect, the
choice, apply discounting.
future, such as that of energy
But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision
rules do not allow discounting.
5.
This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory,
roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a
decision method in such contexts.
6.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as
it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social
asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such
as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the
principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor.
7.
For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments
against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored
costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff.
8.
See Routley, p. 160.
9.
For much further discussion of the points of the preceding two para
graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader
10.
&
Abbotts.
Most of the reactors in the world are of this type;
see
Gyorgy.
11.
See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4.
12.
See Shrader-Frechette.
shortcomings
A worthwhile initial view of the
of the Rassmussen report may be reached by combining
the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader
13.
There are variations on Ai
against numbers such as probabilities.
and Aii
&
Abbotts.
which multiply costs
In this way risks, construed as
probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment.
risks may be assessed
(Alternatively,
through such familiar methods as insurance).
�A principle varying
Aii’. a
Aii, and formulated as follows:
is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more
risks than b and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry
Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978,
Final Report,
p. 305 and p. 288.
In this report, a
is nuclear power and
b
is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources.
other applications
b
In
has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring,
mining and even the Vietnam war (.’ ) .
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles
Ai - Aii1.
The principles are certainly ethically substantive,
since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses,
but they have an inadmissible conventional
origin of b
;
b
character.
For look at the
may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially
acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut
and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known
had been known when it was introduced.
What is required in Aii', for
instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that
'ethically acceptable'
rather than
'socially accepted'.
b
is
But even
with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in
the text, and others.
It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work.
It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to
actuaries.
14.
See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15.
15.
Goodin
16.
The argument is elaborated in ESP.
17.
For some of the more philosophically important material on
p. 433.
alternative nonconsumeristic
work cited in V. and R. Routley,
.social arrangements and lifestyles, see
'Social theories, self management and
environmental problems’ in Mannison et al, where a beginning is made
on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism.
�18.
The parlous
situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is
explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V.
Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’
(available from
the authors).
For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its
19.
rival,
the Alternative Environmental Paradigm, see
"1 the main
the table on p. 341 which encapsulates J"
of the
respective paradigms;
Cotgrove and Duff, especially
assumptions
compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p.33.
Contemporary variants on the Dominant Social Paradigm are
considered in ESP.
The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which
is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess.
For further explanation of the contrast and of the larger array of ecological
positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley,
’Human chauvinism and
environmental ethics’ in Mannison ^~^,et al, and the references there cited,
especially to Rodman’s
20.
work.
The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the
context of paradigm conflict.
But it is also argued that, even within
assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants,
Ti.
Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options.
The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of
the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument.
It is
the
following
version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing
in for material wealth, and for what is valuable.’ )
necessary to sustain economic growth.
Nuclear power is
Economic growth is desirable (for
all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone
redistribution problems, etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll),
But both
and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks.
premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic
growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective
growth, which jettisons
economic
the heavy social and environmental costs carried
by unqualified economic growth.
More to the point, since the second premiss
is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an
appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it)
Paradigm standards.
fails even by Dominant
For of course nuclear power is not necessary
that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives.
defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
given
The premiss usually
Nuclear power is the
economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’
�being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having the most favourable
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively
(unless a
good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done).
Tii.
On proper Dominant Paradigm accounting, nuclear choices should
generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as
public choices.
Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not
by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types
(discussed in Shrader-Flechette, Gyorgy and Nader & Abbotts).
Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is
not justified, as consideration of decision theory methods will reveal:
Tiii.
Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is
rejected,
as the arguments of Goodin on alternative decision rules help to show.
What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm
or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise
image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear
development both in developed countries and in less developed countries makes plain
(for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.).
And the practices of contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the
standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants :
not ethically acceptable.
they are certainly
�REFERENCES USED
Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues
raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (*
).
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, "Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review
W. R. Catton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap,
28(2)
(1980), 333-51.
’A new ecological paradigm for post
exuberant sociology’ American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980).
15-47.
For Report :
Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
*R. E. Goodin, "No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
*A. Gyorgy and friends,
No Nukes : everyone’s guide to nuclear power,
South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
*D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy,
RSSS, Australian National University, 1980.
N. Myers, The Sinking Ark,
Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy,
Outback Press,
Melbourne, 1977.
*K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy,
Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980.
R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79.
�
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Richard and Vai Routley
1.
NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
1
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely raging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not
really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead,
it is a debate about values...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical
ones.
I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.
train has just pulled out.
passengers and freight.
The train which is
A long distance country
crowded carries both
At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as
freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly
toxic and explosive gas.
This is packed in a very thin container which, as
the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance
for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should
strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys.
All
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least
some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could
be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain
that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his
duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not
or the people on it.
These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen
as ludicrous when set in this context.
not
responsible for the train
Unfortunately, similar excuses are often
so seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his
workers1 health or
other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify
his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product,
is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container
even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and his family
will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others,
and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off.
The
poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help,
will suffer especially.
Few people would accept such grounds as justification.
2.
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply
transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the
train case.
How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument
progresses.
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present,
with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century
producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity
of the Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example,
a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
A leak
of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread
disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their
expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may
require 1-1 million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem.
Serious
problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of
storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over
the last twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human
intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative
and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with
attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as regards expensive recent
proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the
result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models
3.
reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human
environments.10 In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real
possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environment.
Given the
3
heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
r
not only have
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,^/none
of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested,
but they
may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
geological or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem
of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The
assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of
efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously
been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are,
then, significant.
to bear
Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant)
energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it.
Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted
of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests
and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the
basis of life, are run-down or destroyed.
Such points tell against the idea
that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear
fission, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The "solution" then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price
which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces
their ability to cope with these problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out
of a
mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies
dependent on an abundance of non-rerewable energy, which is limited in supply to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no
corresponding benefits.
The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some
uncomfortable changes in the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate
descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for
him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing
heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent
lives may be seriously jeopardised.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in
the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear
development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale.
There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not
apply to those
in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be
made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner’s
action in the circumstances outlined is not to imply that there are no
circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable.
As in the case
of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these
justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear
development in turn.
I
II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question
of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
5.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations
to distant future creatures.
A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly
considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration
being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of
contemporary or immediately future people.
Others fall into three categories:
those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them
seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are
committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral
obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the
weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic
and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future
beyond those perhaps to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained',
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving
effect of our actions on future people.
from the
Of those philosophers who say, or whose
views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many
have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on
relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus,
moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold
between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
Let us call
the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the
No
constraints position.
Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position,
which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these.
Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral
obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement.
People in the
distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us,
and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have
against us.
Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligations
on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require
punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement.
But
plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society
and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing
offending predecessors.
6.
The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain.
Consider, for
example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a
particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its
despatch.
No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants
would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would
be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action.
The no-constraints
position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that
whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment
(perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral
protest about the damage it will do to future people.
The no-constraints
position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy:A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and
manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for
present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds
of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the no-constraints
view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration
for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily
varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious.
Yet this view is far
from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this
position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the
basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems
that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such
examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position.
We suspect
that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits
such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause
pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would
want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many of those who have
put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying
moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can
take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in
the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of
the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the
present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in
7.
what they do of people affected and their interests,
to be careful, in their
actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing
harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the. chance
of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not
have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never
been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect
to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be
avoided.
These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part
because of a failure to make an important distinction.
Some of our
obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some
agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise.
Other obligations,
however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that
an agreement has been struck between us.
former kind acquired obligations
Let us call obligations of the
and those of the latter unacquired obligations.
There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with
each.
In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one
should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise.
In the
case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal
agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action,
a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in
the past (e.g., made a promise).
Our obligations to future people clearly
are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position
simply fails to take into account.
These obligations arise as a result of our
ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether
on our contemporaries or
on those in the distant future.
Thus, to return to
the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action
that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the
passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for
them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has
acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them.
All that
8.
one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there
are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially
,
, . ,
,
, ,
,
all obligat
to the distant
acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence th
uture involve
heroic self sacrifice, something "above and beyond" what is normally required.
One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people
into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm
than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from
III.
ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE.
In evading these
difficulties the No-constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly
abandoned.
According to the Qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
There are obligations, even to distant future
with respect to the distant future.
people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests
of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of
the present and immediate future.
The interests of future people then, except
in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present
people.
Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative
activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the
distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by
application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to
future people.
The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something
that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the Qualified position.
What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within
the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice
it operates within legal constraints.
What economics cannot legitimately do is
determine what these constraints are.
There are, moreover, alternative economic
theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future,
giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all
the questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that
future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed
to handle the waste problem).
generations may well not
Since there is mounting evidence that future
be better off then present ones, especially in things
that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations
on this basis can carry much weight.
For the waste problem to be handed down
9.
to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic
progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off
but so much better off that they can
(easily) carry and control the nuclear
freight.
A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument,
builds directly
It is argued from the fact
on the notion of opportunity cost.
that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the nonimmediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at
compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary
values.
This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of
resources.
Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come
to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate
eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
beset this approach.
Two problems
First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable
practical difficulties about applying such discounting.
how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
that the argument depends on a false assumption.
We simply
do not know
A more serious objection is
It is not true that value, or
damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents.
There is no clear
"monetary compensation" for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of
life, a lost species.
The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it
leads back in practice to the No-constraints position.
discounting imposes an " economic horizon"
The reason is that
beyond which nothing need be
considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are,
when discounted
back to the present, negligible.
A different argument for the Qualified position, the
Probabilities argument,
avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability
considerations.
The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower,
perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning
the distant future.
Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future
people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree
of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring
people where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of
conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing
certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against
a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of
10.
distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
Firstly, probabilities involving distant
badly flawed.
is however
The argument
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes.
problems often
Moreover the outcomes of some moral
do not depend on a high level of probability.
In many cases it
is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created;
such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Nor,
of course, can it be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and
benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of
risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
in order to obtain quite doubtful, or even trivial, benefits for some present people,
fin the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use.
And even
the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such
if
an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that
the consigner’s action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit
(e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on <
other people) was sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision, problems, with or
is quite inadequate when different parties
without the probability frills,
are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations
are at issue.
permissible
5
For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is
for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party
provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it,
that costs to some
group
are more than morally
larger benefits to another group.
transferred in any
compensated for by
But costs or benefits are not legitimately
simple way from one group to another.
The often
appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept
the costs” is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits
then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)"
is another and
11.
very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is
not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising
from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved
£
in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This Transfer-limiting principle
is especially clear in cases
of which a thalidomide manufacturing and
marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect
on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
The principle is of
fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again :
it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other
liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter
of reactor meltdown.
In particular, the principle invalidates the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks,
between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own
lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all—
who may be just the opposite!
More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion,
i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of
pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features.
production, from nuclear or fossil
pollution.
fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious
Thus from the Transfer-limiting
important necessary condition for energy options:
an energy option
Large-scale energy
principle emerges an
To be morally acceptable
should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not
benefit correspondingly from the energy source.
Included in the scope of
12.
this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e.
not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those
of the next towns).
A
further corollary of the principle is the Transmission
Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our
successors in substantially worse shape than we "received” it.
For if we did
then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical
theories (e.g. those of a
deontic cast such as Kant’s and Rawls’) and
from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers
putting oneself in another’s position.
But the principle is perhaps best
defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples.
embroider the train parable, the
company
town decides to
Suppose, to
solve
its
disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line,
which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due
protest.
The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus
taining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us would regard this kind
of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company
town flourishes.
IV.
UNCERTAINTY AND
INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY.
Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be expected to take too
much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to
uncertainty.
There are two main components to the
General Uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments
are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on ai priori
second on a posteriori grounds.
follows:-
grounds, the
The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as
In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present,
the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant
future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative.
But we cannot base
assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when
13.
accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate
Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of
different action.
our actions on the distant future.
ignorance
A striking example of the argument from
at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear
development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of
waste control on the
7
grounds of uncertainty.
the argument concerned is this J-
More formally and crudely
One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reliable information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning
our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by ’knowledge’
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available
with respect to
the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required
as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with
respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp
division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the
adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly
such
do act on the basis of^"unreliable" information, which the sceptic as regards the
future conveniently labels "uncertainty".
In moral situations in the present,
assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite
low probabilities.
Consider again the train parable.
We do not need to know
for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact
it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable
than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action.
that there is a significant risk of harm
It is enough
in this sort of case.
It does not
matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the
14.
prospects of the passengers quite uncertain.
It is wrong to ship the gas.
But
if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral
consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double
standard.
According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty
argument,
even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be.
Therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Given that moral principles are characteristically
of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character
then
x
is wrong, for every (action)
sharply thus:
x”,
h
the argument may be stated more
We can never obtain the information about future actions which
would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication.
Therefore, even
if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot
be applied to obtain clear conclusions.
It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain ,
that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than
chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action
would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable
in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions
about how to act.
In this event the distant future would impose no practical
moral constraints on action.
However, the argument is factually incorrect in
assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant
future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is
15.
not so great as to exclude constraints on action.
For example, we may have
little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another
morally-irrelevant factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years
of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have
material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need
a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune
to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one
area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to
preclude moral constraints on action.
For this sort of reason, the
Practical uncertainty argument should be rejected.
Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in
a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off pxQhabLe. harm
to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these
popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other.
For example, we may be told that we
cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they
will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from
our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources
or from the things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete
certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future,
where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those to whom we are morally committed.
Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because
they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment
of other machines.
Even
if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments
16.
is again a mere outside possibility.
Neither the contemporary nor the historical
situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal
moronity or universal-pleasure—machine escapism is a serious possibility.
We can
contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically
supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through
destruction of its resource base.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument,
the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will
prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a
conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less
accurate form?
The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed
quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the
numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but
they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
Nor are distributional
of the future.
problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class
of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would
suggest.
It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the
indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to
resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise
answer to every
ethical question.
But, as the train parable again illustrates,
there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder
resolution,
and
cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers
of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The case of nuclear power is like that.
The failure of these various arguments reveals, what ca^e independentlys
•
argued from the universalisability features of
•
1
moral principles,
8
K
/
thatA
disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims
below the claims of present people.
That is, we have the same general obligations
17.
to future people as to the present;
thus there is the same obligation to take
account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions,
to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions
causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act
so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
Uncertainty
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
V.
PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN.
The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or
and future creatures.
entitlement
to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular
geographical position.
Hence several further problems arise, to which principles
and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem
apply.
For example, if one group (social unit,
or state) decides to dump its
radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent
its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it
imposes risks
and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in
much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on
future people.
There are differences however :
distant people
spatially
cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their
interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden.
People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special
costs and risks.
One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharge
radioactive materials into the air and water near
Emission problem.
the plant : hence the
Such ’’normal” emission during plant operation of low level
radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly
costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced
by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain.
If our
ethical principles
permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the
ethical issue directly raised by nuclear
emissions would be :
what extent of
18.
cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of
nuclear power, and under what conditions?
Since, however, risks and benefits
are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting
principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses
for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion
And these risks are
real!
In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclear
power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that
borne by the population at large.
And children living in this region are even more
vulnerable, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through
exposure than normal adults.
The serious costs to these people cannot be
justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could
be obtained without these costs.
Thus it is not just complacent to say
It s
a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioners
make life comfortable’.
For such benefits to some as airconditioners
provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of
buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer.
Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the
imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice
in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without
serious losses — is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. According
to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable
to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a
population has
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument
being that the additional amount (being equivalent
is also
likely to have negligible consequences.
to the "natural" level)
The increased amounts of
radiation — with their large man-made component — are then accounted normal,
and, it si claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no
ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
19.
e.g.
two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from
acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with
most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions
very substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission
situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would
disclose.
Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to
the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Thus public
policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve
as a "public pacifier" while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations
a
proceed relatively unhamperedi
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an
accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear
occurrence’.
But "definitions" notwithstanding, such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island):
hence the Core-meltdown problem.
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light
water) reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely,
with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively
10
contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small
reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be
killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident,
property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania
would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of
the reactor for which these conservative US figures (still the best available from
official sources7 are given :
the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly be much greater.
The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the
train acts
inadmissibly. a government or government-endorsed utility
appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in
20.
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the ’’community train”.
More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a
community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost
analysis and other economic appraisal, would violate such ethical requirements
as the Transfer-limiting principle.
The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured
to avoid
questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the
extraordinary improbability
ethical arena and into a technological dispute about about the^
of
reactor malfunction.
They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the
train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear
accident.
indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively
used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even
stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the
likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost)
impossible.
However, the mathematical models
relied upon in this report,
variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques",
are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible"
possibilities that may well happen in the real world.
that the
It is not surprising, then,y
methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised,
or that official support for the report has now been withdrawn.
12
Moreover, use
of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a
non-negligible probability of a
serious accident.
In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no
greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here
we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk
assessment models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or
trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks
attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their
21.
ethical status.
The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment
as applied to energy options:
Ai.
If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option
Aii.
b ;
Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g.
deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already
13
accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
These assumptions are then applied as follows.
be killed
Since the number likely to
eventually
by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number
killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted;
it follows that the risks of ntaclear power are acceptable.
A little reflection
reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer
limiting principle.
In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need
a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:costs and benefits go to the same parties;
undertakes
and is the person who voluntarily
the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in
driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed
not benefit?
Do the
on other parties who do
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options
compared, and there are no such distributional problems,
a basis would be soundly based.
that a comparison on such
This is rarely the case, and it is not so in
the case of risk assessments of energy options.
VI.
OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely,mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
risks in the nuclear cycle
Unlike the special
- of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable
material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards
22.
have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of
generating power, e.g.
’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain "the same
14
risk" of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The
problems are not unique to nuclear development.
Other social and environmental problems -
though endemic where dangerous
large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and
include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the
nuclear power cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable
component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution , such
as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear
development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead
radioactive lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many
large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences,
of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core
A
meltdown is not a possibility). Though theft of material from more dubious
enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large
and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose
problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other industry
produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive
explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts.
In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to
basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal
liberty, freedom of association and of expression,and free access to information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of
special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations ancl made it
answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
23.
These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along
with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
That nuclear development appears to force such political
societies.
consequences tells heavily against it.
Nuclear development is further indicted
politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is
true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a
nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what
circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing
the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the
opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement.
never accounted
Since nuclear wars are
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils,
nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread of nuclear
power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable
consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities,
is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development is
undesirable.
This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear war against
large-scale nuclear development.
VII.
16
CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING QN
NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT.
UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF
Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case
against nuclear development, only one
justificatory
that of appeal to overriding circumstances.
route remains open,
That appeal, to be ethically
acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as observed,
the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely
economistic
arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the
town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly
uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
case:
a Transfer-limiting principle applies.
So it is also in the nuclear
But suppose now the consigner argues
that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die.
It is
by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still
amountsjjone of transfer of costs and risks onto others.
But such a conflict
situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is
alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases
aticaJVwhere Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated,. Nuclear develop
ment is often
defended
in this way, through Conflict arguments,
to
the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features,
nevertheless the alternatives are worse.
Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on
competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm.
The success of such
conflict arguments requires the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the
action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument
(for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has
another
option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in
the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are
even worse than the option itself.
A first argument, the Poverty argument,
is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indus
trialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating
the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development.
The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the
poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is
good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment
and poverty
in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of
direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging
substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear energy
is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is both
politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires
massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
25.
—-creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon
largely non-existent utility systems - e.g.
established electricity
transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical
appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the
problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people
of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of,
and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and
often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are
usually organised.
than what it is:
But that does not make the poverty argument anything other
a fraud.
There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives
and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources,
alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor,
both in the third world and in industrial countries:
coal and other fossil fuels,
geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar
sources, wind, water and tidal power).
Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-going-
out argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations
to future people.
We have, it is said, a
duty to pass on the immensely
valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed.
Unless our
high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our
valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in
our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
the most part these large questions can be by-passed.
But for
The reason is that the
argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology
societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
/ it:
It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that/cannot be changed in
the direction of energy conservation or
alternative (perhaps high technology)
energy sources without collapse.
These assumptions are all hard to accept.
The assumption that
technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so;
after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major
social and technological restructuring and consumption modification.
If
western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally
unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program
of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to
26.
future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
Since high-
The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged.
technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central
question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled
is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a
society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is
valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably,that we have a duty to pass on to
the future.
The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence
There is good
or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource
consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is
unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of
the Lights-going-out argument are wrong.
present
The consumption of less energy than at
need involve no reduction of well-being
*
and certainly
a
large increase
over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear
energy, is quite unnecessary.
then
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do
is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to
enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase
the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza .
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by means of nuclear fission, be positively inimical to it.
which has become heavily dependent upon a
A society
highly centralised, controlled and
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
then they do at present.
Such a society would
almost inevitably tend to
become authoritatian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among
other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the
nuclear situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as
the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and
collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom
27.
for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high
technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is
valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for
power or, better,the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which
offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what
is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The
Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails.
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the
appeal to futurity, closed.
If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the
same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape
routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.)
for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable.
In sum, nuclear
development is morally unacceptable on several grounds.
VIII.
SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy option
that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no
doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it carries with it
the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as
acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by
extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very
high projected consumption figures.
the Transfer-limiting principle :
Such an option would, moreover, also violate
for it would impose widespread costs on
nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to
some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
To these main conventional options a third is often added which
emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and
hydroelectricity.
Such softer options - if suitably combined with energy
conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of
energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no
genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power.
choice is not however technological,
The deeper
nor merely/individual/ but Social, and
involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and,
at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life
styles and social arrangements^ These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the
28.
unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of
examining the goals themselves.
That is, we are not merely faced with the
question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged
needs and the cost of a society that creates them.
It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even more benign
technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and
which are^'
them.
^likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
In short, even more benign technologies may lead to violation of the
Transmission
^Requirement.
Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s
forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used
for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping.
While few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the
unrestricted exploitation of forests —
whether it goes under the name of
"solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be
the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests
are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label
"renewable resources".
Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true,
given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now
very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated
as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values.
In
many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already
been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent.
It
certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain-
forest types, are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future.
The addition of
a major further and not readily limitable demand pressure
for energy on top
of
the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term
conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling
the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion
in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions,
possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems,
including enormous loss of natural species.
Some of us do not want to pass on,
and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested
world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear
29.
products or polluted by coal products.
illustrates, a mere switch to
In short, as the forest situation
more benign technologies - important though this
is - without any more basic structural and social change, is inadequate.
The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter
a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs,
and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
The social change option
tends to be obscured in most
discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because
it does question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The
conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with
wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a
false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context
so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that
people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, ....
authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants.
from created wants
It would be
Such an argument
conveniently ignores the social framework in which such
needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of
many such wants at the framework level is not
however to assume that they
are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation)
and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all.
It
is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds
of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds of infrastructure, and to see
apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and
directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate
and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult
to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the
passing on of serious costs to future people.
reasons than such
ethical ones for taking it:
And there are other sorts of
it is the main, indeed the only
sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological
perspective, as contrasted with a shallow
ecological outlook which regards
the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but
only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests.
The deep
ecological perspective is an integral part of the Alternative Ecological
Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm
(which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics)
30.
and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic
Socialism)^ It is
incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural
environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but
is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over
nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants.
The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is
fast
increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since
core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic
growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental
differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements.
The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not
specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the
20
basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The
ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed
through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly
lead to the difficult social change option.
The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power
structure.
To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to
parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that
official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult as it is to suitably
alter "the system,”
especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure,
it is imperative to try:
we are all on the nuclear train.
FOOTNOTES
This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear
1.
power - ethical, social, and political dimensions’
(ESP for short, available
from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred
For help with the condensation we are very
to in the reference list).
considerably indebted to the editors.
In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and
suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the
large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around
the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including
nuclear war).
We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and
references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims.
Further,
in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary
sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Little
difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through
secondary sources or in filling out much important background material from
work cited herein.
For example, virtually all the data cited in sections I and VII
is referenced in Routley.
2.
At worst ESP can always be consulted.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of
(lightwater) reactors, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear
technology.
3.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has
to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation,
unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and
welfare.
But since the harm
'nuclear development may afflict on non
human life, for example, can hardly improve
its case, it suffices if the case
against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the
conventional way.
For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented)
simulation models
4.
respects.
see Goodin,
p.428.
The Opportunity-cost
argument is also defective in other
It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the
contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the
proper methods for decision which affect, the
choice, apply discounting.
future, such as that of energy
But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision
rules do not allow discounting.
5.
This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory,
roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a
decision method in such contexts.
6.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as
it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social
asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such
as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the
principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor.
7.
For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments
against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored
costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff.
8.
See Routley, p. 160.
9.
For much further discussion of the points of the preceding two para
graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader
10.
&
Abbotts.
Most of the reactors in the world are of this type;
see
Gyorgy.
11.
See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4.
12.
See Shrader-Frechette.
shortcomings
A worthwhile initial view of the
of the Rassmussen report may be reached by combining
the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader
13.
There are variations on Ai
against numbers such as probabilities.
and Aii
&
Abbotts.
which multiply costs
In this way risks, construed as
probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment.
risks may be assessed
(Alternatively,
through such familiar methods as insurance).
A principle varying
Aii’. a
Aii, and formulated as follows:
is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more
risks than b and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry
Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978,
Final Report,
p. 305 and p. 288.
In this report, a
is nuclear power and
b
is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources.
other applications
b
In
has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring,
mining and even the Vietnam war (.’ ) .
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles
Ai - Aii1.
The principles are certainly ethically substantive,
since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses,
but they have an inadmissible conventional
origin of b
;
b
character.
For look at the
may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially
acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut
and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known
had been known when it was introduced.
What is required in Aii', for
instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that
'ethically acceptable'
rather than
'socially accepted'.
b
is
But even
with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in
the text, and others.
It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work.
It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to
actuaries.
14.
See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15.
15.
Goodin
16.
The argument is elaborated in ESP.
17.
For some of the more philosophically important material on
p. 433.
alternative nonconsumeristic
work cited in V. and R. Routley,
.social arrangements and lifestyles, see
'Social theories, self management and
environmental problems’ in Mannison et al, where a beginning is made
on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism.
18.
The parlous
situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is
explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V.
Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’
(available from
the authors).
For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its
19.
rival,
the Alternative Environmental Paradigm, see
"1 the main
the table on p. 341 which encapsulates J"
of the
respective paradigms;
Cotgrove and Duff, especially
assumptions
compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p.33.
Contemporary variants on the Dominant Social Paradigm are
considered in ESP.
The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which
is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess.
For further explanation of the contrast and of the larger array of ecological
positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley,
’Human chauvinism and
environmental ethics’ in Mannison ^~^,et al, and the references there cited,
especially to Rodman’s
20.
work.
The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the
context of paradigm conflict.
But it is also argued that, even within
assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants,
Ti.
Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options.
The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of
the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument.
It is
the
following
version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing
in for material wealth, and for what is valuable.’ )
necessary to sustain economic growth.
Nuclear power is
Economic growth is desirable (for
all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone
redistribution problems, etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll),
But both
and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks.
premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic
growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective
growth, which jettisons
economic
the heavy social and environmental costs carried
by unqualified economic growth.
More to the point, since the second premiss
is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an
appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it)
Paradigm standards.
fails even by Dominant
For of course nuclear power is not necessary
that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives.
defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
given
The premiss usually
Nuclear power is the
economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’
being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having the most favourable
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively
(unless a
good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done).
Tii.
On proper Dominant Paradigm accounting, nuclear choices should
generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as
public choices.
Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not
by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types
(discussed in Shrader-Flechette, Gyorgy and Nader & Abbotts).
Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is
not justified, as consideration of decision theory methods will reveal:
Tiii.
Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is
rejected,
as the arguments of Goodin on alternative decision rules help to show.
What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm
or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise
image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear
development both in developed countries and in less developed countries makes plain
(for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.).
And the practices of contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the
standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants :
not ethically acceptable.
they are certainly
REFERENCES USED
Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues
raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (*
).
S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, "Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review
W. R. Catton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap,
28(2)
(1980), 333-51.
’A new ecological paradigm for post
exuberant sociology’ American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980).
15-47.
For Report :
Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
*R. E. Goodin, "No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
*A. Gyorgy and friends,
No Nukes : everyone’s guide to nuclear power,
South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
*D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy,
RSSS, Australian National University, 1980.
N. Myers, The Sinking Ark,
Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy,
Outback Press,
Melbourne, 1977.
*K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy,
Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980.
R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79.
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Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan
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Text
' i '
Vai Routley
Richa/
1.
NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS1
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ragging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not
really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead,
it is a debate about values...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical
ones.
I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.
train has just pulled out.
passengers and freight.
The train which is
A long distance country
crowded carries both
At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as
freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly
toxic and explosive gas.
This is packed in a very thin container which, as
the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance
for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should
strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys.
All
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least
some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could
be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain
that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his
duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not
or the people on it.
X
responsible for the train
These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen
/as ludicrous when set in this context.
Unfortunately, similar excuses are
not -aiso seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his
workers’ health or
other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify
his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product,
is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container
even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and his family
will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others,
and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off.
The
poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help,
will suffer especially.
Few people would accept such grounds as justification.
�Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply
transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties,
especially wheie they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the
train case.
How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument
progresses.
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present,
with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century
producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity
of the Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example,
a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
A leak
of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread
disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their
expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may
require 1% million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem.
Serious
problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of
storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over
I
the last twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human
intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative
and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with
attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as regards expensive recent
proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the
result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models
�3.
reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human
10
environments.
In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real
possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environmentP
Given the
heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
not only have
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance,y none
of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested,
but they
may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
geological or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem
of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The
assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of
efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously
been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are,
then, significant.
to bear
Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant)
energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it.
Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted
of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests
and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the
basis of life, are run-down or destroyed.
Such points tell against the idea
that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear
fission, at least indirect beneficiaries.
�The "solution” then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price
which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces
their ability to cope with these problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out
of a
mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies
dependent on an abundance of non-rerewable energy, which is limited in supply -
to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no
corresponding benefits.
The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some
uncomfortable changes in the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate
descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for
him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing
heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent
lives may be seriously jeopardised.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in
the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear
development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale.
There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not
apply to those
in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be
made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner’s
action in the circumstances Outlined is not to imply that there are no
circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable.
As in the case
of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these
justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear
development in turn.
II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question
of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
�5.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations
to distant future creatures.
A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly
considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration
being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of
contemporary or immediately future people.
Others fall into three categories:
those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them
seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are
committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral
obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the
weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic
and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future
beyond those perhaps to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained;
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving
effect of our actions on future people.
from the
Of those philosophers who say, or whose
views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many
have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on
relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus,
moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold
between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
Let us call
the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the
constraints position.
'
-*■
■■■--------- -----
No
,
Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position,
which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these.
Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral
obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement.
People in the
distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us,
and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have
against us.
Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligations
on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require
punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement.
But
plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society
and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing
offending predecessors.
�The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain.
Consider, for
example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a
particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its
despatch.
No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants
would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would
be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action.
The no—constraints
position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that
whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment
(perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral
protest about the damage it will do to future people.
The no-constraints
position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and
manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for
present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds
of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the no-constraints
view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration
for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily
varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious.
Yet this view is far
from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this
position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the
basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems
that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such
examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position.
We suspect
that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits
such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause
pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would
want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many of those who have
put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying
moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can
take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in
the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of
the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the
present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in
�7.
what they do of people affected and their Interests,
to be careful in their
actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing
harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the chance
of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not
have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never
been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect
to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be
avoided.
These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part
because of a failure to make an important distinction.
Some of our
obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some
agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise.
Other obligations,
however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that
an agreement has been struck between us.
former kind acquired obligations
Let us call obligations of the
and those of the latter unacquired obligations.
There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with
each.
In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one
should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise.
In the
case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal
agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action,
a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in
the past (e.g., made a promise).
Our obligations to future people clearly
are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position
simply fails to take into account.
These obligations arise as a result of our
ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether
on our contemporaries or
on those in the distant future.
Thus, to return to
the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action
that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the
passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for
them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has
acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them.
All that
�8.
one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there
are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially
ions, to the distant
acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence'
.at/future involve
heroic self sacrifice, something ’’above and beyond" what is normally required.
One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people
into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm
than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from
shipping the dangerous package on the train.
III.
ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE.
In evading these
difficulties the No-constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly
abandoned.
According to the Qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
There are obligations, even to distant future
with respect to the distant future.
people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests
of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of
the present and immediate future.
The interests of future people then, except
in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present
people.
Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative
activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the
distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by
application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to
future people.
The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something
that is becoming increasingly common, can lead theft to the Qualified position.
What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within
the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice
it operates within legal constraints.
What economics cannot legitimately do is
determine what these constraints are.
There are, moreover, alternative economic
theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future,
giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all
the questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that
future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed
to handle the waste problem).
generations may well not
Since there is mounting evidence that future
be better off then present ones, especially in things
that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations
on this basis can carry much weight.
For the waste problem to be handed down
�9.
to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic
progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off
but so much better off that they can
(easily) carry and control the nuclear
freight.
A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument,
builds directly
It is argued from the fact
on the notion of opportunity cost.
that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the non-
immediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at
compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary
values.
This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of
resources.
Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come
to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate
eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
beset this approach.
Two problems
First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable
practical difficulties about applying such discounting.
how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
that the argument depends on a false assumption.
We simply
do not know
A more serious objection is
It is not true that value, or
damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents.
There is no clear
’’monetary compensation” for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of
life, a lost species.
The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it
leads back in practice to the No-constraints position.
discounting imposes an ” economic horizon”
The reason is that
beyond which nothing need be
considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are,
when discounted
back to the present, negligible.
»
A different argument for the Qualified position, the
Probabilities argument,
avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability
considerations.
The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower,
perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning
the distant future.
Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future
people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree
of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring
people where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of
conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing
certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against
a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of
�10.
distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
is however
The argument
Firstly, probabilities involving distant
badly flawed.
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes.
problems often
Moreover the outcomes of some moral
do not depend on a high level of probability.
In many cases it
is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created;
such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Nor,
of course, can it be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and
benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of
risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
in order to obtain quite doubtful, or even trivial, benefits for some present people,
^in the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use.
And even
the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such
if
an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that
the consigner's action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit
(e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on
other people) was sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision, problems, with or
is quite inadequate when different parties
without the probability frills,
are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations
are at issue.
permissible
5
For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is
for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party
provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it,
that costs to some
group
are more than morally
larger benefits to another group.
transferred in any
compensated for by
But costs or benefits are not legitimately
simple way from one group to another.
The often
appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept
the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits
then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)"
is another and
�i
very different thing.
I
11.
It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is
not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising
from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved
g
in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This Transfer-limiting principle
is especially clear in cases
of which a thalidomide manufacturing and
marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect
on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
The principle is of
fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again :
it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other
liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter
of reactor meltdown.
In particular, the principle, invalidates the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks,
between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own
lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all—
who may be just the opposite!
,
More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion,
i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of
pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features.
production, from nuclear or fossil
pollution.
fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious
Thus from the Transfer-limiting
important necessary condition for energy options:
an energy option
Large-scale energy
principle emerges an
To be morally acceptable
should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not
benefit correspondingly from the energy source.
Included in the scope of
�12.
this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e.
not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those
of the next towns).
A
further corollary of the principle is the Transmission
Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our
successors in substantially worse shape than we "received” it.
For if we did
then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical
theories (e.g. those of a
deontic cast such as Kant’s and Rawls’) and
from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers
putting oneself in another’s position.
But the principle is perhaps best
defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples.
embroider the train parable, the
company
town decides to
Suppose, to
solve
its
disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line,
which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due
protest.
The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus
taining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us would regard this kind
of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company
town flourishes.
IV. UNCERTAINTY AND
INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY.
Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be expected to take too
much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to
uncertainty.
There are two main components to the
General Uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments
are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on a priori
second on a posteriori grounds.
follows:-
grounds, the
The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as
In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present,
the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant
future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative.
But we cannot base
assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when
�13.
accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate
Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of
different action.
our actions on the distant future.
ignorance
A striking example of the argument from
at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear
development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of
grounds of uncertainty.
More formally and crudely
waste control on the
the argument concerned is
this-
One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reliable information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning
our knowledge of the future (formally, replace
obligations
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available
by
knowledge
with respect to
the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required
as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with
respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp
division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the
adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints.
do act on the basis
We can and constantly
such
f/"unreliable” information, which the sceptic as regards the
future conveniently labels "uncertainty".
In moral situations in the present,
assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite
low probabilities.
Consider again the train parable.
We do not need to know
for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In lact
it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable
than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action.
that there is a significant risk of harm
It is enough
in this sort of case.
It does not
matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the
�14.
prospects of the passengers quite uncertain.
It is wrong to ship the gas.
But
if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral
consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double
standard.
According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty
argument,
even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be.
Therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Given that moral principles are characteristically
of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character
then
x
is wrong, for every (action)
sharply thus:
x",
h
the argument may be stated more
We can never obtain the information about future actions which
would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication.
Therefore, even
if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot
be applied to obtain clear conclusions.
It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain .
that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than
chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action
would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable
in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions
about how to act.
In this event the distant future would impose no practical
moral constraints on action.
However, the argument is factually incorrect in
assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant
future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is
�15.
not so great as to exclude constraints on action.
For example, we may have
little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another
morally-irrelevant factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years
of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have
material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need
a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune
to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one
area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to
preclude moral constraints on action.
For this sort of reason, the
Practical uncertainty argument should be rejected.
Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in
a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probable harm
to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these
popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other.
For example, we may be told that we
cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they
will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from
our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources
or from the things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete
certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future,
where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those to whom we are morally committed.
Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because
they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment
of other machines.
Even
if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration ~ what we are being handed in such arguments
�16.
is again a mere outside possibility.
Neither the contemporary nor the historical
situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal
moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility.
We can
contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically
supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through
destruction of its resource base.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument,_
the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will
prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a
conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less
accurate form?
The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed
quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the
numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but
they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
of the future.
Nor are distributional
problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class
of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would
suggest.
It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the
indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to
resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise
answer to every
ethical question.
But, as the train parable again illustrates,
there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder
resolution,
and
cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers
of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The case of nuclear power is like that.
The failure of these various arguments reveals, what caiji^e independently^
argued from the universalisability features of
moral principles,
thata
disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims
below the claims of present people.
That is, we have the same general obligations
�17.
to future people as to the present;
thus there is the same obligation to take
account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions,
to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions
causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act
so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
Uncertainty
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
V.
PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN.
The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or
and future creatures.
entitlement
to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular
geographical position.
Hence several further problems arise, to which principles
and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem
apply.
For example, if one group (social unit,
or state) decides to dump its
radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent
its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it
imposes risks
and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in
much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on
future people.
There are differences however :
distant people
spatially
cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their
interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden.
People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special
costs and risks.
One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharge
radioactive materials into the air and
Emission problem.
water near
the plant : hence the
Such "normal" emission during plant operation of low level
radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly
costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced
by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain.
If our
ethical principles
permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the
ethical issue directly raised by nuclear
emissions would be :
what extent of
�18.
cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of
nuclear power, and under what conditions?
Since, however, risks and benefits
are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting
principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses
for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion
And these risks are
real.’
In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclear
power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that
borne by the population at large.
And children living in this region are even more
vulnerable, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through
exposure than normal adults.
The serious costs to these people cannot be
justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could
be obtained without these costs.
Thus it is not just complacent to say
It s
a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioners
make life comfortable’.
For such benefits to some as airconditioners
provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of
buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer.
Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the
imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice
in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without
serious losses - is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. According
I
to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable
to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a
population ha^
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument
being that the additional amount (being equivalent
is also
likely to have negligible consequences.
to the "natural” level)
The increased amounts of
radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal,
and, it si claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no
ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person s well-being,
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, no t be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
�19.
e.g.
two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from
acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with
most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions
very substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission
situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would
disclose.
Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’'imposed” is entrusted to
the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Thus public
policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve
as a ’’public pacifier” while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations
q
proceed relatively unhamperedT
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an
accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear
occurrence’.
But "definitions” notwithstanding, such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island):
hence the Core-meltdown problem.
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light
water) reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely,
with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively
10
contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small
reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be
killed Instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident,
property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania
would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of
the reactor for which these conservative US (still the best available from
A
.
11
official sources' are given :
the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly be much greater.
The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the
train acts
inadmissibly.
a government or government-endorsed utility
appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in
�20.
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the "community train".
More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a
community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost
analysis and other economic appraisal, would violate such ethical requirements
as the Transfer-limiting principle.
The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured
to avoid
questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the
extraordinary improbability
ethical arena and into a technological dispute about about the/
of
reactor malfunction.
They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the
train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear
accident.
Indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively
used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even
stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the
likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost)
impossible.
However, the mathematical models
relied upon in this report,
variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques",
are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible"
possibilities that may well happen in the real world.
that the
It is not surprising, then,^
methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised,
or that official support for the report has now'been withdrawn..
12
Moreover, use
of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a
non-negligible probability of a
serious accident.
In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no
greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here
we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk
assessment models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or
trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks
attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their
�1
21.
ethical status.
The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment
as applied to energy options:
(
Ai.
If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option
Aii.
b ;
Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g.
deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already
/3
accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
These assumptions are then applied as follows.
be killed
Since the number likely to
eventually
by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number
killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted;
it follows that the risks of nuclear power are acceptable.
A little reflection
reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer
limiting principle.
In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need
a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:-
costs and benefits go to the same parties;
Do the
and is the person who voluntarily
the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in
undertakes
driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed
not benefit?
on other parties who do
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options
compared, and there are no such distributional problems,
a basis would be soundly based.
that a comparison on such
This is rarely 'the case, and it is not so in
the case of risk assessments of energy options.
VI.
OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely,mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
risks in the nuclear cycle
Unlike the special
- of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable
material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards
�22.
have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of
generating power, e.g.
’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’’the same
14
risk” of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’.
The
A
problems are not
produced—by nuclear development.
Other social and environmental problems -
though endemic where dangerous
large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and
include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the
nuclear power cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable
component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution , such
as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear
development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead
radioactive lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many
large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences,
of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core
meltdown is not a possibility).
Though theft of material from more dubious
enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large
and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose
problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other industry
produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive
explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up,,so vulnerable on so many fronts.
In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to
basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal
liberty, freedom of association and of expression,and free access to information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of
special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations ami made it
answerable ...
to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
�23.
These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along
with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
That nuclear development appears to force such political
societies.
consequences tells heavily against it.
Nuclear development is further indicted
politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is
true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a
nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what
circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing
the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the
opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement.
never accounted
Since nuclear wars are
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils,
nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread of nuclear
power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable
consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities,
is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development is
undesirable.
This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear war against
large-scale nuclear development.
VII.
CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING ON
NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT.
UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF
Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case
against nuclear development, only one
justificatory
that of appeal to overriding circumstances.
route remains open,
That appeal, to be ethically
acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as observed,
the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely
economistic
arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the
town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly
uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
case:
a Transfer-limiting principle applies.
So it is also in the nuclear
But suppose now the consigner argues
that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die.
It is
�by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still
to
amounts^one of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict
situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is
alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases
atical^where Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated,. Nuclear develop
ment is often
defended
in this way, through Conflict arguments,
to
the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features,
nevertheless the alternatives are worse.
Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on
competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm.
The success of such
conflict arguments requires the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the
action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument
(for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has
another
option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in
the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are
even worse than the option itself.
A first argument, the Poverty argument,
is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of Indus»
trialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating
the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development.
The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the
poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is
good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment
and poverty
in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of
direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging
substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear energy
is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is both
politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires
massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
�25.
—.creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon
largely non-existent utility systems - e.g.
established electricity
transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical
appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the
problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people
of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of,
and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and
often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are
usually organised.
than what it is:
But that does not make the poverty argument anything other
a fraud.
There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives
and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources,
alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor,
both in the third world and in industrial countries:
coal and other fossil fuels,
geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar
sources, wind, water and tidal power).
Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-goingout argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations
to future people.
We have, it is said, a
duty to pass on the immensely
valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed.
Unless our
high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our
valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
>
The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in
our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
the most part these large questions can be by-passed.
But for
The reason is that the
argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology
societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
. it
It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that/cannot be changed in
the direction of energy conservation or
alternative (perhaps high technology)
energy sources without collapse.
These assumptions are all hard to accept.
The assumption that
technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so;
after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major
social and technological restructuring and consumption modification.
If
western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally
unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program
of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to
�future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged.
Since high-
technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central
question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled
is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a
society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is
valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to
the future.
The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence
or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good
reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource
consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is
unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of
the Lights-going-out argument are wrong.
present
The consumption of less energy than at
need involve no reduction of well-being;and certainly
a
large increase
over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear
energy, is quite unnecessary.
then
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do
is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to
enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase
the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza .
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by means of nuclear fission,be positively inimical to it.
which has become heavily dependent upon a
A society
highly centralised, controlled and
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
then they do at present.
Such a society would
almost inevitably tend to
become authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among
other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the
nuclear situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as
the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and
collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom
�27.
for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high
technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is
valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for
power or, better,the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which
offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what
is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The
Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails.
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the
appeal to futurity, closed.
If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the
same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape
routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.)
for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable.
In sum, nuclear
development is morally unacceptable on several grounds.
VIII.
SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy option
that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no
doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it carries with it
the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as
acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by
extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very
high projected consumption figures.
the Transfer-limiting principle :
Such an option would, moreover, also violate
for it would impose widespread costs on
nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to
some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
To these main conventional options a third is often added which
emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and
hydroelectricity.
Such softer options — if suitably combined with energy
conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of
energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no
genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power, The deeper
choice is not however technological,
nor merely^individual^, £u£ Social , and
involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and,
at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life
styles and social arrangements^6 These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the
�28.
unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of
examining the goals themselves.
That is, we are not merely faced with the
question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged
needs and the cost of a society that creates them.
It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even more benign
technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and
which are^5"
them.
"2?likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
In short, even more benign technologies may lead to violation of the
Transmission ^2 2,1^g q u i rement.
Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s
forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used
for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping.
While few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the
unrestricted exploitation of forests -
whether it goes under the name of
"solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be
the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests
are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label
"renewable resources".
Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true,
given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now
very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated
as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values.
In
many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already
been exceeded, so that a total decline, is widely thought to be imminent.
It
certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain
forest types, are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future.
The addition of
a ma|nr^ f ur ther and not readily limitable demand pressure
for energy on top
of ^the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term
conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling
the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion
in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions,
possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems,
including enormous loss of natural species.
Some of us do not want to pass on,
and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested
world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear
�29.
products or polluted by coal products.
illustrates, a mere switch to
In short, as the forest situation
more benign technologies - important though this
is - without any more basic structural and social change, is inadequate.
The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter
a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs,
and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
The social change option
tends to be obscured in most
discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because
it does question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The
conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with
wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a
false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context
so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that
people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, ....
authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants.
from created wants
It would be
Such an argument
conveniently ignores the social framework in which such
needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of
many such wants at the framework level is not
however to assume that they
are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation)
and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all.
It
is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds
of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds, of infrastructure, and to see
apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and
directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate
and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult
to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the
passing on of serious costs to future people.
reasons than such
ethical ones for taking it:
And there are other sorts of
it is the main, indeed the only
sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological
perspective, as contrasted with a shallow
ecological outlook which regards
the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but
only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests.
The deep
ecological perspective is an Integral part of the Alternative Ecological
Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm
(which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics)
�30.
and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic
18
Socialism).
It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural
environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but
is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over
nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants.
The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is
fast
increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since
core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic
growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental
differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements.
The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not
specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the
19
basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The
ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed
through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly
lead to the difficult social change option.
The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power
structure.
To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to
parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that
official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult as it is to suitably
alter "the system,"
especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure,
it is imperative to try:
we are all on the nuclear train.
�FOOTNOTES
This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear
1.
power - ethical, social, and political dimensions’
(ESP for short, available
from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred
to in the reference list).
For help with the condensation we are very
considerably indebted to the editors.
In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and
suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the
large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around
the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including
nuclear war).
We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and
references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims.
Further,
in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary
sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Little
difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through
secondary sources or in filling out much important background material from
work cited herein.
For example, virtually all the data cited in sections^ and VII
is referenced in Routley.
At worst ESP can always be consulted.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
2.
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
I
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
core meltdown of
(lightwater) reactors, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear
technology.
3.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has
to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation,
unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and
welfare.
But since the harm
nuclear development may afflict on non
human life, for example, can hardly improve
its case, it suffices if the case
against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the
conventional way.
�For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented)
simulation models
p.428.
The Opportunity-cost
4.
respects.
see Goodin,
argument is also defective in other
It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the
contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the
proper methods for decision which affect the
choice, apply discounting.
future, such as that of energy
But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision
rules do not allow discounting.
This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory,
5.
roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a
decision method in such contexts.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
6.
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as
it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social
asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such
as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the
principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor.
7.
For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments
against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored
costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff.
8.
See Routley, p. 160.
9.
For much further discussion of the points of
the preceding two para-
»
graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader
10.
&
Abbotts.
Most of the reactors in the world are of this type;
see
Gyorgy.
11.
See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4.
12.
See Shrader-Frechette.
shortcomings
A worthwhile initial view of the
of the Rassmussen report may be reached by combining
the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader
13.
There are variations on Ai
against numbers such as probabilities.
and Aii
&
Abbotts.
which multiply costs
In this way risks, construed as
probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment.
risks may be assessed
(Alternatively,
through such familiar methods as insurance).
�A principle varying
.
*
Aii
a
Aii, and formulated as follows:
is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more
risks than b and b is socially accepted.
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978,
Final Report,
p. 305 and p. 288.
In this report, a
is nuclear power and
b
is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources.
other applications
b
In
has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring,
mining and even the Vietnam war () .
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles
Ai - Aii’.
The principles are certainly ethically substantive,
since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses,
but they have an inadmissible conventional
origin of b
:
b
character.
For look at the
may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially
acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut
and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known
had been known when it was introduced.
What is required in Aii’, for
instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that
’ethically acceptable’
rather than
’socially accepted'.
b
is
But even
with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in
the text, and others.
It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work.
It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to
actuaries.
14.
See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15.
15.
Goodin
16.
The argument is elaborated in ESP.
17.
For some of the more philosophically important material on
p. 433.
alternative nonconsumeristic
.social arrangements and lifestyles, see
work cited in V. and R. Routley, 'Social theories, self management and
environmental problems’ in Mannison et al, where a beginning is made
on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism.
�The parlous
18.
situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is
explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V.
Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’
(available from
the authors).
For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its
19.
rival,
the Alternative Environmental Paradigm, see
Cotgrove and Duff, especially
_ the main
the table on p. 341 which encapsulates
of the
assumptions
paradigms; compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34.
Contemporary variants ^.n the Dominant Social Paradigm wer-e considered in ESP.
-X
The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which
is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess.
For further explanation of the contrast and of the larger array of ecological
positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley,
environmental ethics' in Mannison
especially to Rodman’s
20.
’Human chauvinism and
et al, and the references there cited,
work.
The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the
context of paradigm conflict.
But it is also argued that, even within
assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants,
Ti.
Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options.
The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of
the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument.
It is
the
following
version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing
in for material wealth, and for what is valuable.’
necessary to sustain economic growth.
Nuclear power is
Economic: growth is desirable (for
all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone
redistribution problems, etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll),
and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks.
But both
premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic
growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective
growth, which jettisons
economic
the heavy social and environmental costs carried
by unqualified economic growth.
More to the point, since the second premiss
is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an
fails even by Dominant
appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it)
Paradigm standards.
For of course nuclear power is not necessary
that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives.
defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
given
The premiss usually
Nuclear power is the
economically best way to sustain economic growth,
’economically best’
�being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’,
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
’having the most favourable
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively
(unless a
good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done).
Tii-
On proper Dominant Paradigm accounting, nuclear choices should
generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as
public choices.
Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not
by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types
(discussed in Shrader-Flechette, Gyorgy and Nader & Abbotts).
Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is
not justified, as consideration of decision theory methods will reveal:
Tiii.
Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is
rej ected f
as the arguments of Goodin on ^Alternative decision rules help to show.
What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm
or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise
image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear
development both in developed countries and in less developed countries makes plain
(for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.).
the practices of contemporary
Ayi
corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the
standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants :
not ethically acceptable.
,
they are certainly
�<0
O
to
REFERENCES USED
Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues
raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (*
).
S. C^yove. and A. Duff, ’’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review
28(2) (1980), 333-51.
W. R. Catton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post
exuberant sociology’ American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980).
15-47.
For Report :
Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
*R. E. Goodin, "No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
*A. Gyorgy and friends,
No Nukes : everyone’s guide to nuclear power,
South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
*D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy,
RSSS, Australian National University, 1980.
N. Myers, The Sinking Ark,
Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy,
Outback Press,
Melbourne, 1977.
*K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy,
Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980.preferred Lo as SF)T~"
R. and V. Routley,
’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79.
�
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' i '
Vai Routley
Richa/
1.
NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS1
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ragging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not
really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead,
it is a debate about values...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical
ones.
I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.
train has just pulled out.
passengers and freight.
The train which is
A long distance country
crowded carries both
At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as
freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly
toxic and explosive gas.
This is packed in a very thin container which, as
the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance
for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should
strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys.
All
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least
some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could
be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain
that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his
duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not
or the people on it.
X
responsible for the train
These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen
/as ludicrous when set in this context.
Unfortunately, similar excuses are
not -aiso seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his
workers’ health or
other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify
his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product,
is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container
even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and his family
will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others,
and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off.
The
poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help,
will suffer especially.
Few people would accept such grounds as justification.
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply
transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties,
especially wheie they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the
train case.
How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument
progresses.
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present,
with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century
producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity
of the Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example,
a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
A leak
of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread
disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their
expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may
require 1% million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem.
Serious
problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of
storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over
I
the last twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human
intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative
and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with
attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as regards expensive recent
proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the
result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models
3.
reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human
10
environments.
In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real
possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environmentP
Given the
heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
not only have
present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies.
For instance,y none
of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested,
but they
may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
geological or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem
of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The
assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of
efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously
been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are,
then, significant.
to bear
Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant)
energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it.
Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted
of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests
and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the
basis of life, are run-down or destroyed.
Such points tell against the idea
that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear
fission, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The "solution” then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price
which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces
their ability to cope with these problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out
of a
mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies
dependent on an abundance of non-rerewable energy, which is limited in supply -
to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no
corresponding benefits.
The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some
uncomfortable changes in the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate
descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for
him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing
heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent
lives may be seriously jeopardised.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in
the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear
development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale.
There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not
apply to those
in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be
made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner’s
action in the circumstances Outlined is not to imply that there are no
circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable.
As in the case
of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these
justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear
development in turn.
II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question
of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
5.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations
to distant future creatures.
A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly
considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration
being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of
contemporary or immediately future people.
Others fall into three categories:
those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them
seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are
committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral
obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the
weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic
and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future
beyond those perhaps to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained;
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving
effect of our actions on future people.
from the
Of those philosophers who say, or whose
views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many
have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on
relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus,
moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold
between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
Let us call
the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the
constraints position.
'
-*■
■■■--------- -----
No
,
Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position,
which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these.
Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral
obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement.
People in the
distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us,
and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have
against us.
Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligations
on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require
punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement.
But
plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society
and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing
offending predecessors.
The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain.
Consider, for
example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a
particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its
despatch.
No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants
would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would
be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action.
The no—constraints
position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that
whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment
(perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral
protest about the damage it will do to future people.
The no-constraints
position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and
manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for
present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds
of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the no-constraints
view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration
for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily
varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious.
Yet this view is far
from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this
position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the
basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems
that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such
examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position.
We suspect
that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits
such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause
pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would
want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many of those who have
put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying
moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can
take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in
the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of
the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the
present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in
7.
what they do of people affected and their Interests,
to be careful in their
actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing
harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the chance
of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not
have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never
been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect
to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be
avoided.
These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part
because of a failure to make an important distinction.
Some of our
obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some
agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise.
Other obligations,
however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that
an agreement has been struck between us.
former kind acquired obligations
Let us call obligations of the
and those of the latter unacquired obligations.
There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with
each.
In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one
should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise.
In the
case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal
agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action,
a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in
the past (e.g., made a promise).
Our obligations to future people clearly
are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position
simply fails to take into account.
These obligations arise as a result of our
ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether
on our contemporaries or
on those in the distant future.
Thus, to return to
the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action
that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the
passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for
them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has
acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them.
All that
8.
one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there
are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially
ions, to the distant
acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence'
.at/future involve
heroic self sacrifice, something ’’above and beyond" what is normally required.
One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people
into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm
than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from
shipping the dangerous package on the train.
III.
ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE.
In evading these
difficulties the No-constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly
abandoned.
According to the Qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
There are obligations, even to distant future
with respect to the distant future.
people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests
of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of
the present and immediate future.
The interests of future people then, except
in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present
people.
Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative
activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the
distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by
application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to
future people.
The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something
that is becoming increasingly common, can lead theft to the Qualified position.
What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within
the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice
it operates within legal constraints.
What economics cannot legitimately do is
determine what these constraints are.
There are, moreover, alternative economic
theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future,
giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all
the questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that
future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed
to handle the waste problem).
generations may well not
Since there is mounting evidence that future
be better off then present ones, especially in things
that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations
on this basis can carry much weight.
For the waste problem to be handed down
9.
to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic
progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off
but so much better off that they can
(easily) carry and control the nuclear
freight.
A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument,
builds directly
It is argued from the fact
on the notion of opportunity cost.
that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the non-
immediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at
compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary
values.
This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of
resources.
Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come
to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside
(e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate
eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
beset this approach.
Two problems
First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable
practical difficulties about applying such discounting.
how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
that the argument depends on a false assumption.
We simply
do not know
A more serious objection is
It is not true that value, or
damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents.
There is no clear
’’monetary compensation” for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of
life, a lost species.
The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it
leads back in practice to the No-constraints position.
discounting imposes an ” economic horizon”
The reason is that
beyond which nothing need be
considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are,
when discounted
back to the present, negligible.
»
A different argument for the Qualified position, the
Probabilities argument,
avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability
considerations.
The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower,
perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning
the distant future.
Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future
people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree
of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring
people where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of
conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing
certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against
a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of
10.
distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present,
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
is however
The argument
Firstly, probabilities involving distant
badly flawed.
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes.
problems often
Moreover the outcomes of some moral
do not depend on a high level of probability.
In many cases it
is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created;
such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Nor,
of course, can it be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and
benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of
risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
in order to obtain quite doubtful, or even trivial, benefits for some present people,
^in the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use.
And even
the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such
if
an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that
the consigner's action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit
(e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on
other people) was sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision, problems, with or
is quite inadequate when different parties
without the probability frills,
are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations
are at issue.
permissible
5
For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is
for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party
provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it,
that costs to some
group
are more than morally
larger benefits to another group.
transferred in any
compensated for by
But costs or benefits are not legitimately
simple way from one group to another.
The often
appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept
the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits
then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)"
is another and
i
very different thing.
I
11.
It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is
not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising
from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved
g
in the activity and are not beneficiaries.
This Transfer-limiting principle
is especially clear in cases
of which a thalidomide manufacturing and
marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect
on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
The principle is of
fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again :
it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other
liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter
of reactor meltdown.
In particular, the principle, invalidates the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks,
between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own
lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all—
who may be just the opposite!
,
More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion,
i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of
pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features.
production, from nuclear or fossil
pollution.
fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious
Thus from the Transfer-limiting
important necessary condition for energy options:
an energy option
Large-scale energy
principle emerges an
To be morally acceptable
should not involve the transfer of significant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not
benefit correspondingly from the energy source.
Included in the scope of
12.
this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e.
not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those
of the next towns).
A
further corollary of the principle is the Transmission
Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our
successors in substantially worse shape than we "received” it.
For if we did
then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical
theories (e.g. those of a
deontic cast such as Kant’s and Rawls’) and
from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers
putting oneself in another’s position.
But the principle is perhaps best
defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples.
embroider the train parable, the
company
town decides to
Suppose, to
solve
its
disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line,
which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due
protest.
The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus
taining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us would regard this kind
of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company
town flourishes.
IV. UNCERTAINTY AND
INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY.
Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be expected to take too
much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to
uncertainty.
There are two main components to the
General Uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments
are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on a priori
second on a posteriori grounds.
follows:-
grounds, the
The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as
In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present,
the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant
future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative.
But we cannot base
assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when
13.
accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate
Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of
different action.
our actions on the distant future.
ignorance
A striking example of the argument from
at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear
development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of
grounds of uncertainty.
More formally and crudely
waste control on the
the argument concerned is
this-
One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reliable information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning
our knowledge of the future (formally, replace
obligations
in the crude statement of the argument above).
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available
by
knowledge
with respect to
the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required
as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with
respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp
division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the
adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints.
do act on the basis
We can and constantly
such
f/"unreliable” information, which the sceptic as regards the
future conveniently labels "uncertainty".
In moral situations in the present,
assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite
low probabilities.
Consider again the train parable.
We do not need to know
for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In lact
it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable
than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action.
that there is a significant risk of harm
It is enough
in this sort of case.
It does not
matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the
14.
prospects of the passengers quite uncertain.
It is wrong to ship the gas.
But
if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral
consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double
standard.
According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty
argument,
even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be.
Therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Given that moral principles are characteristically
of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character
then
x
is wrong, for every (action)
sharply thus:
x",
h
the argument may be stated more
We can never obtain the information about future actions which
would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication.
Therefore, even
if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot
be applied to obtain clear conclusions.
It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain .
that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than
chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action
would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable
in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions
about how to act.
In this event the distant future would impose no practical
moral constraints on action.
However, the argument is factually incorrect in
assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant
future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is
15.
not so great as to exclude constraints on action.
For example, we may have
little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another
morally-irrelevant factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years
of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have
material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need
a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune
to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one
area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to
preclude moral constraints on action.
For this sort of reason, the
Practical uncertainty argument should be rejected.
Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in
a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probable harm
to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these
popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other.
For example, we may be told that we
cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they
will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from
our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources
or from the things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete
certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future,
where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those to whom we are morally committed.
Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because
they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment
of other machines.
Even
if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration ~ what we are being handed in such arguments
16.
is again a mere outside possibility.
Neither the contemporary nor the historical
situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal
moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility.
We can
contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically
supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through
destruction of its resource base.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument,_
the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will
prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a
conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less
accurate form?
The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed
quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the
numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but
they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
of the future.
Nor are distributional
problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class
of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would
suggest.
It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the
indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to
resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise
answer to every
ethical question.
But, as the train parable again illustrates,
there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder
resolution,
and
cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers
of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The case of nuclear power is like that.
The failure of these various arguments reveals, what caiji^e independently^
argued from the universalisability features of
moral principles,
thata
disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims
below the claims of present people.
That is, we have the same general obligations
17.
to future people as to the present;
thus there is the same obligation to take
account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions,
to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions
causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act
so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
Uncertainty
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
V.
PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN.
The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or
and future creatures.
entitlement
to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular
geographical position.
Hence several further problems arise, to which principles
and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem
apply.
For example, if one group (social unit,
or state) decides to dump its
radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent
its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it
imposes risks
and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in
much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on
future people.
There are differences however :
distant people
spatially
cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their
interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden.
People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special
costs and risks.
One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharge
radioactive materials into the air and
Emission problem.
water near
the plant : hence the
Such "normal" emission during plant operation of low level
radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly
costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced
by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain.
If our
ethical principles
permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the
ethical issue directly raised by nuclear
emissions would be :
what extent of
18.
cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of
nuclear power, and under what conditions?
Since, however, risks and benefits
are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting
principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses
for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion
And these risks are
real.’
In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclear
power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that
borne by the population at large.
And children living in this region are even more
vulnerable, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through
exposure than normal adults.
The serious costs to these people cannot be
justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could
be obtained without these costs.
Thus it is not just complacent to say
It s
a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioners
make life comfortable’.
For such benefits to some as airconditioners
provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of
buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer.
Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the
imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice
in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without
serious losses - is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. According
I
to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable
to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a
population ha^
received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument
being that the additional amount (being equivalent
is also
likely to have negligible consequences.
to the "natural” level)
The increased amounts of
radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal,
and, it si claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no
ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person s well-being,
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, no t be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
19.
e.g.
two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from
acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with
most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions
very substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission
situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would
disclose.
Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’'imposed” is entrusted to
the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Thus public
policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve
as a ’’public pacifier” while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations
q
proceed relatively unhamperedT
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an
accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear
occurrence’.
But "definitions” notwithstanding, such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island):
hence the Core-meltdown problem.
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light
water) reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely,
with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively
10
contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small
reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be
killed Instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident,
property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania
would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of
the reactor for which these conservative US (still the best available from
A
.
11
official sources' are given :
the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly be much greater.
The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the
train acts
inadmissibly.
a government or government-endorsed utility
appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in
20.
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the "community train".
More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a
community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost
analysis and other economic appraisal, would violate such ethical requirements
as the Transfer-limiting principle.
The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured
to avoid
questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the
extraordinary improbability
ethical arena and into a technological dispute about about the/
of
reactor malfunction.
They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the
train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear
accident.
Indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively
used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even
stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the
likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost)
impossible.
However, the mathematical models
relied upon in this report,
variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques",
are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible"
possibilities that may well happen in the real world.
that the
It is not surprising, then,^
methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised,
or that official support for the report has now'been withdrawn..
12
Moreover, use
of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a
non-negligible probability of a
serious accident.
In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no
greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here
we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk
assessment models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or
trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks
attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their
1
21.
ethical status.
The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment
as applied to energy options:
(
Ai.
If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option
Aii.
b ;
Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g.
deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already
/3
accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
These assumptions are then applied as follows.
be killed
Since the number likely to
eventually
by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number
killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted;
it follows that the risks of nuclear power are acceptable.
A little reflection
reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer
limiting principle.
In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need
a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:-
costs and benefits go to the same parties;
Do the
and is the person who voluntarily
the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in
undertakes
driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed
not benefit?
on other parties who do
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options
compared, and there are no such distributional problems,
a basis would be soundly based.
that a comparison on such
This is rarely 'the case, and it is not so in
the case of risk assessments of energy options.
VI.
OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely,mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
risks in the nuclear cycle
Unlike the special
- of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable
material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards
22.
have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of
generating power, e.g.
’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’’the same
14
risk” of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’.
The
A
problems are not
produced—by nuclear development.
Other social and environmental problems -
though endemic where dangerous
large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and
include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the
nuclear power cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable
component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution , such
as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear
development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead
radioactive lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many
large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences,
of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core
meltdown is not a possibility).
Though theft of material from more dubious
enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large
and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose
problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other industry
produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive
explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up,,so vulnerable on so many fronts.
In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to
basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal
liberty, freedom of association and of expression,and free access to information.
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of
special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations ami made it
answerable ...
to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
23.
These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along
with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
That nuclear development appears to force such political
societies.
consequences tells heavily against it.
Nuclear development is further indicted
politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is
true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a
nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what
circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing
the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the
opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement.
never accounted
Since nuclear wars are
positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils,
nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread of nuclear
power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable
consequences.
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities,
is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development is
undesirable.
This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear war against
large-scale nuclear development.
VII.
CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING ON
NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT.
UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF
Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case
against nuclear development, only one
justificatory
that of appeal to overriding circumstances.
route remains open,
That appeal, to be ethically
acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as observed,
the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely
economistic
arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the
town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly
uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
case:
a Transfer-limiting principle applies.
So it is also in the nuclear
But suppose now the consigner argues
that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die.
It is
by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still
to
amounts^one of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict
situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is
alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases
atical^where Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated,. Nuclear develop
ment is often
defended
in this way, through Conflict arguments,
to
the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features,
nevertheless the alternatives are worse.
Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on
competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm.
The success of such
conflict arguments requires the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the
action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument
(for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has
another
option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in
the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are
even worse than the option itself.
A first argument, the Poverty argument,
is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of Indus»
trialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised
nations.
And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating
the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development.
The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the
poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world.
There is
good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment
and poverty
in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of
direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging
substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear energy
is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is both
politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires
massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
25.
—.creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon
largely non-existent utility systems - e.g.
established electricity
transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical
appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the
problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people
of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of,
and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and
often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are
usually organised.
than what it is:
But that does not make the poverty argument anything other
a fraud.
There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives
and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources,
alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor,
both in the third world and in industrial countries:
coal and other fossil fuels,
geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar
sources, wind, water and tidal power).
Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-goingout argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations
to future people.
We have, it is said, a
duty to pass on the immensely
valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed.
Unless our
high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our
valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
>
The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in
our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
the most part these large questions can be by-passed.
But for
The reason is that the
argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology
societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
. it
It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that/cannot be changed in
the direction of energy conservation or
alternative (perhaps high technology)
energy sources without collapse.
These assumptions are all hard to accept.
The assumption that
technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so;
after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major
social and technological restructuring and consumption modification.
If
western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally
unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program
of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to
future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged.
Since high-
technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central
question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled
is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a
society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is
valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to
the future.
The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence
or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good
reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource
consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is
unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of
the Lights-going-out argument are wrong.
present
The consumption of less energy than at
need involve no reduction of well-being;and certainly
a
large increase
over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear
energy, is quite unnecessary.
then
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do
is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to
enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase
the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza .
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by means of nuclear fission,be positively inimical to it.
which has become heavily dependent upon a
A society
highly centralised, controlled and
garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
then they do at present.
Such a society would
almost inevitably tend to
become authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among
other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the
nuclear situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as
the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and
collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom
27.
for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high
technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is
valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for
power or, better,the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which
offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what
is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The
Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails.
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the
appeal to futurity, closed.
If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the
same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape
routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.)
for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable.
In sum, nuclear
development is morally unacceptable on several grounds.
VIII.
SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy option
that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no
doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it carries with it
the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as
acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by
extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very
high projected consumption figures.
the Transfer-limiting principle :
Such an option would, moreover, also violate
for it would impose widespread costs on
nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to
some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
To these main conventional options a third is often added which
emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and
hydroelectricity.
Such softer options — if suitably combined with energy
conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of
energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no
genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power, The deeper
choice is not however technological,
nor merely^individual^, £u£ Social , and
involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and,
at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life
styles and social arrangements^6 These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the
28.
unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of
examining the goals themselves.
That is, we are not merely faced with the
question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged
needs and the cost of a society that creates them.
It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even more benign
technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and
which are^5"
them.
"2?likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
In short, even more benign technologies may lead to violation of the
Transmission ^2 2,1^g q u i rement.
Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s
forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used
for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping.
While few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the
unrestricted exploitation of forests -
whether it goes under the name of
"solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be
the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests
are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label
"renewable resources".
Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true,
given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now
very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated
as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values.
In
many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already
been exceeded, so that a total decline, is widely thought to be imminent.
It
certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain
forest types, are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future.
The addition of
a ma|nr^ f ur ther and not readily limitable demand pressure
for energy on top
of ^the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term
conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling
the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion
in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions,
possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems,
including enormous loss of natural species.
Some of us do not want to pass on,
and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested
world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear
29.
products or polluted by coal products.
illustrates, a mere switch to
In short, as the forest situation
more benign technologies - important though this
is - without any more basic structural and social change, is inadequate.
The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter
a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs,
and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive
modes of production.
The social change option
tends to be obscured in most
discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because
it does question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The
conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with
wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a
false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context
so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that
people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, ....
authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants.
from created wants
It would be
Such an argument
conveniently ignores the social framework in which such
needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of
many such wants at the framework level is not
however to assume that they
are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation)
and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all.
It
is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds
of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds, of infrastructure, and to see
apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and
directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate
and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult
to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the
passing on of serious costs to future people.
reasons than such
ethical ones for taking it:
And there are other sorts of
it is the main, indeed the only
sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological
perspective, as contrasted with a shallow
ecological outlook which regards
the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but
only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests.
The deep
ecological perspective is an Integral part of the Alternative Ecological
Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm
(which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics)
30.
and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic
18
Socialism).
It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural
environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but
is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over
nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants.
The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is
fast
increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since
core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic
growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental
differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements.
The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not
specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the
19
basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The
ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed
through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly
lead to the difficult social change option.
The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power
structure.
To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to
parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that
official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult as it is to suitably
alter "the system,"
especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure,
it is imperative to try:
we are all on the nuclear train.
FOOTNOTES
This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear
1.
power - ethical, social, and political dimensions’
(ESP for short, available
from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred
to in the reference list).
For help with the condensation we are very
considerably indebted to the editors.
In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and
suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the
large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around
the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including
nuclear war).
We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and
references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims.
Further,
in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary
sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Little
difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through
secondary sources or in filling out much important background material from
work cited herein.
For example, virtually all the data cited in sections^ and VII
is referenced in Routley.
At worst ESP can always be consulted.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
2.
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
I
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
core meltdown of
(lightwater) reactors, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear
technology.
3.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has
to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation,
unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and
welfare.
But since the harm
nuclear development may afflict on non
human life, for example, can hardly improve
its case, it suffices if the case
against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the
conventional way.
For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented)
simulation models
p.428.
The Opportunity-cost
4.
respects.
see Goodin,
argument is also defective in other
It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the
contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the
proper methods for decision which affect the
choice, apply discounting.
future, such as that of energy
But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision
rules do not allow discounting.
This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory,
5.
roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a
decision method in such contexts.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
6.
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as
it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social
asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such
as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the
principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor.
7.
For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments
against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored
costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff.
8.
See Routley, p. 160.
9.
For much further discussion of the points of
the preceding two para-
»
graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader
10.
&
Abbotts.
Most of the reactors in the world are of this type;
see
Gyorgy.
11.
See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4.
12.
See Shrader-Frechette.
shortcomings
A worthwhile initial view of the
of the Rassmussen report may be reached by combining
the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader
13.
There are variations on Ai
against numbers such as probabilities.
and Aii
&
Abbotts.
which multiply costs
In this way risks, construed as
probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment.
risks may be assessed
(Alternatively,
through such familiar methods as insurance).
A principle varying
.
*
Aii
a
Aii, and formulated as follows:
is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more
risks than b and b is socially accepted.
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978,
Final Report,
p. 305 and p. 288.
In this report, a
is nuclear power and
b
is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources.
other applications
b
In
has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring,
mining and even the Vietnam war () .
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles
Ai - Aii’.
The principles are certainly ethically substantive,
since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses,
but they have an inadmissible conventional
origin of b
:
b
character.
For look at the
may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially
acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut
and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known
had been known when it was introduced.
What is required in Aii’, for
instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that
’ethically acceptable’
rather than
’socially accepted'.
b
is
But even
with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in
the text, and others.
It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work.
It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to
actuaries.
14.
See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15.
15.
Goodin
16.
The argument is elaborated in ESP.
17.
For some of the more philosophically important material on
p. 433.
alternative nonconsumeristic
.social arrangements and lifestyles, see
work cited in V. and R. Routley, 'Social theories, self management and
environmental problems’ in Mannison et al, where a beginning is made
on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism.
The parlous
18.
situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is
explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V.
Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’
(available from
the authors).
For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its
19.
rival,
the Alternative Environmental Paradigm, see
Cotgrove and Duff, especially
_ the main
the table on p. 341 which encapsulates
of the
assumptions
paradigms; compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34.
Contemporary variants ^.n the Dominant Social Paradigm wer-e considered in ESP.
-X
The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which
is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess.
For further explanation of the contrast and of the larger array of ecological
positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley,
environmental ethics' in Mannison
especially to Rodman’s
20.
’Human chauvinism and
et al, and the references there cited,
work.
The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the
context of paradigm conflict.
But it is also argued that, even within
assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants,
Ti.
Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options.
The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of
the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument.
It is
the
following
version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing
in for material wealth, and for what is valuable.’
necessary to sustain economic growth.
Nuclear power is
Economic: growth is desirable (for
all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone
redistribution problems, etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll),
and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks.
But both
premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic
growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective
growth, which jettisons
economic
the heavy social and environmental costs carried
by unqualified economic growth.
More to the point, since the second premiss
is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an
fails even by Dominant
appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it)
Paradigm standards.
For of course nuclear power is not necessary
that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives.
defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
given
The premiss usually
Nuclear power is the
economically best way to sustain economic growth,
’economically best’
being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’,
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
’having the most favourable
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively
(unless a
good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done).
Tii-
On proper Dominant Paradigm accounting, nuclear choices should
generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as
public choices.
Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not
by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types
(discussed in Shrader-Flechette, Gyorgy and Nader & Abbotts).
Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is
not justified, as consideration of decision theory methods will reveal:
Tiii.
Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is
rej ected f
as the arguments of Goodin on ^Alternative decision rules help to show.
What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm
or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise
image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear
development both in developed countries and in less developed countries makes plain
(for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.).
the practices of contemporary
Ayi
corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the
standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants :
not ethically acceptable.
,
they are certainly
<0
O
to
REFERENCES USED
Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues
raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (*
).
S. C^yove. and A. Duff, ’’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review
28(2) (1980), 333-51.
W. R. Catton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post
exuberant sociology’ American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980).
15-47.
For Report :
Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
*R. E. Goodin, "No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
*A. Gyorgy and friends,
No Nukes : everyone’s guide to nuclear power,
South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979.
*D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy,
RSSS, Australian National University, 1980.
N. Myers, The Sinking Ark,
Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979.
R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy,
Outback Press,
Melbourne, 1977.
*K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy,
Reidel, Dordrecht,
1980.preferred Lo as SF)T~"
R. and V. Routley,
’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79.
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Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan
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Richard and Vai Routley
1.
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NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS1
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not
really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead,
it is a debate about values...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical
ones.2
I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.
train has just pulled out.
passengers and freight.
The train which is
A long distance country
crowded carries both
At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as
freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly
toxic and explosive gas.
This is packed in a very thin container which, as
the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance
for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should
strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys.
All
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least
some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could
be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain
that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his
duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not
or the people on it.
responsible for the train
These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen
as ludicrous when set in this context.
Unfortunately, similar excuses are
not also seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his
workers' health or
other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify
his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product,
is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container
even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and his family
will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others,
and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off.
The
poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help,
will suffer especially.
Few people would accept such grounds as justification.
�2.
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply
transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the
train case.
How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument
progresses.
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present,
with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century
producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity
of the Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example,
a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
A leak
of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread
disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their
expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may
require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem.
Serious
problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of
storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over
the last twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human
intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative
and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with
attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as regards expensive recent
proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the
result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models
�3.
reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human
environments.1^ In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real
3
possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environment.
Given the
heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
not only have
I present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,^none
of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested,
but they
may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
geological or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem
of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The
assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of
efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously
been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are,
then, significant.
to bear
Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant)
energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it.
Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted
of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests
and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the
basis of life, are run-down or destroyed.
Such points tell against the idea
that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear
fission, at least indirect beneficiaries.
�4.
The "solution” then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price
which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces
their ability to cope with these problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out
of a
mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies
dependent on an abundance of non-re newable energy, which is limited in supply -
to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no
corresponding benefits.
The "solution” may enable the avoidance of some
uncomfortable changes in the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate
descendants, just as the consigner's action avoids uncomfortable changes for
him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing
heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent
lives may be seriously jeopardised.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in
the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear
development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale.
There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not
apply to those
in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be
made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner's
action in the circumstances outlined is not to imply that there are no
circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable.
As in the case
of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these
justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear
development in turn.
II.OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
A
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question
of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
�5.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations
to distant future creatures.
A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly
considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration
being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of
contemporary or immediately future people.
Others fall into three categories:
those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them
seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are
committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral
obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the
weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic
and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future
beyond those perhaps to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained',
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving
effect of our actions on future people.
from the
Of those philosophers who say, or whose
views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many
have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on
relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus,
moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold
between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
Let us call
the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the
No
constraints position.
Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position,
which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these.
Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral
obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement.
People in the
distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us,
and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have
against us.
Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligations
on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require
punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement.
But
plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society
and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing
offending predecessors.
�6.
The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain.
Consider, for
example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a
particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its
despatch.
No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants
would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would
be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action.
The no-constraints
position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that
whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment
(perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral
protest about the damage it will do to future people.
The no-constraints
position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy:-
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and
manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for
present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds
of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the no-constraints
view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration
for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily
varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious.
Yet this view is far
from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this
position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the
basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems
that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such
examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position.
We suspect
that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits
such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause
pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would
want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many of those who have
put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying
moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can
take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in
the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of
the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the
present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in
�7.
what they do of people affected and their interests,
to be careful in their
actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing
harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people, of the chance
of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not
have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never
been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect
to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be
avoided.
These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part
because of a failure to make an important distinction.
Some of our
obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some
agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise.
Other obligations,
however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that
an agreement has been struck between us.
former kind acquired obligations
Let us call obligations of the
and those of the latter unacquired obligations.
There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with
each.
In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one
should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise.
In the
case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal
agent who is aware of the consequences or
consequences of his action,
a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in
the past (e.g., made a promise).
Our obligations to future people clearly
are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position
simply fails to take into account.
These obligations arise as a result of our
ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether
on our contemporaries or
on those in the distant future.
Thus, to return to
the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action
that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the
passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for
them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has
acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them.
All that
�8.
one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there
z
are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially
o thQ distant
acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence
ure involve
heroic self sacrifice, something ’’above and beyond” what is normally required.
One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people
into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm
than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from
shipping the dangerous package on the train.
III.
ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE.
In evading these
difficulties the No—constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly
abandoned.
According to the Qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
There are obligations, even to distant future
with respect to the distant future.
people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests
of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of
the present and immediate future.
The interests of future people then, except
in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present
people.
Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative
activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the
distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by
application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to
future people.
The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something
that is becoming increasingly common, can lead thei to the Qualified position.
What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within
the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice
it operates within legal constraints.
What economics cannot legitimately do is
determine what these constraints are.
There are, moreover, alternative economic
theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future,
giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all
the questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that
future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed
to handle the waste problem).
generations may well not
Since there is mounting evidence that future
be better off then present ones, especially in things
that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations
on this basis can carry much weight.
For the waste problem to be handed
�9.
to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic
progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off
but so much better off that they can
(easily) carry and control the nuclear
freight.
A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument,
^builds directly
on the notion of opportunity cost.
It is argued from the fact
that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the nonimmediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at
compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary
values.
This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of
resources.
Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come _
to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside
/(e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate
eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
beset this approach.
Two problems
First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable
practical difficulties about applying such discounting.
how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
that the argument depends on a false assumption.
We simply
do not know
A more serious objection is
It is not true that value, or
damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents.
There is no clear
’’monetary compensation" for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of
life, a lost species.
The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it
leads back in practice to the No-constraints position.
discounting imposes an ” economic horizon"
The reason is that
beyond which nothing need be
considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are,
when discounted
back to the present, negligible.
A different argument for the Qualified position, the
Probabilities argument,
avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability
considerations.
The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower,
perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning
the distant future.
Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future
people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree
of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring
people where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of
conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing
certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against
a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of
�iisfcsrs”'.... . •
10.
distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
is however
The argument
Firstly, probabilities involving distant
badly flawed.
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes.
problems often
Moreover the outcomes of some moral
do not depend on a high level of probability.
In many cases it
is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created;
such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Nor,
/of course, VitTcar) be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and
benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of
risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
i»n e>rd^f -Lt?
'fc-C
I in the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use.
z
the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such
And even, if
an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that
the consigner’s action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit
(e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on
other people) was sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision problems, with or
is quite inadequate when different parties
without the probability frills,
are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations
are at issue.
permissible
5
For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is
for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party
provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it,
that costs to some
group
are more than
larger benefits to another group.
transferred in any
morally
compensated for by
But costs or benefits are not legitimately
simple way from one group to another.
The often
appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept
the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits
then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)"
is another and
�very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is
not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising
from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved
in the activity and are not beneficiaries.This Transfer-limiting principle
is especially clear in cases
of which a thalidomide manufacturing and
marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect
on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
The principle is of
fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again :
it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other
liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter
/
9
'of reactor meltdown.
In particular, the principle invalidates the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks,
between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own
lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all
who may be just the opposite!
More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion,
i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of
pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features.
/
j
Large-scale energy
y»ss//
/production, from nuclear or foe-itc fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious
!pollution.
Thus from the Transfer-limiting
t>fe principle emerges an
important necessary condition for energy options:
To be morally acceptable
k -era, OE£12^ should not involve the transfer of s.igif leant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not
benefit correspondingly from the energy source.
Included in the scope of
�12.
this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e.
not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those
Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our
successors in substantially worse shape than we ’'received” it.
For if we did
then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical
theories (e.g. those of a
deontic cast such as Kant's and Ra
and
from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers
putting oneself in another’s position.
But the principle is perhaps best
defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples.
embroider the train parable, the
company
town decides to
Suppose, to
solve
its
disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line,
which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due
protest.
The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus
taining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us would regard this kind
of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company
town flourishes.
/
/IV.
c
UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY.
7
/Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be
ed to take too
much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to
uncertain/y.
There are two main components to the
argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments
are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on a priori
second on a posteriori grounds.
follows:-
grounds, the
The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as
In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present,
the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant
future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative.
But we cannot base
assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when
�accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate
Therefore we must regretfully ignore the
different action.
our actions on the distant future.
ignorance
uncertain effects of
A striking example of the argument from
at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear
development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of
waste control on the
7
grounds of uncertainty.
the argument concerned is this:
More formally and crudely
(%)£/only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reliable information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning
*
our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations
in the crude statement of the argument above).
by ’knowledge’
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available
with respect to
the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required
as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with
respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp
division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the
adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly
,
such
do act on the basis of^"unreliable" information, which the sceptic as regards the
future conveniently labels "uncertainty".
In moral situations in the present,
assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite
low probabilities.
Consider again the train parable.
We do not need to know
for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact
it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable
than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action.
that there is a significant risk of harm
It is enough
in this sort of case.
It does not
matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the
�14.
prospects of the passengers quite uncertain.
It is wrong to ship the gas.
But
if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral
consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double
standard.
According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty
argument,
even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be.
Therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Given that moral principles are characteristically
of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character
then
x
is wrong, for every (action)
sharply thus:
x",
h
the argument may be stated more
We can never obtain the information about future actions which
would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication.
Therefore, even
if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot
be applied to obtain clear conclusions.
It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain .
that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way
better than
chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action
would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable
in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions
about how to act.
In this event the distant future would impose no practical
moral constraints on action.
However, the argument is factually incorrect in
assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant
future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is
�15.
not so great as to exclude constraints on action.
For example, we may have
little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another
morally^irrelevant^factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years
of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have
material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need
a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune
to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
^cancer
genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one
area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to
preclude moral constraints on action.
For this sort of reason, the
practical uncertainty argument should be rejected.
Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in
a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probably harm
to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these
popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other.
For example, we may be told that we
cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they
will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from
our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources
or from the things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete
certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future,
where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those to whom we are morally committed.
Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because
they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment
of other machines.
Even
if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments
�16.
is again a mere outside possibility.
Neither the contemporary nor the historical
situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal
moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility.
We can
contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically
supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through
destruction of its resource base.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument,
the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will
prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a
conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less
accurate form?
The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed
quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the
numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but
they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
of the future.
Nor are distributional
problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class
of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would
suggest.
It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the
indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to
resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise
answer to every
ethical question.
But, as the train parable again illustrates,
/there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder
resolution,
and
.anci
cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers
of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The case of nuclear power is like that.
The failure of these various arguments reveals, what c^e^| ^^^men^does nc
argued from the universalisability features of
moral principles,
that/
disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims
below the claims of present people.
That is, we have the same general obligations
�to future people as to the present;
thus there is the same obligation to take
account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions,
to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions
causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act
so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
Uncertainty
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
V.
PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN.
The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage
and future creatures.
entitlement
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or
to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular
and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem
^apply.
For example, if one group (social uriit^
or state) decides to dump its
radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent
its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it
imposes risks
and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in
much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on
future people.
There are differences however :
spatially
distant people
cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their
interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden.
People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special
costs and risks.
One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharj
radioactive materials into the air and
Emission problem.
water near
the plant : hence the
Such ’’normal" emission during plant operation of low level
radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly
costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced
by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain.
If our
permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the
ethical issue directly raised by nuclear
emissions would be :
what extent of
�18.
cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of
nuclear power, and under what conditions?
Since, however, risks and benefits
are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting
I principle -
such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses
for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashio,
these risks are
In the USA, people who live within 50 miles oMmclear
real!
power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that
borne by the population at large.
And children living in this region are even more
vulnerable, since they and several times more likely to contract cancer through
exposure than normal adults.
The serious costs to these people cannot be
J us tit led by the alleged benefits for others, expecially when these benefits could
be obtained without these costs.
a pity about
Thus it is not just complacent to say 'It’s
Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new
make life comfortable’.
airconditioners
For such benefits to some as airconditioners
provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of
buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer.
Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the
imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice
in the. location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without
serious losses - is really quite alright is the
Doubling
argument.
Accord
to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable
to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a
population have received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument
being that the additional amount (being equivalent
to the
"natural” level)
is also likely to have negligible consequences.
The increased amounts of
radiation - with their large man-made component
- are then accounted normal,
and, it is claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no
ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
�19.
e.g.
two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from
acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with
most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions
very substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission
situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would
disclose.
Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’’imposed'’ is entrusted to
the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Thus public
policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve
as a
public pacifier” while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations
proceed relatively unhampered?
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an
accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear
occurrence .
But "definitions” notwithstanding, such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island):
hence the Core-meltdown problem.
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light
water) reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely,
the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively
10
contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small
reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be
killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident,
property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania
would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of
the reactor for which these conservative US (still the best available from
official sources) are given :
the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly be much greater.
The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the
O
^train acts in^admissibly.
A government or government-endorsed utility
appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in
�20.
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the ’’community train”.
More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a
community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost
as the Transfer-limiting principle.
The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured
to avoid
questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the
extraordinary
reactor malfunction.
They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the
train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear
accident.
Indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively
used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even
stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the
likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost)
impossible.
However, the mathematical models
relied upon in this report,
variously called "fault tree analysis” and "reliability estimating techniques",
are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible"
possibilities that may well happen in the real world.
that the
It is not surprising, then i
methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised,
or that official support for the report has now been withdrawn.
12
Moreover, use
of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a
non-negligible probability of a
serious accident.
In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no
greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here
we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk
assessment models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or
trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks
attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their
�21.
ethical status.
The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment
as applied to energy options:
Ai.
If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option
Aii.
b ;
Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g.
deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is alreay^
accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
3
These assumptions are then applied as follows.
be killed
Since the number likely to
eventuall
by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number
killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted;
it follows that the risks of huclear power are acceptable.
A little reflection
reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer
limiting principle.
In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need
a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:-
costs and benefits go to the same parties;
Do the
and is the person who voluntarily
the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in
undertakes
driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed
not benefit?
on other parties who do
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options
compared, and there are no such distributional problems,
a basis would be soundly based.
that a comparison on such
This is rarely the case, and it is not so in
the case of risk assessments of energy options.
VI.
OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely^ mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
risks in the nuclear cycle
Unlike the special
- of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable
material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards
�22.
have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of
generating power, e.g.
’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’’the same
u
14
risk" of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The
problems are not really produced by nuclear development.
Other social and environmental problems
endemic where dangerous
large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and
include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the
J
nuclear power cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable
component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution ,such
as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear
development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead
radioactive lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many
large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences,
of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core
meltdown is not a possibility).
Though theft of material from more dubious
enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large
and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose
problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other industry
produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive
explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts.
In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to
basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of
special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations and- made it
answerable ...
to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
�..iwu-
23.
These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along
with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
societies.
That nuclear development appears to force such political
<—
i '
(consequences tells heavily against it.
Nuclear development is further indicated
politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is
true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a
nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what
circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing
the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the
opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement.
\ /jL
Since nuclear wars are
/nevei/ accountable- positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils,
nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread of nuclear
power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable
consequences.
0^!/\
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities,
is itself undesirable, and therefore what le^jtds to it, nuclear development^ is
undesirable.
This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear wa£ against
large-scale nuclear development.
VII.
CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING ON
NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT.
UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF
Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case
against nuclear development, only one
justificatory
that of appeal to overriding circumstances.
route remains open,
That appeal, to be ethically
acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as observed,
the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely
I ^conomistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the
town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly
uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
case:
a Transfer-limiting principle applies.
So it is also in the nuclear
But suppose now the consigner argues
that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die.
It is
�24.
by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still
/amount s^one of transfer of costs and risks onto others.
But such a conflict
situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is
alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases
atical/frhere Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated. Nuclear develop
ment is often
defended
in this way, through Conflict arguments,
to
the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features,
nevertheless the alternatives are worse.
Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on
competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm.
The success of such
/conflict arguments require^the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the
action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument
(for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has
another
option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in
the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are
even worse than the option itself.
A first argument, the Poverty argument,
is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indus
trialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialisec
nations.
And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating
the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development.
The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the
poor of the industrial countries or for those of the. third world.
There is
good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment
and poverty
in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of
direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging
substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear energy
is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is both
politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires
massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
�25.
WT creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon
largely non-existent utility systems - e.g.
established electricity
transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical
appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the
problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people
of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of,
and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and
often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are
usually organised.
than what it is:
But that does not make the poverty argument anything other
a fraud.
There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives
and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources,
alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor,
both in the third world and in industrial countries:
coal and other fossil fuels,
geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar
sources, wind, water and tidal power).
Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-goingout argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations
to future people.
We have, it is said, a
duty to pass on the immensely
valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed.
Unless our
high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our
valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in
But for
our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
the most part these large questions can be by-passed.
The reason is that the
argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology
societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
$I
I it assuine</ that technological society is unmodifiable, that^cannot be changed in
' the direction of energy conservation or
alternative (perhaps high technology)
energy sources without collapse.
These assumptions are all hard to accept.
The assumption that
technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so;
after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major
social and technological restructuring and consumption modification.
If
western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally
unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program
of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to
�26.
future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged.
Since high-
technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central
question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled
is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a
society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is
valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably that we have a duty to pass on to
the future.
The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence
or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good
reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource^
consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is
unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of
the Lights-going-out argument are wrong.
The consumption of less energy than at
present/ need involve no reduction of well-being; and certainly
a
large increase
over present levels of consumption assumed trr the usual economic case for nuclear
energy, is quite unnecessary.
then
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do
is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to
enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase
the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza .
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by means of nuclear fission, be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon a^ highly centralised, controlled and
garrisoned
md expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
then they do at present.
Such a society would/' almost inevitably tend to
become authoritatian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among
other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the
nuclear situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as
the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and
collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom
�27.
for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high
technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is
valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for
power or, better, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which
offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what
is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The
Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails.
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the
appeal to futurity, closed.
If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the
same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape
routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.)
for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable.
Tn sum, nuclear
development is morally unacceptable on several grounds.
VIII.
SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy option
that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no
doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it carries with it
the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as
acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by
extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very
Such an option would, moreover, also violate
high projected consumption figures.
the Transfer-limiting principle :
for it would impose widespread costs on
nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to
some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
To these main conventional options a third is often added which
emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and
hydroelectricity.
Such softer options — if suitably combined with energy
conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of
energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no
genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objectives to nuclear power.
choice is not however technological,
The deeper
nor merely^individual^ 1 bUL Social, and
involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and,
at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life
styles and social arrangements’!:6 These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the
�unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of
examining the goals themselves.
That is, we are not merely faced with the
question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged
needs and the cost of a society that creates them.
It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even more benign
technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and
^are?which^
/them.
^likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
In short, even more benign technologies may le/id to violation of the
Transmission
JjteQu^-remen^•
Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s
forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used
for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping.
While few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the
unrestricted exploitation of forests -
whether it goes under the name of
’’solar energy” or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be
the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests
are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label
"renewable resources”.
Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true,
given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now
very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated
as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values,
In
many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already
been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent,
It
certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain17
^/forest types^ are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of
y/a maj^r further and not readily limitable demand pressure
for energy on top
/of /the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term
conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling
the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion
in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions,
possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems,
including enormous loss of natural species.
Some of us do not want to pass on,
and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested
world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear
�29.
products or polluted by coal products.
illustrates, a mere switch to
In short, as the forest situation
more benign technologies - important though this
is - without any more basic structural and social change,is inadequate.
The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter
a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs
and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensi
modes of production.
The social change option
tends to be obscured in most
discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because
it does question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The
conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with
wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a
false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context
so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that
people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, ....
authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants.
from created wants
It would be
Such an argument
conveniently ignores the social framework in which such
needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of
many such wants at the framework level is not
however to assume that they
are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation)
and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all.
It
is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds
of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds of infrastructure, and to see
apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and
directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate
and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult
to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the
passing on of serious costs to future people.
reasons than such
ethical ones for taking it:
And there are other sorts of
it is the main, indeed the only
sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological
perspective, as contrasted with a shallow
ecological outlook which regards
the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but
only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests.
The deep
ecological perspective is an integral part of the Alternative Ecological
Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm
(which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics)
�30.
and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic
18
Socialism).
It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural
environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but
is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over
nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants.
The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is
fast
increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since
core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic
growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental
differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements.
The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not
specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the
19
basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead.
The
ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed
through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly
lead to the difficult social change option.
The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power
'structure.
To the extenj? that the option represents some kind of threat to
parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that
official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult as it is to suitably
alter "the system,”
especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure,
it is imperative to try:
we are all on the nuclear train.
�FOOTNOTES
This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear
1.
power - ethical, social, and political dimensions
*
(ESP for short, available
from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred
to in the reference list).
For help with the condensation we are very
considerably indebted to the editors.
In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and
suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the
large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around
the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including
nuclear war).
We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and
references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims.
Further,
in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary
sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Little
difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through
secondary sources or in filling out much Important background material from
work cited herein.
For example, virtually all the data cited in sections, and VII
is referenced in Routley.
At worst ESP can always be consulted.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
2.
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of # (lightwater) reactors, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear
technology.
3.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has
to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation,
unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and
welfare.
But since the harm ' ~
nuclear development may afflict on non
human life, for example, can hardly improve
its case, it suffices if the case
against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the
conventional way.
�For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented)
^simulation models see Gooding, 428.
The Opportunity-cost
4.
respects.
argument is also defective in other
It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the
contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the
/proper methods for decision which ^ffect the
choice, apply discounting.
future, such as that of energy
But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision
rules do not allow discounting.
This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory,
5.
roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a
decision method in such contexts.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
6.
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as
it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social
asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such
as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the
principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor.
/ 7.
For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments
against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored
costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff.
See Routley, p. 160.
/\
the preceding two para£
I graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader and Abbotts.
For much further discussion of the points of
[10.
Most of the reactors^Ln the world are of this type;
see
Gyorgy.
11.
See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4.
12.
See Shrader-Frechette.
/ shortcomings
A worthwhile initial view of the
of the Rass^ftussen report may be reached by combining
' /the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader and Abbotts.
13.
There are variations on Ai
against numbers such as probabilities.
and Aii
which multiply costs
In this way risks, construed as
probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment.
risks may be assessed
(Alternatively,
through such familiar methods as insurance).
�A principle varying
Aii’. a
Aii, and formulated as follows:
is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more
risks than b and b is socially accepted.
Aii’. was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978,
Final Report,
p. 305 and p. 288.
In this report, a
is nuclear power and
b
is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources.
other applications
b
In
has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring,
mining and even the Vietnam war (!).
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles
Ai - Aii’.
The principles are certainly ethically substantive,
since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses,
but they have an inadmissible conventional
origin of b
;
b
character.
For look at the
may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially
acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut
and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known
had been known when it was introduced.
What is required in Aii’, for
instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that
’ethically acceptable’
rather than
’socially accepted’.
b
is
But even
with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in
the text, and others.
It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work.
It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to
actuaries.
14.
See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15.
15.
Goodin
16.
The argument is elaborated in ESP.
17.
For some of the more philosophically important material
p. 433.
'alternative Mannlaon
~
Asocial arrangements and lifestyles, see
work cited in V. and R. Routley, ’Social theories, self management and
environmental problems’ in
al, where a beginning is made
on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism.
�The parlous
18.
situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is
explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V.
Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’
(available from
the authors).
19.
> rival,
For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its
Paradigm, see Cot^royfe and Duff, especially
the Alternative Environmental
the
assumptions
the table on p. 341 which
/of the
paradigms; compare also Cotton and Dunljzfp, especially p. 34.
Contemporary varients in the Dominant Social Paradigm were considered in ESP.
The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which
A
s
/is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess.
//
S
/For further explanation of the contract and of the larger array of ecological
positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley,
’ in Mannison
environmental ethics
___
’Human chauvinism and
et al, and the references there cited,
^especially to R^d man’s work.
20.
The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the
context of paradigm conflict.
But it is also argued that, even within
assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants,
Ti.
Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options.
The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of
the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument.
It is
the
following
version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing
Nuclear power is
in for material wealth, and for what is valuable!^
necessary to sustain economic growth.
Economic growth is desirable (for
all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone
redistribution problems, etc.).
k
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
/
/The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll),
and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks.
But both
premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic
growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective
X
//"growth, which
economic
the heavy social and environmental costs carried
by unqualified economic growth.
More to the point, since the second premiss
is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an
appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it)
Paradigm standards.
fails even by Dominant
For of course nuclear power is not necessary
that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives.
defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
given
The premiss usually
Nuclear power is the
economically best way to sustain economic growth,
’economically best’
�being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’,
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
’having the most favourable
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively
(unless a
good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done).
Tii.
On proper Dominant Paradigjfi accounting, nuclear choices should
generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as
public choices.
Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not
by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types
Gyorgy and Nader alrd Abbotts).
discussed in Shrader-Frechette,
ZU
Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is
//not justified, oi consideration of decision theory methods will reveal:
Tiii.
Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is
rejected^Jas the arguments op Goodin on alternative decision rules help to show.
|l*^
What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm
or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise
image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear
X
^development both in developed countries and in less developed countries
(for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.).
Are the practices of contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the
standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants :
not ethically acceptable.
they are certainly
�
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Richard and Vai Routley
1.
»
NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS1
One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of
nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now
widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important
empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not
really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead,
it is a debate about values...
many of the questions which arise are social and ethical
ones.2
I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM.
train has just pulled out.
passengers and freight.
The train which is
A long distance country
crowded carries both
At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as
freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly
toxic and explosive gas.
This is packed in a very thin container which, as
the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance
for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should
strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or
involved in a collision,
or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently
or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it.
of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys.
All
If the
container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least
some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could
be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases.
Most of us would roundly condemn such an action.
of the parcel say to try to justify it?
What might the consigner
He might say that it is not certain
that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his
duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not
or the people on it.
responsible for the train
These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen
as ludicrous when set in this context.
Unfortunately, similar excuses are
not also seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his
workers' health or
other peoples’ welfare at risk.
Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify
his action.
The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product,
is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container
even if it knew how to make one.
If the company fails, he and his family
will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others,
and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off.
The
poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help,
will suffer especially.
Few people would accept such grounds as justification.
2.
Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom
one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply
transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties,
especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style.
The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the
train case.
How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument
progresses.
There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic
wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as
large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.
The waste problem will be much
more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present,
with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century
producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity
of the Hiroshima bomb.
Much of this waste is extremely toxic.
For example,
a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer.
A leak
of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread
disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land.
Wastes
will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their
expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may
require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.
Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for
their entire active lifetime.
For fission products the required storage period
averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include
plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem.
Serious
problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of
storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over
the last twenty years.
Short-term methods of storage require continued human
intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter
ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors.
No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history
of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate
we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be
confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for
the vast period of time involved.
Nor does the history of human affairs over the
last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring
human intervention over perhaps a million years.
Proposed long-term storage methods
such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative
and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with
attempts made to put them into practice.
Even as regards expensive recent
proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the
result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models
3.
reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human
environments.1^ In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real
3
possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environment.
Given the
heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given
the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as
nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes.
Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on
not only have
I present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,^none
of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested,
but they
may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale.
Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable.
It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
geological or future human factors.
But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem
of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The
assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method
proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of
efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously
been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.
The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are,
then, significant.
to bear
Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced
significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant)
energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because
the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable
that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable
sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will
probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope
with it.
Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted
of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests
and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the
basis of life, are run-down or destroyed.
Such points tell against the idea
that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear
fission, at least indirect beneficiaries.
4.
The "solution” then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price
which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces
their ability to cope with these problems.
Like the consigner in the train
parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out
of a
mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies
dependent on an abundance of non-re newable energy, which is limited in supply -
to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no
corresponding benefits.
The "solution” may enable the avoidance of some
uncomfortable changes in the lifetime
of those now living and their immediate
descendants, just as the consigner's action avoids uncomfortable changes for
him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing
heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent
lives may be seriously jeopardised.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral
principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in
the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear
development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale.
There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we
acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not
apply to those
in the non-immediate future.
Secondly, an attempt might be
made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner's
action in the circumstances outlined is not to imply that there are no
circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable.
As in the case
of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these
justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case.
We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear
development in turn.
II.OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE.
A
The especially problematic area
is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which
people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate
future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories.
In fact the question
of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories
fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as
regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do
not take due account of the interests of future creatures.
5.
Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations
to distant future creatures.
A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly
considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration
being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of
contemporary or immediately future people.
Others fall into three categories:
those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them
seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are
committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral
obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with
admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the
weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic
and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future
beyond those perhaps to the next generation.
According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to
the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained',
there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving
effect of our actions on future people.
from the
Of those philosophers who say, or whose
views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many
have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on
relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity.
Thus,
moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold
between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space).
Let us call
the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the
No
constraints position.
Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position,
which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these.
Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral
obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement.
People in the
distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us,
and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have
against us.
Secondly, there are those
accounts which base moral obligations
on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require
punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement.
But
plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society
and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time.
Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing
offending predecessors.
6.
The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain.
Consider, for
example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a
particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its
despatch.
No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants
would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would
be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action.
The no-constraints
position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that
whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment
(perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral
protest about the damage it will do to future people.
The no-constraints
position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy:-
A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and
manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for
present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds
of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time.
According to the no-constraints
view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration
for the harm it does remote future people.
Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily
varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious.
Yet this view is far
from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this
position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the
basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory.
It seems
that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such
examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position.
We suspect
that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits
such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause
pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would
want to assert that it was not what they intended.
What many of those who have
put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying
moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives.
The popular view that the future can
take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present.
But it is not.
It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in
the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself.
Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of
the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the
present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in
7.
what they do of people affected and their interests,
to be careful in their
actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing
harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people, of the chance
of a good life.
Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future
people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we
like with respect to them.
In just the same way, the fact that one does not
have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never
been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect
to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be
avoided.
These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part
because of a failure to make an important distinction.
Some of our
obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some
agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise.
Other obligations,
however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that
an agreement has been struck between us.
former kind acquired obligations
Let us call obligations of the
and those of the latter unacquired obligations.
There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with
each.
In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one
should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise.
In the
case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal
agent who is aware of the consequences or
consequences of his action,
a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in
the past (e.g., made a promise).
Our obligations to future people clearly
are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position
simply fails to take into account.
These obligations arise as a result of our
ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether
on our contemporaries or
on those in the distant future.
Thus, to return to
the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action
that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the
passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for
them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has
acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them.
All that
8.
one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there
z
are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially
o thQ distant
acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence
ure involve
heroic self sacrifice, something ’’above and beyond” what is normally required.
One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people
into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm
than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from
shipping the dangerous package on the train.
III.
ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE.
In evading these
difficulties the No—constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly
abandoned.
According to the Qualified position
we are not entirely unconstrained
There are obligations, even to distant future
with respect to the distant future.
people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests
of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of
the present and immediate future.
The interests of future people then, except
in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present
people.
Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative
activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the
distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them.
The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in
prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by
application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to
future people.
The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something
that is becoming increasingly common, can lead thei to the Qualified position.
What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within
the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice
it operates within legal constraints.
What economics cannot legitimately do is
determine what these constraints are.
There are, moreover, alternative economic
theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future,
giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all
the questions at issue.
Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting
the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that
future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed
to handle the waste problem).
generations may well not
Since there is mounting evidence that future
be better off then present ones, especially in things
that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations
on this basis can carry much weight.
For the waste problem to be handed
9.
to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic
progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off
but so much better off that they can
(easily) carry and control the nuclear
freight.
A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument,
^builds directly
on the notion of opportunity cost.
It is argued from the fact
that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the nonimmediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at
compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary
values.
This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of
resources.
Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come _
to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside
/(e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate
eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage.
beset this approach.
Two problems
First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable
practical difficulties about applying such discounting.
how to determine appropriate future discount rates.
that the argument depends on a false assumption.
We simply
do not know
A more serious objection is
It is not true that value, or
damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents.
There is no clear
’’monetary compensation" for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of
life, a lost species.
The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it
leads back in practice to the No-constraints position.
discounting imposes an ” economic horizon"
The reason is that
beyond which nothing need be
considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are,
when discounted
back to the present, negligible.
A different argument for the Qualified position, the
Probabilities argument,
avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability
considerations.
The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower,
perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning
the distant future.
Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future
people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree
of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring
people where (much) higher probabilities are attached.
So in the case of
conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing
certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against
a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of
iisfcsrs”'.... . •
10.
distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present
assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved.
is however
The argument
Firstly, probabilities involving distant
badly flawed.
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes.
problems often
Moreover the outcomes of some moral
do not depend on a high level of probability.
In many cases it
is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created;
such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Nor,
/of course, VitTcar) be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and
benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of
risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with
consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people,
i»n e>rd^f -Lt?
'fc-C
I in the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use.
z
the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such
And even, if
an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that
the consigner’s action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit
(e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on
other people) was sufficiently large.
Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision problems, with or
is quite inadequate when different parties
without the probability frills,
are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations
are at issue.
permissible
5
For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is
for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party
provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it,
that costs to some
group
are more than
larger benefits to another group.
transferred in any
morally
compensated for by
But costs or benefits are not legitimately
simple way from one group to another.
The often
appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept
the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits
then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)"
is another and
very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is
not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising
from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved
in the activity and are not beneficiaries.This Transfer-limiting principle
is especially clear in cases
of which a thalidomide manufacturing and
marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect
on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
The principle is of
fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again :
it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other
liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter
/
9
'of reactor meltdown.
In particular, the principle invalidates the comparison,
heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks,
between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or
cigarette smoking.
In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the
activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health
costs and risks involved.
In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies
of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own
lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all
who may be just the opposite!
More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion,
i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of
pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features.
/
j
Large-scale energy
y»ss//
/production, from nuclear or foe-itc fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious
!pollution.
Thus from the Transfer-limiting
t>fe principle emerges an
important necessary condition for energy options:
To be morally acceptable
k -era, OE£12^ should not involve the transfer of s.igif leant costs or
risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not
benefit correspondingly from the energy source.
Included in the scope of
12.
this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e.
not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those
Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our
successors in substantially worse shape than we ’'received” it.
For if we did
then that would be a significant transfer of costs.
The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical
theories (e.g. those of a
deontic cast such as Kant's and Ra
and
from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers
putting oneself in another’s position.
But the principle is perhaps best
defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples.
embroider the train parable, the
company
town decides to
Suppose, to
solve
its
disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line,
which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due
protest.
The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus
taining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us would regard this kind
of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company
town flourishes.
/
/IV.
c
UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY.
7
/Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be
ed to take too
much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to
uncertain/y.
There are two main components to the
argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up.
Both arguments
are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on a priori
second on a posteriori grounds.
follows:-
grounds, the
The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as
In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present,
the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant
future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative.
But we cannot base
assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when
accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate
Therefore we must regretfully ignore the
different action.
our actions on the distant future.
ignorance
uncertain effects of
A striking example of the argument from
at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear
development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of
waste control on the
7
grounds of uncertainty.
the argument concerned is this:
More formally and crudely
(%)£/only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on
reliable information.
distant future.
There is no reliable information at present as regards the
Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning
*
our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations
in the crude statement of the argument above).
by ’knowledge’
The main ploy is to considerably
overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available
with respect to
the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required
as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with
respect to the future.
Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp
division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other.
We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the
adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly
,
such
do act on the basis of^"unreliable" information, which the sceptic as regards the
future conveniently labels "uncertainty".
In moral situations in the present,
assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite
low probabilities.
Consider again the train parable.
We do not need to know
for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape.
In fact
it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable
than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action.
that there is a significant risk of harm
It is enough
in this sort of case.
It does not
matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the
14.
prospects of the passengers quite uncertain.
It is wrong to ship the gas.
But
if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future?
The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral
consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double
standard.
According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty
argument,
even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice
take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about
the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely
consequences of actions on it will be.
Therefore, however good our intentions
to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to
ignore their interests.
Given that moral principles are characteristically
of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character
then
x
is wrong, for every (action)
sharply thus:
x",
h
the argument may be stated more
We can never obtain the information about future actions which
would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication.
Therefore, even
if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot
be applied to obtain clear conclusions.
It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain .
that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way
better than
chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action
would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable
in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions
about how to act.
In this event the distant future would impose no practical
moral constraints on action.
However, the argument is factually incorrect in
assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate.
Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant
future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or
sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is
15.
not so great as to exclude constraints on action.
For example, we may have
little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another
morally^irrelevant^factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years
of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have
material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need
a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune
to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of
^cancer
genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination
from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at
present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
The case of nuclear waste
storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one
area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to
preclude moral constraints on action.
For this sort of reason, the
practical uncertainty argument should be rejected.
Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in
a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probably harm
to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration.
Most of these
popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case,
switching from one to the other.
For example, we may be told that we
cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they
will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from
our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources
or from the things that would affect us.
But this is to insist upon complete
certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future,
where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those to whom we are morally committed.
Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because
they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment
of other machines.
Even
if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which
only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are
eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments
16.
is again a mere outside possibility.
Neither the contemporary nor the historical
situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal
moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility.
We can
contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically
supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through
destruction of its resource base.
Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the
indeterminacy of the future.
For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument,
the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will
prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a
conflict with the present.
Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less
accurate form?
The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed
quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the
numbers of the latter are indeterminate.
Such problems are indeed difficult, but
they are not resolved by ignoring the claims
of the future.
Nor are distributional
problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class
of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would
suggest.
It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the
indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to
resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise
answer to every
ethical question.
But, as the train parable again illustrates,
/there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder
resolution,
and
.anci
cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers
of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general
probable characteristics of future people.
The case of nuclear power is like that.
The failure of these various arguments reveals, what c^e^| ^^^men^does nc
argued from the universalisability features of
moral principles,
that/
disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims
below the claims of present people.
That is, we have the same general obligations
to future people as to the present;
thus there is the same obligation to take
account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions,
to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions
causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act
so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life.
Uncertainty
and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations.
V.
PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN.
The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage
and future creatures.
entitlement
Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or
to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular
and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem
^apply.
For example, if one group (social uriit^
or state) decides to dump its
radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent
its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it
imposes risks
and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in
much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on
future people.
There are differences however :
spatially
distant people
cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their
interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden.
People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special
costs and risks.
One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharj
radioactive materials into the air and
Emission problem.
water near
the plant : hence the
Such ’’normal" emission during plant operation of low level
radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs.
While there are undoubtedly
costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced
by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain.
If our
permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the
ethical issue directly raised by nuclear
emissions would be :
what extent of
18.
cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of
nuclear power, and under what conditions?
Since, however, risks and benefits
are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting
I principle -
such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses
for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashio,
these risks are
In the USA, people who live within 50 miles oMmclear
real!
power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that
borne by the population at large.
And children living in this region are even more
vulnerable, since they and several times more likely to contract cancer through
exposure than normal adults.
The serious costs to these people cannot be
J us tit led by the alleged benefits for others, expecially when these benefits could
be obtained without these costs.
a pity about
Thus it is not just complacent to say 'It’s
Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new
make life comfortable’.
airconditioners
For such benefits to some as airconditioners
provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of
buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer.
Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the
imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice
in the. location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without
serious losses - is really quite alright is the
Doubling
argument.
Accord
to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable
to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a
population have received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument
being that the additional amount (being equivalent
to the
"natural” level)
is also likely to have negligible consequences.
The increased amounts of
radiation - with their large man-made component
- are then accounted normal,
and, it is claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable.
in this argument is sound.
None of the steps
Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no
ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being;
and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger
one will, under such conditions, not be.
Finally, what is or has become normal,
19.
e.g.
two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from
acceptable.
In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with
most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions
very substantially in excess of the standards laid down;
so the emission
situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would
disclose.
Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’’imposed'’ is entrusted to
the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties.
Thus public
policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve
as a
public pacifier” while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations
proceed relatively unhampered?
While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation,
reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an
accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear
occurrence .
But "definitions” notwithstanding, such accidents can happen,
and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island):
hence the Core-meltdown problem.
If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light
water) reactors,
then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely,
the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively
10
contaminated.
In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small
reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be
killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident,
property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania
would be destroyed.
Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of
the reactor for which these conservative US (still the best available from
official sources) are given :
the consequences of a similar accident with a
modern reactor would accordingly be much greater.
The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the
O
^train acts in^admissibly.
A government or government-endorsed utility
appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in
20.
siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on
the ’’community train”.
More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a
community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost
as the Transfer-limiting principle.
The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured
to avoid
questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the
extraordinary
reactor malfunction.
They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the
train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear
accident.
Indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively
used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even
stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated:
namely, the
likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost)
impossible.
However, the mathematical models
relied upon in this report,
variously called "fault tree analysis” and "reliability estimating techniques",
are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible"
possibilities that may well happen in the real world.
that the
It is not surprising, then i
methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised,
or that official support for the report has now been withdrawn.
12
Moreover, use
of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a
non-negligible probability of a
serious accident.
In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible
probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no
greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted.
Here
we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into
decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk
assessment models, etc.
Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or
trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks
attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their
21.
ethical status.
The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment
as applied to energy options:
Ai.
If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option
Aii.
b ;
Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g.
deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is alreay^
accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
3
These assumptions are then applied as follows.
be killed
Since the number likely to
eventuall
by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number
killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted;
it follows that the risks of huclear power are acceptable.
A little reflection
reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer
limiting principle.
In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need
a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:-
costs and benefits go to the same parties;
Do the
and is the person who voluntarily
the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in
undertakes
driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed
not benefit?
on other parties who do
It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options
compared, and there are no such distributional problems,
a basis would be soundly based.
that a comparison on such
This is rarely the case, and it is not so in
the case of risk assessments of energy options.
VI.
OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT,
ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR.
The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the
environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear
fuel cycle.
The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after
reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely^ mining, milling, conversion,
enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of
materials.
Several of these stages involve hazards.
risks in the nuclear cycle
Unlike the special
- of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable
material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards
22.
have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of
generating power, e.g.
’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’’the same
u
14
risk" of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The
problems are not really produced by nuclear development.
Other social and environmental problems
endemic where dangerous
large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and
include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the
J
nuclear power cycle.
Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable
component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution ,such
as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear
development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead
radioactive lands and waterways reveal.
Though sabotage is a threat to many
large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences,
of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core
meltdown is not a possibility).
Though theft of material from more dubious
enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large
and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose
problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material.
No other industry
produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive
explosives.
No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts.
In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and
continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject
to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to
basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal
These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of
special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties.
Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary
powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and
activities not only of employees but also of their families and
sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves
become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities.
The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a
special armed force to guard nuclear installations and- made it
answerable ...
to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
..iwu-
23.
These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along
with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic
societies.
That nuclear development appears to force such political
<—
i '
(consequences tells heavily against it.
Nuclear development is further indicated
politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war.
It is
true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a
nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what
circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power.
Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing
the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the
opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement.
\ /jL
Since nuclear wars are
/nevei/ accountable- positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils,
nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable.
The spread of nuclear
power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable
consequences.
0^!/\
Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities,
is itself undesirable, and therefore what le^jtds to it, nuclear development^ is
undesirable.
This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear wa£ against
large-scale nuclear development.
VII.
CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING ON
NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT.
UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF
Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case
against nuclear development, only one
justificatory
that of appeal to overriding circumstances.
route remains open,
That appeal, to be ethically
acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations.
For, as observed,
the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely
I ^conomistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the
town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly
uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
case:
a Transfer-limiting principle applies.
So it is also in the nuclear
But suppose now the consigner argues
that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die.
It is
24.
by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient,
especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still
/amount s^one of transfer of costs and risks onto others.
But such a conflict
situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is
alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases
atical/frhere Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated. Nuclear develop
ment is often
defended
in this way, through Conflict arguments,
to
the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features,
nevertheless the alternatives are worse.
Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on
competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm.
The success of such
/conflict arguments require^the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of
alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only
alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable
ones.
If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the
action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument
(for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has
another
option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some
other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched.
Just
such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in
the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are
even worse than the option itself.
A first argument, the Poverty argument,
is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indus
trialised countries.
Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed,
would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence
we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialisec
nations.
And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating
the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development.
The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the
poor of the industrial countries or for those of the. third world.
There is
good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment
and poverty
in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available
capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of
direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging
substitution of energy use for labour use.
The argument that nuclear energy
is needed for the third world is even less convincing.
Nuclear energy is both
politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires
massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
25.
WT creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon
largely non-existent utility systems - e.g.
established electricity
transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical
appliances to plug into the system.
Politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for
change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the
problem.
The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people
of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of,
and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and
often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are
usually organised.
than what it is:
But that does not make the poverty argument anything other
a fraud.
There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives
and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources,
alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor,
both in the third world and in industrial countries:
coal and other fossil fuels,
geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar
sources, wind, water and tidal power).
Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-goingout argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations
to future people.
We have, it is said, a
duty to pass on the immensely
valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed.
Unless our
high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our
valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away.
The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.
Future people will be the losers.
The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in
But for
our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society.
the most part these large questions can be by-passed.
The reason is that the
argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology
societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable.
$I
I it assuine</ that technological society is unmodifiable, that^cannot be changed in
' the direction of energy conservation or
alternative (perhaps high technology)
energy sources without collapse.
These assumptions are all hard to accept.
The assumption that
technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so;
after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major
social and technological restructuring and consumption modification.
If
western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally
unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program
of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to
26.
future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack
the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of
contemporary society.
The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged.
Since high-
technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central
question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled
is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a
society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is
valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably that we have a duty to pass on to
the future.
The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence
or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good
reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource^
consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own.
But even
if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is
unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of
the Lights-going-out argument are wrong.
The consumption of less energy than at
present/ need involve no reduction of well-being; and certainly
a
large increase
over present levels of consumption assumed trr the usual economic case for nuclear
energy, is quite unnecessary.
then
What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do
is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to
enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase
the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza .
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
is obtained by means of nuclear fission, be positively inimical to it.
A society
which has become heavily dependent upon a^ highly centralised, controlled and
garrisoned
md expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is
highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which
control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert
enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more
then they do at present.
Such a society would/' almost inevitably tend to
become authoritatian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among
other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the
nuclear situation.
Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations
some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction
of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as
the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and
collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished:
political freedom
27.
for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives,
alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such
unacceptable consequences, are available.
The alternative to the high
technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is
valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for
power or, better, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which
offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what
is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option.
The
Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails.
Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the
appeal to futurity, closed.
If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the
same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the
present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against
the future is inevitable.
Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape
routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.)
for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable.
Tn sum, nuclear
development is morally unacceptable on several grounds.
VIII.
SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES.
The future energy option
that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no
doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable.
For it carries with it
the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as
acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by
extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very
Such an option would, moreover, also violate
high projected consumption figures.
the Transfer-limiting principle :
for it would impose widespread costs on
nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to
some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement.
To these main conventional options a third is often added which
emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and
hydroelectricity.
Such softer options — if suitably combined with energy
conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of
energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no
genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objectives to nuclear power.
choice is not however technological,
The deeper
nor merely^individual^ 1 bUL Social, and
involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and,
at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life
styles and social arrangements’!:6 These more fundamental choices between social
alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options
tends to obscure.
It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the
unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of
examining the goals themselves.
That is, we are not merely faced with the
question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given
demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these;
we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged
needs and the cost of a society that creates them.
It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be
likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet
unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands.
Even more benign
technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and
^are?which^
/them.
^likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to
In short, even more benign technologies may le/id to violation of the
Transmission
JjteQu^-remen^•
Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s
forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used
for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping.
While few would
object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the
unrestricted exploitation of forests -
whether it goes under the name of
’’solar energy” or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be
the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests
are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label
"renewable resources”.
Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true,
given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now
very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated
as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values,
In
many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already
been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent,
It
certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain17
^/forest types^ are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of
y/a maj^r further and not readily limitable demand pressure
for energy on top
/of /the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation
of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term
conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling
the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion
in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions,
possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems,
including enormous loss of natural species.
Some of us do not want to pass on,
and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested
world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear
29.
products or polluted by coal products.
illustrates, a mere switch to
In short, as the forest situation
more benign technologies - important though this
is - without any more basic structural and social change,is inadequate.
The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter
a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs
and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensi
modes of production.
The social change option
tends to be obscured in most
discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because
it does question underlying values of current social arrangements.
The
conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with
wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively presents a
false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social
context
so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly
taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable.
The point is readily illustrated.
It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation
and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that
people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, ....
authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants.
from created wants
It would be
Such an argument
conveniently ignores the social framework in which such
needs and wants arise or are produced.
To point to the determination of
many such wants at the framework level is not
however to assume that they
are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation)
and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all.
It
is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds
of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds of infrastructure, and to see
apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and
directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate
and private profit and advantage.
The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult
to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the
passing on of serious costs to future people.
reasons than such
ethical ones for taking it:
And there are other sorts of
it is the main, indeed the only
sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological
perspective, as contrasted with a shallow
ecological outlook which regards
the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but
only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests.
The deep
ecological perspective is an integral part of the Alternative Ecological
Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm
(which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics)
30.
and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic
18
Socialism).
It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural
environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but
is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over
nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants.
The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is
fast
increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since
core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic
growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental
differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements.
The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not
specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the
19
basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead.
The
ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed
through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly
lead to the difficult social change option.
The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power
'structure.
To the extenj? that the option represents some kind of threat to
parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that
official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often
obscuring it.
But difficult as it is to suitably
alter "the system,”
especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure,
it is imperative to try:
we are all on the nuclear train.
FOOTNOTES
This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear
1.
power - ethical, social, and political dimensions
*
(ESP for short, available
from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred
to in the reference list).
For help with the condensation we are very
considerably indebted to the editors.
In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and
suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the
large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around
the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including
nuclear war).
We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and
references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims.
Further,
in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary
sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources.
Little
difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through
secondary sources or in filling out much Important background material from
work cited herein.
For example, virtually all the data cited in sections, and VII
is referenced in Routley.
At worst ESP can always be consulted.
All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417;
2.
the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6.
While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle
in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it
helps to know a little.
& Abbotts, Gyorgy.
The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader
Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such
important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a
core meltdown of # (lightwater) reactors, much more information is required.
For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies
and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear
technology.
3.
Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has
to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments.
Nuclear radiation,
unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and
welfare.
But since the harm ' ~
nuclear development may afflict on non
human life, for example, can hardly improve
its case, it suffices if the case
against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the
conventional way.
For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented)
^simulation models see Gooding, 428.
The Opportunity-cost
4.
respects.
argument is also defective in other
It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the
contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the
/proper methods for decision which ^ffect the
choice, apply discounting.
future, such as that of energy
But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision
rules do not allow discounting.
This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory,
5.
roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a
decision method in such contexts.
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
6.
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as
it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social
asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population.
Examples such
as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the
principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor.
/ 7.
For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments
against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored
costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff.
See Routley, p. 160.
/\
the preceding two para£
I graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader and Abbotts.
For much further discussion of the points of
[10.
Most of the reactors^Ln the world are of this type;
see
Gyorgy.
11.
See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4.
12.
See Shrader-Frechette.
/ shortcomings
A worthwhile initial view of the
of the Rass^ftussen report may be reached by combining
' /the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader and Abbotts.
13.
There are variations on Ai
against numbers such as probabilities.
and Aii
which multiply costs
In this way risks, construed as
probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment.
risks may be assessed
(Alternatively,
through such familiar methods as insurance).
A principle varying
Aii’. a
Aii, and formulated as follows:
is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more
risks than b and b is socially accepted.
Aii’. was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry
in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable:
Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978,
Final Report,
p. 305 and p. 288.
In this report, a
is nuclear power and
b
is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources.
other applications
b
In
has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring,
mining and even the Vietnam war (!).
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles
Ai - Aii’.
The principles are certainly ethically substantive,
since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses,
but they have an inadmissible conventional
origin of b
;
b
character.
For look at the
may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially
acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut
and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known
had been known when it was introduced.
What is required in Aii’, for
instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that
’ethically acceptable’
rather than
’socially accepted’.
b
is
But even
with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in
the text, and others.
It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work.
It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to
actuaries.
14.
See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15.
15.
Goodin
16.
The argument is elaborated in ESP.
17.
For some of the more philosophically important material
p. 433.
'alternative Mannlaon
~
Asocial arrangements and lifestyles, see
work cited in V. and R. Routley, ’Social theories, self management and
environmental problems’ in
al, where a beginning is made
on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism.
The parlous
18.
situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is
explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V.
Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’
(available from
the authors).
19.
> rival,
For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its
Paradigm, see Cot^royfe and Duff, especially
the Alternative Environmental
the
assumptions
the table on p. 341 which
/of the
paradigms; compare also Cotton and Dunljzfp, especially p. 34.
Contemporary varients in the Dominant Social Paradigm were considered in ESP.
The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which
A
s
/is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess.
//
S
/For further explanation of the contract and of the larger array of ecological
positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley,
’ in Mannison
environmental ethics
___
’Human chauvinism and
et al, and the references there cited,
^especially to R^d man’s work.
20.
The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the
context of paradigm conflict.
But it is also argued that, even within
assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants,
Ti.
Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options.
The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of
the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument.
It is
the
following
version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing
Nuclear power is
in for material wealth, and for what is valuable!^
necessary to sustain economic growth.
Economic growth is desirable (for
all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone
redistribution problems, etc.).
k
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
/
/The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll),
and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks.
But both
premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic
growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective
X
//"growth, which
economic
the heavy social and environmental costs carried
by unqualified economic growth.
More to the point, since the second premiss
is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an
appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it)
Paradigm standards.
fails even by Dominant
For of course nuclear power is not necessary
that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives.
defended is some elaboration of the premiss :
given
The premiss usually
Nuclear power is the
economically best way to sustain economic growth,
’economically best’
being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’,
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
’having the most favourable
Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear
development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively
(unless a
good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done).
Tii.
On proper Dominant Paradigjfi accounting, nuclear choices should
generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as
public choices.
Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not
by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types
Gyorgy and Nader alrd Abbotts).
discussed in Shrader-Frechette,
ZU
Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is
//not justified, oi consideration of decision theory methods will reveal:
Tiii.
Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is
rejected^Jas the arguments op Goodin on alternative decision rules help to show.
|l*^
What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm
or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise
image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear
X
^development both in developed countries and in less developed countries
(for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.).
Are the practices of contemporary
corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the
standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants :
not ethically acceptable.
they are certainly
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Typescript (photocopy) of draft, with handwritten, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield.
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Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/48e20123bb1a0afc4c75d56b9df2ed2b.pdf
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Text
(SECTIC;. i'v'j
174
/al Plumwood 1 and Richard Rout ley
Peter
like
Singer,
so-e
basic
wish
Philosophic
to
question,
assumptions
underpinning estern can's attitudes loaros nis role in the
moral universe ana his relationship to nonhunan animals.
1
*vai •Plumwood has done most of ner work under ner married name:
• v a 1 “Routley.
*ln deference, however, to her wish tc establish herself under
•Plur »ooi that name
■ill oe used throughout this work.
In
a
passage reiininscent of Singer's call for
examination of unguestioneo assumptions, they state:
..nodern
moral
philosophers
--
fulfilling
tneir now established function of providing a
theoretical superstructure to explain and
justify
contemporary
rather
than
.oral
sensibilities
questioning
fundamental
asumptions -- tend to argue tnat tne bias
toward human interests, which is an integral
part
of
going ethical theories, is not just
hich is
both possible and aesiraole tc eliminate, out
another form of
class
cnauvinism
is ratner a restriction nctated by tne logic
of
evaluative
an-
.oral concepts, ana tnat
the
�Page 2
coherent, possible, or viable
alternative to the "human chauvinism" of.
standard etnical theories. 2
there is no
“Richard “Routley “sand\& “Vai “Routley.
'‘Against the “inevitability of “Human
2
“Cnauvinisr .
“>ln\a “Goodpaster, “r.,“E. "&ar At *K.“ .
“Sayre, "o.eds\&.
“ttric
s ano “Problems of tne 21st “Century.
“ one “Lame, “.-Diversity of "-otre “Dame “t ress,
If
class
cnauvinism
Jo-7.
differential,
"is
discriminatory and inferior treatnent (oy sufficiently many
members of the class) for items outside the class, for which
there
is
not
suiXiciect
chauvinism is tne form of
justification"3,
class
chauvinism
in
then
which
human
the
species, uaao Sapleur., substantially morally discriminates
against everything nonhuman by an insufficiently justified
assumption of human rnoral uniqueness.
“R, “Routley “4<and\i. *v, “Routley, “Hunan "Chauvinisi? and “Environmental “Ethics.
“kln\& “ annison, “D.“S.,
c“Ror>bie, “m.“A., “aand\&
“R. “Routley,
“Environmental “Philosophy.
“Canberra, “A“ "u, 1980; 96.
*&eds\&.
The
contention
that
man
is tne sole subject of value and
�Page J
morality
fallacy.
by
definition
This
runs
contention
aground
takes
the
the
seif-validating ana unchallengeable;
consideration oeing exclusive
to
on
a
definitional
definition ot moral
human
realm
to
be
The fallacy of the definitional move is that
of
believing
that
by
converting
the
substantive evaluative
theses
of
nu<an
chauvinism to matters of definition they
become somehow exempt from challenge or need
for
justification,
iris is comparable to
justifying discriminatory menbership for a
club by referring to the rules, similarly
conceived as self-validating and exempt from
question or need of justification. 4
v
v r'r sr °Ut3sy "&andX& "v • *Routiey.
'Against the 'Inevitability of 'Human
In this case the club rules define the Moral Club.
These
definitions
can
upon
either
Physical
characteristics or a set of properties that are logically
connected with qualification for moral consideration,
it is
onvious that the physical characteristics are not morally
relevant:
*
x
It is impossible to restrict moral terms to
particular species, when species distinctions
are
defined
in
terms
of
physical
characteristics
which
are
not
morally
relevant,
•ore generally, an attempt to derive a
logically
necessary
connection
net eet
humanity itself and the applicability of
morality is bound to fail, for creatures
anatomically ana zoologically aistinct fro
hurans
>hicii arc identical with humans in
terms ot morally relevant
features
arc
logically possible,
upsetting any logical
linkage. 5
5•
and Houtley.
W Koutley
■■
Against the inevitability of Human Chauvinism;
39.
X
rnerefore , the characteristics neeoed to support the
defintional
move
have
to
be
other
than physical
characteristics. However, if properties logically tiea „itn
moral considerations are examined closely, it is fauna that
they do not support the exclusive eligibility of hur ans to
tne Moral Clue. Three conditions or adequacy ore set down
for making tne Clue exclusive to humans:
�Page 4
1.
The set of characteristics must
he
possessed
oy
at
least
all
properly
functioning humans,
since
tc
omit
any
si unit leant aroup usually considered subject
to iroral consiceratin, suer as infants, young
children,
prinitive tribesmen, etc., ano to
allow that it was ierrissiole to treat these
groups
in
the
ay
it
is considered
permissible to treat non-humans, that is, as
mere
instruments,
would
certainly
lc
repugnant to modern moral sensibilities and
would offend common intuitions as to the
orotherhood of mar., the vie- that all humans
are possessors of inalienable rights, Thus
human chauvinism , if it
is to produce a
coherent
theory which does not unacceptably
rule out some groups of humans, must find
so e set cf features cc on to the rust
diverse ' en ters of hu" anKiriu....
(luu loiax
Auclusloa
2.
in order tor nu an chauvinis;
to be
justified, this sec ot characteristics ust
not be possessed by any non-nuran.
Uiie
ioXai i-xclusiau
3. The set of characteristics must oe not
merely norally relevant but sufficient to
justify, in a ncn-circuiar way,
the cut-oil
of moral consideration at exactly tne right
point.
If human chauvinism is to avoio the
charge of arbitrariness and unjustifiability
and to demonstrate its inevitability ana tne
impossibility of alternatives, it rust erneroe
from tne characteristics why items not having
tne f ay oe used as i: ere instruments to serve
tne interests of
those which do possess
tne . b
(lac
Xb^Xxxi&euXai Ju&xxxXcaXXQa
liS&UuaXlbU )
b
“Routley and "Routley.
39-40.
"Against tne "Inevitability of "Human "Chauvinism J
But tne properties usually assumed to give humans
exclusive entry into tne moral Cluo when tested against
these conditions of adequacy either admit nonhumans or
exclude humans.
Thirty-two such properties are tested oy
Plumwood and Routely XuXb£ alia,
using
tools,
using
language, self-awareness,
ceing a■are of the Inevitability
ot one s own death, being aoie to answer questions about
moral
issues sucn as human chauvinism, having interests,
having projects, belonging to a social community,
being
morally responsible tor one's actions, etc., and all are
found anting on at least one count.
�Page 5
However, the conditions of adequacy night oe challenged
as too stmgent. Yet, if tne '<oral Club is to be exclusive
to humans and neither arbitrary nor unjustified, then
condition 1 - tnat all functioning humans possess the
property - must apply, etherise tne requirerents for Club
member snip are drawn too narrowly and some humans are
excludes.
against this condition it might be argued tnat
numan is too
__
_____
_ _ and it is only persons (where
oread________
in scope
, .
re
j_eVdnt_ "para
parametre)
person is defined by some morally
relevant
e’tre) who
should
De considered,
this would mean that those humans
buran
, ,---- -—
-no
did not qualify as persons aouIo net oe eligible for
treatment as
oncers of tne
oral Clue or if they tie
treated as members that eligibiility was arbitrary and
unjust.
it it is the case that’all humans (persons) must
possess this property, then it must also be the case tnat no
nonhuman possesses it,
otherwise an Argument From Analogy
and Anoiiioiy applies.
if some nonhumans possess the property
or properties then the requirements for Club membership are
ara^n too broadly ana some nonnumans are eligible
_J. Finally,
it
is not enough to separate the eligible
- ’ J ~ ' •- from the
ineligible (or pernaps the edible from tne inediblej,
it
must oe snown why the ineiigiole are not only ineligible for
membership, but why tney cannot even oe consldereo for
membership, otherwise tne difference in treatment is not
justified.
To carry tne Club metaphor
..
a little farther,
pernaps too far, while remoers n.a,
ay h-.nave certain privileges,
this aoes not necessarily mean tnat
that in addition to not
enjoying these special privileges, nonrnembers can also oe
un*arrantly deprived of benefits common to memoers and
non-memoers.
why should membership devalue nonmenoers ano
put tneTi at the disposal of members?
it is o y this
condition that human chauvinism must show why humans are the
exclusive subjects of intrinsic value and the value of
nonhumans can be handled in terms of instrun.enr.al value to
humans.
If these conditions of adequacy stand, then
tne
definitional necessity of exclusiveness fails. Yet another
approach at making the realms of value ano
morality
exclusive to humans is to examine no.< values are thougnt to
operate.
. prototype argument tor this is laio out as
follows:
A.
values are
determined
through
tne
preference
rankings
of valuers
(tne aa
dfixacuafiie Karnes
,
Valuers'
preference rankings are determined through
valuer s interests (tne preXcifiace £aauci.ioa
thesis).
C.
valuers are humans (persons)
(tne saecsas assaaplioa).
I.
Therefore,
values are determines tnrouqn human interests
(tnrough tne interests ot persons).
8
Routley and Routley. Against the Inevitability of human Chauvinism:
The use of persons in this quotation is a reference to agru.rents aimed at
�Page 6
saving tne exclusiveness of the doral Club by limiting membership to humans
with some given capacity, characteristic or excellence or combination of
these.
while this argument may succeed in preventing non- u.ans tror
consideration, it is at the cost of non-paradigr atic i,.<ins.
From this argument It is sometimes concluded that "not only
is it perfectly accceptatie for humans to reduce matters of
value and morality to natters of human interest, but
oreover there is no rational or possible alternative to
going
so;
any alternative is simply incoherent." 9
ithever, it this argument is disrantled it is snown to rest
on
a
set of false assumptions that even Charitable
tanipulation cannot save.
9
43.
Routley and Routley.
Against me Inevitability of Human Chauvinism;
an ambiguity resides in the use of 'determined through'
in precise
I,
if
'determined through' means 'have to ce
determined*, men Plumwood and Routley feel,
mat it is
’Odaliy
upgraded
"to
reveal the sneer necessity of
conclusion J." 10
10
“Routley and “Routley.
Against the inevitability of Human Chauvinism:
no-ever, this involves a similar modificiition of p r e tn i s e C
or eise a nodal fallacy is involved. The
C._ stronger
ci
necessary
sense is preferable in forcing tne conclusion,
J -- as shall be
seen snortly when premise C is considered, but tne more
cnaritaoie move for tne argument is to weaken the use of
'determined mrougn' to something like 'reflect ' or 'are a
ratter of'. Despite either modification to resolve the
ambiguity
of 'determined through' premise A is still
susceptide to the charge:
value rankings cannot however ce cashed in
for
preference
rankings
since,
as 1 s
well-known, preference rankings and value
rankings car
diverge;
a valuer can prefer
wnat has less value and can value what is not
, referred.
11
Premise a is , therefore ( modified to read:
Al Values are determined through the value
rankings of (appropriate) valuers,
12
11
"Routley and “Routley. Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism
44.
12
Ro tley and Routley,
Against me inevitability of num Chauvinism:
44.
Bypassing premise B for a moment, premise C,
the
St-ficieb aSiuuiptAob, can be seen as a "circular way of
reintroducing tne logical version of human chauvinism by
restricting tne class of valuers a priori to humans" and at
�Page 7
Snr1 ^'?2Hy2enriy*-^rae'
13 11 is essential to the argument
lse1 c to oe a necessary condition that humans are
the only valuers.
ithout that the argument ooes not
human chauvinsitic conclusion.
if persons is
usea instead of humans, tnen it becomes
-ore defensible,
since not all humans are valuers, but not all valuers are
human,
if not all valuers are numar' or persons,
tnen to
sustain
the
human chauvinistic conclusion it becomes
necessary either to reject ail non-human (person) values or
i? i‘,’o e«- a "'ove m premise a such that 'interests' are
United to human (person) interests.
43-4.
Routley and Houtley.
Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism!
, „ It is just such a move at premise B ,
that ma k e s it,
tor them, tne most objectionable of the premises, Premise 6
is a group selfisnness
To
eirrsnness argument.
io show
tn
at
the
that
conclusion and particularly premise
‘
pre ise “B is
little more than an
argument for group
oup egoism in an environmental setting,
they
oisplay it against
ainst an argument baldly for
egoism.
if
pre ise A is recast replacing 'preferences'
ith 'values' as
ov°'v-i^2'preTn!ern ?rS0 0ds.to have 'preferences' replaced
attention in
is no- shifted to
interests .
interests can oe usea either in a weax and
- ,
-se so tnat anything tne valuer values is in tne
Ya|uer s interest
,ln stronger, but false sense tnat is
intended to support interests as ceing in the valuer's
advantage:
to sum. up tne dilemma for the argument then:
when. "interests" is usea in its weaker sense
premise u may be accepted out
tne argument
does not establish its inter, oea conclusion or
in any way sucpoert human chauvinism.
For
tne intended effect of the argument in the
cruae form is this; in determining values it
is
enough
to look at human advantage;
nothing else counts.
If tne argument -ere
correct,
tnen one could assess values bv
cneckmq out tne local (selfish) advantage of
hu ans,
or, more generally, tne aavanta ,e of
tne case class someho* assembled.
it, on thP
otner hano,
"interests":
is usea in its
strong sense, tne conclusion would license a
form of human crauvinis , but premise
no,
false.
14
Rout ley ano
Routley.
“Against the “Inevitability of “Human "Chauvinism:
�Page 8
This argument has a second
,
aspect to it which they
explore.
if tne argument is not acceptable as it stands,
then supposelv, neither is tne alternative of rejecting its
conclusion.
Precise A is opposed to the conclusion D (~a or
D / D-> A) to shod
either one accepts the conclusion,
ith its
consequent instru entalist account of value,
or one is committed to an intrinsic or
cetacned value theory wnich takes values to
oe completely independent of valuers,
no
------------ , ano
and r.c
ay determined oy tneit, out, it is assumed,
the latter theory is a ell Known as untenable,
and rr.ay even _.
____ as involving mysticism
be seen
or as oeing irrational
inus,
it may te
conduced,
there is no real alternative to
hu-an chauvinism.
lb
#15
Routley and Routley.
Against tne inevitability of Human Chauvinism;
but this choice is rejectee «
as a x
false
«js>c one:
u < < c.
To reject the instrumentalist conclusion D is
bv no means to be commited tc a, or to the
view that tne valuers
. _____
__
,____
and
their
preference
rankings play no role in determining values
and tnat values are
a_ further
'set„
o
—
__ ___ .
of
items
mysterious independent iters
in the world
somehow perceived by valuers
through
a
special (even mystical and nonr ational) moral
sense.
16
Against, the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism:
Parallel to this dichotomy between A and u is the dichotomy
Detween instrumental and intrinsic values so central in tne
division and treatment of members from nonmembers in tne
hor a1 Club;
Tne dicnotomy frequently presentea between
instrumentalist accounts of. value, on tie one
hand, ana detached tneories
(or what die
mistakenly taken to 0e the same, intrinsic
tneories) is, for the same reason, a false
one.
Instrumental theories ore those men
attempt to
reduce
value
to
what
is
instrumental to or contributes to a stated
goal.
Typically such theories taxe tne goal
to oe tne furtherance of the interest of a
privileged class;
tor example, tne goal may
oe taken to be determined in terms of the
interests, concerns, advantage, or welfare of
tne .class of humans, or of persons, or of
sentient creatures, cej ending on t>e type of
cnauvinism.
In particular, human chauvinist
tneories
are,
characteristically,
instrumentalist theories.
in contrast, an
item is valued intrinsically where it is
16
Routley and Routley.
47.
47.
�Page 9
valued for its own sake, and not merely as a
means
to
something
further;
and
an
intrinsic-value theory allo is that some items
are
intrinsically
valuable.
valuable,
. intrinsic
theories tnen,
then, contrast with
- it n ___
instr urn on cal
theories,, and *hat
vhat "intrinsic" tells us is no
more
tnan
that
tne
the
iter
taken
as
intrinsically valuable is not valued merely
as a means tc some goal, i.e.,
is, not merely
- - is
instrumentally valued. Accordingly
- 117 detached
value
theories,
since
< disjoint
1
from
instrumental theories, are a suo-ciass of
intrinsic value theories;
and they are a
proper suoclass since intrinsic values need
not be detached, lSomething may __
______ _
be valuaole
in itself without its ceing detached frott all
valuing experience.
17
17
Routley and Routley. Against tne inevitability 01 ■ uman •Chauvinism
Because detacned value theories are only a subclass of
intrinsic value theories the dichotomies bet een A and b and
between instrumental and instrinsic theories are false.
Since detached theories cannot be maintained and totally
instrumental value theories leao to an infinite regress,
which is manifest if, consistent witn tne theory, the goals
of a valuer are taken as instrumental, then neither of tnese
extremes is acceptable, but values do exist, so some other
vie-, besides those offered in the dichotomy must
be
advanced, Plumwood ana Routley advance one vie* tnat denies
the dichotomy, yet does not limit valuers to humans and does
not li it tne value of objects to human instrumental values;
A person is the source of value-judgments and
values .in one sense,
i.e.
s/he is tne
valuer;
out not in another, namely s/ne is
not responsible for a valued item having its
valued properties.
or is there any licence
for reducing tne values assignee to those
tnat serve tne interests of tne valuer.
18
18
Routley and Routley. Hunan chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
This solution seems to do little more than shift the
detached value argument back one step.
-hy snould tne
qualities of an item be valued except that a valuer places
some value on them? Tnat is to say, all items (objects of
moral concern) have qualities,
out
tnat some of these
Qualities
are valued ana some are not inaicates tne
(instrumental) choices of a valuer
(unless a theory of
detacher values, *hich has just teen rejected, is adopted.)
me intent behind this value theory is to avoid positing
detacned values,
yet to maintain sone basis for intrinsic
values tnat cannot be cashed in tor instrumental values.
io
158
47’8.
�Page 10
do this requires that the intrinsic value of the qualities
not be seen also as instrumental values.
it is not,
tneretorej a natter of assigning intrinsic values to tne
goals of instrumental value tneories,
it is a matter of
finding a way in which a particular goal or item or being is
capable of possessing value that is neither detached from,
the notion of a valuer nor , if connected in some manner to
a valuer, merely a means to another end.
Asserting the
valued qualities are resident
in the iter; is intended to
separate it from the valuer's evaluation and denying the
reauction of values to the interests of tne valuer is
intended to provide for an intrinsic worth in items and
separate intrinsic values from purely instrumental values,
if tne intrinsic value of an object is
conceptually
different from its instrumental value, then tne intrinsic
value must be taken into consideration separate from its
instrumental uses and instrumental judgments about the item.
Therefore, the item (object of moral concern) is
granted
respect in, of ana tor itself and this is the ultimate goal
of the P1U' .-ood/Koutley position.
An item can have an Intrinsic and an instrumental
worth,
but this does not in and of itself remove the humans
bias to arcs intrunentai values or towards the properties
valued.
For this the aerial that humans (persons) are tne
only valuers is needed:
It is simply a (common) mistake to think mat
values and rights do not have a meaning, or
an application, outsice tne human context or
situation:
to establish tnis point (on which
i-oore rightly insisted) it is enough to point
out again that (hypothetical) valuers, not
necessarily nun an or persons, can assign
values with respect to situations and worlds
devoid of hunans ano of persons altogether.
19
houtley ano "Routley. “Human Chauvinisr and “Environmental “mthics:
19
it can now be asserted tnat items in the environment have a
value beyond those assignee to then by humans (persons)) ana
that ceings other than humans can be valuers,, but what is
left to do is to establish tne relative ranks or
'pecking
In this regari tne greater value
order' of valuers.
things
may
nave
assumption "that ever, trough other
instrinsic value, people <or humans are more valuable than
anything else, and rank more highlyi (no matter how large
their numoer) ' must be denied.
20
Houtley and Pout ley.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
The greater value assumption, a weaker form, ot human
chauvinism, is open to most of objections made against numao
chauvinisr.
and to examples contrasting morally repugnant
humans
ith norally non-repugnant nonhumans illustrating t.ne
171.
157-b.
�Page 11
•
•
unacceptable outcomes of this assumption, such as:
if tnere is only roc
in one's life boat
for
one ano one fust cnccse oet-.een saving Adolf
Hitler and a combat ^hicn nas lived a decent
life and never narirea a living creature, one
is morally obliged to choose the former. 21
21
Routley and Routley.
Against tne Inevitability of Human Chauvinism:
5 7.
Having set aside tne arguments for
value
being
exclusive to humans tney no focus on arguments for morality
being exclusive to humans.
One such argument is tne
contractual argument:
J.
K.
L.
M.
N.
22
fne
only
justification
of
moral
principles (only X) is a contractual one,
i.e., the entry into contracts of agents
(Zry).
Agents only enter into contracts (only Z)
it it serves tneir. o*n interests.
(The
Ciaisl.
ifiii J
Humans (persons) are the only agents that
enter into contracts (tout Zj,
therefore, oy K ano i;
Humans
(persons)
only
enter
into
contracts (only Z) if it serves tneir own
interests.
Tnerefore, from J and
:
Tne
only
justification
for
moral
principles
(only X)
is the (selfisn)
interests of humans (persons). 22
"Routley ano "Routley.
"Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinisms
This entire contract argument can oe faulted as a
strawman, out tne general effect of the argument ano tne
conclusion still carry tne intention of human chauvinistic
arguments oased on the exclusiveness of morality to numans.
Thus tnis prototype is illustrative ana descriptive of the
sorts of conclusions in force and the sorts of premises usea
to support then.
Therefore, the counterarguments usea
against trie contractual argument and its close relatives
oesignate the sorts of attacxs that can be launched against
arguments for human cnauvlnis ano moral exclusiveness.
It is assumed tnat conditions other tnan contractual
ones
, e.g.
community based, can be substituted into
pre ■ ise J and with appropriate modifications to the rest of
tne argu ent tne same conclusion can be reached. Premise d
proports to set tne parameters of tne argument oy selecting
an activity with moral relevance that does not violate tne
second condition of adequacy previously set down.
In an
52.
�Page 12
attempt to describe an exclusively hui<<an i oral context,
premise J's use o£ the ^oro 'only' to support entry into
contracts, a purely hu.an (person's) endeavour, makes it
obviously raise. turtnernore, in supporting the contract
-hdicinq as a purely human (person s) endeavour, however,
"premise J imports the very chauvinism that is at issue in
tne conclusion." 2J
23
“Routley ana “Routley.
Against tne inevitability of Human “Chauvinism:
53.
premise J is found to be faulty on several points.
If
moral obligation is tasen to ce a moral principle then
premise J
is not sufficient
to
include
all
moral
obligations.
"There is no actual contract underlying tne
principle that one ought not to be cruel to animals,
children, and otners not in a position to contract." 24 Ii
this too narrow scope »ere not enough to condemn tne theory,
then;
The social
contract
account
of
moral
obligation is defective because it implies
tnat moral obligations can really only hold
between responsible moral agents and attempts
to account for all. moral ooliqation as based
on contract.
but of course tne account is
correct as an account of the origin of some
tyr.es of moral ooligatlon;
there are moral
ooli ,ations of type that can only
hold
oetween
free and responsible agents and
others which only apply within a social and
political
context.
let other types of
ooligatlon, such as the obligation not to
cause suffering, can arise only with respect
to sentient or prefercnce-naving creatures -.•no are not necessarily morally responsible
-- ana could not significantly arise
itn
res.ect to a nonsentient such as a tree or a
rock.
25
Routley and Routley. Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism:
Routley ano Routley. Against tne Ir.evitablility of human Chauvinism:
24
25
A moral agent could have a moral obligation to a being
incapable of being or becoming a moral agent. Even when
precise J is amended to something besiaes a contractual,
foundation, it still comes to grief on tne sticking point of
obiigations.
Premise K, the egoist assumption;
is faulted on the same grounds as egoism
itself.
For agents sometimes enter into
contacts that are not in their awn interests
but are in tne interests of other persons or
54.
5b.
�Page 13
creatures, or are undertaken on behalf of,
tor instance to protect, other items tr at do
not nave interests at all, e.g.,
rivers,
ouildings, forests.
Against the Inevitability of u an Chauvinism:
what is not pellucid nere, is that entering into a contract
on oenalf of another is not, or cannot, be in the interests
of the contracting agentand therefore a denial of premise K,
Entering into acontract that protects something that is
itself incapable of interests nay indirectly oe in the
interests of tne contracting agent even though tne agent's
interests are not directly recognized by tne contract.
by
example, an agent may enter into a contact that proctects a
virgin forest and the river that flos through it, in order
to protect the agent's access to water downstream of tne
forest.
Or pernaps even more indirectly, an agent ray sign
over his land as a wildflower sanctuary because
his
neighbour,
*no he nates,
is allergic to wildflowers.
It
would seer that wnat has to oe snown is that an agent would
enter a contract on behalf gf anotner -nen tne interests of
the other are directly opposed to tne interests of tne
conrtracting agent,
Opposition to tne contracting agent's
interests may oe, however, too strinqent a condition.
If
breaking the premise rests in showing tnat an agent will act
outside nis selfish interests, tnen it is only necessary to
snow tnat an agent
vould enter into a contract when his
selfish interests
-ere not involved.
In sucn a case,
entering a contract tc protect a river, building, or forest
could ce sufficlent.
26
-^outley and Routiey.
53.
Premise K can be amended to reflect the ability to
enter into contracts for beings or things other tnan tne
contracting agent:
27
However even if premise . K were amended to
ad-iiit that agents may enter into contracts on
oenalt of nonhuman items,
it would still
result in a form of numan chauvinis given
familiar -assumptions, since nonhun-an items
will
still
ce
unable to create moral
obligaions except through a human sponsor or
patron, who will presumably
aole to choose
-hetner or not to protect them. 27
"Routley and "Routiey.
"Against the "Inevitability of "Human "Chauvinism:
but if tnis modification is made and nonhuman items are
unable to create a moral, obligation on the agents
(agents
ceing under moral obligations only where they cnoose to De),
then tnis premise assumes tne conclusion ■. It is only the
interests of the humans
Involved tnat justify the moral
obligation imposed by tne contract.
53.
�Page 14
Premise L is strengthened by trie use of
person* "tor
otherwise premises suer, as e and its variations are suspect,
since tnere is nothing,
legally or morally,
to prevent
consortia,
organizations, and other nonhumans from entering
into contracts (and tnese items are appropriately counted as
persons in the larger ieg.,1 sense)." 2t
28
-? 3 •
Routley and Routley.
Against the Inevitability of Hunan Chauvinism:
■<hile premise L may be the better by this move premises
j and k are both tne worse. J remains false and K is either
false or assumes the conclusion if modified to allow for
conditions tnat would save tne human chauvinistic elements
of it.
thus contractual arguments land alter natives of the
same form as this prototype) for the substantiation of a
human cnauvinistic-oased environmental ethics are lost.
ine
assumptions underlying tne premises are simply not. equal to
the task of supporting the conclusion. Further modification
of
the premises is at the expense oi violating the
conditions of adequacy for exclusive human membership in the
.'oral Clue.
if the restrictions (such as 'only') on
oremdses ltxe J (or variations of it) are removed, then
leeway is
left for including soie npnhumans oi excluding
some humans.
Cn the other hand,
restrictions may oe
retained and tne contractual portion is modified put the
result is tne sane.
ire -ore vital premise for establishing
tne human cnauvinistic conelusion, premises like K tnat 1ink
t?e exclusive numan justification ot moral actions to human
interests, either assume the conclusion or may re countered
by examples that snow them to be false.
Plum-ood and Routley conclude;
it is not possible to provide criteria
hich
would jusill* distinguishing,
lr the sharp
way standard western ethics do,
between
numans and certain nonhuman creatures, and
particularily those creatures which
have
preferences or ^referred states. For sucn
criteria appear to depend upon tne mistaken
assumption
that moral respect for other
creatures is due only when they can be shown
to
measure
up
to
some
ratner
axaltbai.ll4=u£.t.££aifi£d and JLaauea tests for
membership of a privileged class (essentially
an elitist view),
instead of upon,
say,
respect
for
tne
preferences
of other
creatures.
Accordingly tne
sharp
moral
distinction, commonly accepted in ethics bv
philosophers and ethers alike,
all
bureaus aea all olb££ aniial ^pbclax*. lac&£ a
Sall^laClQty; Cobfitbul
29
�Page 15
29
103.
“Koutley ana “Routley.
“Chauvinisi
ar.) “•.nviron : ental “£tnicss
Having broken the exclusiveness of value and morality
to humans and naving disconnected the link of values and
morals to solely human interests,
■ nat alternatives are
there to human chauvinistic systens? Given tne analysis
just made of value and morality, Plumwood ano Routley
maintain:
what emerges
____ __ _ is
________
____ of
__ types of
__
____
a picture
oral
obligation as associated with a nest of rings
or annular bounaary
classes,
with
the
innermost
class,
consisting
of
highly
_
creatures,
intelligent,
social,
sentient
having tne full range of moral obligations
applicable to them, ana outer classes of sucn
nonsentient
items as trees and rocks having
only a much more restricted range of moral
obligations significantly applicable to them,
In
in some cases there
is no sharp division
between tne rings,
'but there is no single
uniform privileged class of items, no one
base class,
to which all ano only moral
principles directly apply, and moreover the
zoological ■class of humans is not one or tne
really significant boundary classes.
Tne
recognition
tnat
sone
types
of moral
ooiiqation only apply -<ithin tne context of a
particular
sort
of society, or through
contract, does nothing to support the case of
human cnauvinlsfi .
3
30
55.
Routley and “Routley.
-gainst tne inevitability of human Chauvinism
This notion of nested zones or an annular
classes ; ay be diagramed as in Diagram i. 31
picture
of
�Page lb
31
"Routley, "Richard.
"Canberra, 1981: 2.
"In "defense of "Cannibalise,
"Unpublished paper.
The laoels for the rings or zones represent;
32
respectively different soils of objects
such
as,
objects
of
moral
concern,
/.elf are-having
objects,
preference-havers
(and
cnoice-na<ers),
right-nolders,
obligation-holders
and
responsibilitybearers,
trose contractually- co<ni!'ittea- and
tne different sorts of obligations that can
significantly apply to such objects.
ot all
the tyoes of objects indicated are distinct,
nor is the listing intended to be exhaustive
but rather illustrative.
for
strictly the
laoels given should oe expanded, as the
distinctions are categorical ones, so tnat
what matters is net whether an object is, tor
instance, contractually committed in sore
fasnion out whether it is tne sort of thing
that can be,
whether it can significantly
enter into or be committed by arrangements of
a contractual xina,
32
Routley and Routley.
human Cnauvinlsin and Environmental Ethics:
oreover,
tne categorical distinctions that demarcate the
various rings or zones are morally relevent categories.
ine
annular
picture
does
not. reject traditional ethical
categories, tut does reject the limitation of categories to
one snecies or case class.
.Also it rejects unjustified
distinctions tnat are not "...categorical distinctions .hich
tie analytically -itn ethical notions...."
33
107-8.
�Page 17
Routley ana "Routley.
"Human "cnauvinis
and "Environmental "Ethics:
inis celng tne case:
it is certainly in no «ay species chauvinist
or nuian chauvinist. For none of tne zones
of tne annular picture couprises the class o£
humans
(or its
jincr variant tne class of
persons);
for tnis class is not of moral
relevance.
34
_Routley and Routley.
Human Chauvinism ana Environmental Ethics:
Returning again to tne metaphor of tne oral Club, under tr.e
annular ring picture membership in tne Club is automatic to
all objects of moral concern, out tne privileges within tne
Club are limited by moral capacities to use the facilities
ot me Club.
Tne obligations and the extent of those
ooligations of human members to nonhuman members rest upon
tne type of moral object . tne nonhuman is and on its
capacities (illustrated by its overlay on the annular rings)
not upon a comparison of tne nonhuman to tne human. For
example a being capaole of contractual obligation could
justifiaoly discriminate against a being unaole to make
contracts
with reference
to
contractual
ooligations,
regardless of
the species of tne t/o beings.
dy tie same
token,
it would be unjust of a
preference-haver
to
discriminate against another preference-haver solely because
tne two preference-havers were of uifferent species.
loo it snould be notes tnat Diagram 1 illustrates tne
position of humans as a species ano not tnat ot a particular
human. Any given nuran, as ith any given object of
noral
concern plotted on tne annular rings, .»ould not necessarily
mater? in each detail the plot of tne species to «nicn it
oelonjs:
Just as tnere are relevant divisions beyond
tne class of perference-havers , so tnere are
ithir. the class. Tnus tne suggestion tnat
tne class to.-a rds which noral obligations
(ano a corresponding Sait ot moral concern
which ta<es account ot creatures* states) ay
oe neld is bounded
by
tne
class
of
preference-havers,
does not ot course imply
tnat oo disxiUGXicas can be nade -iiwl- the
class of preference-navers with respect to
tne kind of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example, contractual obligations -- wnicn
Dy no means exnaust obligation -- can only be
nela directly
(as distinct from by way of
representative) with respect to
a
n.ucn
narrower class of creatures, from which many
•
108.
�P a g e 1«
humans are excluded.
35
10 7.
3b
“Routley and “Routley.
“Human “Chauvinis
and “Environmental “Ethics;
The shift from determining moral regard by a comparison
o£ nonnumans to humans to a determination oy an examination
ot categorical distinctions expands tf.e range of nonhuman
objects of moral concern.
ay rejecting tne base class
assumption, value as determined oy use or production by the
base class is also rejected. inis does not mean tnat human
values *111 be rejected, but tnat values will no longer oe
judged solely in human terms and that human values -ill no
longer automatically taxe precedent over all other values,
inus a particular ecosystem, e.g. a swamp, is recognized a.,
having value other tnan the possible location of an oil
bearing geosyncline or a salt dome.
It is seen to nave
value as the home of a number of various flora and fauna
species with a complex set of inter-relationships and as a
system in itself that is not reducible to the interests of
one species or even group of species within it.
Inis last point tnat the value of an ecosystem, or any
similar complex of values, interests, preferences, etc,, is
not reducible to the values, interests, or preferences of
either the individual components or toe whole, ignoring tne
individual components, is called by them tne "no-reduction
position".
Inis position permits a middle ground between
tne extremes of particularistic and holistic views and
thereby provides a loc is for what they term "the ecological
outlook":
in a closely related
-ay,
the no-reduction
position can provide a suitable metaphysical
base for an ecological
outloox vor*
i
ax vuuxuurs
worldview,
in which man is seen
:
as .part
_
of a natural
community, part of natural systems seen as
integrated
wholes
and with .welfare and
interests
bound
whole, ......
ano not
__________ ____
__ up with the
.....................
as,
in tne typical .estern view, a separate,
self-contained actor standing outsue tne
syster
and manipulating it in the pursuit of
self-contained interests,
36
36
Routley, Vai and Richard Routley. Social rneories, oelf management,
and Environmental Problems.
“&“ln\s annison,
.s., iCRobbie,
.a. “ .anoX*
R. Routley, “&edsX&. Environmental Philosophy. Canberra, am), I960:
319.
One of the offsooots ot this no-reductior position is a
policy of respect for the systei , its parts, and for the
inter-relationships between parts and the parts and the
h ole;
�Page 19
Tne no-reduction position can thus provide a
natural
foundation
for
a
genuinely
environmental ethic, one *nicn allows human
actions to be guided oy respect, cure and
concern for the natural world and rejects tne
"human
Egoist"
tnesis
that
tne
only
constraints on nunan action concerning nature
arise from tne interests of other numans.
For sucn relations of interdependence between
man and nature must give rise to constraints
on numan action in the same
*ay
tnat
appropriate
relations
of. interdependence
between en do, so tne thesis that action can
and must oe unconstrained by any concerns
other than human ones fails, as does tne
thesis tnat nature is no more than a means to
hu an ends, a mere tool.
37
37
Routley and Routley.
Social theories, Self management, and Environmentaifroblems:
Tne respect position .is cased on one or
general ooligation principles:
1.
ore
of
three
Ine general principle cf respect
. .. .. _ _ i for preference-navers
(.formerly
applied
only
to
human
preferences)
is
transferred to the larger arena of all oeinys or items
that can be placed in a disprefer red state> •
..the requisite, important and non-ar.itrary
distinction is to ce ora*n which narKS out
the class
of
creatures
to.-,arcs
-hicn
obligations
may ce held;
tnat is,
the
usually
recognisec
principles
oi
consideration
towards
others
(of
tne
privileged class) properly extend or should
be generalized to consideration for other
creatures
having
preferences,
and
xgg
geaaxal aeXeriSiCle GGliGaiiaa
-iu.cci„14i is fiat Lii put
aXfaets
XoXuui
PitfiXetfiaGfisfiaAzexsl iuia a dis^raXaxxfia state
1CC GQ GQGU reuses, 38
Routley and Routley,
2.
39
Hunan Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
Preferences alone, ho-.ever, are still too narro
to
develop an environmental ethic or ecological outlooK. So
tne second principle applies to beings or
iters
<itn an
interest'
or
'welfare',
v-nere rf...an 'interest' or
welfare in tne broaa sense is a Xclus or life-goal, as
possessed by living things, or an equilibrium or system
goal, as possessed oy living ecosystems." 39
Routley and Routley,
104.
'
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
106,
319.
�Page 20
iherefore, tne second principle is:
that the -altaic or
of animate
objects and also such biological items as
ecosystems can ce affected in one way oi
another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.
Foi instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it
can ce reduced to zero oy sandmining, and it
can be seriously threatened by pumping vaste
detergent into trie nearoy ocean. Tnere is a
general ocligaiton principle corresponding
likewise to tnis more comprehensive class of
,»elf are-bearers, namely, dpX to jaopafoxse
ttfi ..ulijeiiju ui aaiuxai oPJecxs uc
-J.4--UU1 JiCu ±£aiGU.
4<)
40
3.
Routiey and Routiey.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics;
lOu- /.
Beyond preference-havers and beings or systems
ith
interests or welfares,
the environment contains items,
sucn as rocKS, soils and «:ater*ays tnat nave value, out no
preferences or interests;
unlike higher animals sucn items
cannot
literally be put into dispreferred states
(and In
obvious sense, as opposed to the
ider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare,
they have no interests),
out they can be
damaged or destroyeo or nave their Maiue
eroded or impaired. 41
41
Routiey ana Routiey.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics;
Tne three generalizable obligation principles
are
parallel in their structure and application and vary omv in
/.hat rings of the annular Picture that
they
cover.
Exclusiveness of the principles to a particuair ring,
however, snould not ce assumed.
ine principle of not
damaging or destroying the value of an object of in oral
concern could extend across the entire annular picture.
Thus tne overlay of a ^articular ouject of moral concern
will indicate which principle(s) of obligation may be
applied to a particular case. An object of moral concern,
e.g. a wornoat, may very veil be capdole of being placed in
a
dispreferred
state,
its
wellbeing
or
interests
jeopardizej, or devalued at one ana tne same time.
in tne
other hand, another object of moral concern, e.g. Ayers
Rock, may, perhaps, only be disvalued.
109.
�Page 21
Further tne respect position not only gives generalized
principi.es of od! igat ion , but it also reverses tne common
notion of when tnese principles are applied:
Cn tne alternative thoroughgoing
respect
vie.'.,
whi.cn
is
illustrated o y various
nonexploitive non- estern ethics, one starts
from a restricted position, a position of no
interference and no exploitation, a position
at peace witn tne natural world so to say,
and allots interference -- not as on
■estern
tninxlng,
restricts i terference -- for aooa
reasons.
ine onus of ,-roof is tnus entirely
inverted:
good reasons are required lax
interference, not xa siax interference. 42
_____ Routley and Routley.
nunan Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
174.
<*?verLi? ’
onus 01 proof leads to shifts and
inversions in otner areas as well. Requiring good reasons
for interfering crings about a shift in tne notion of
property ownership. Operating under a respect position, it
can no longer oe assumed that tne environment or pieces of
lii?an QofSrivate Property t0 De done with or disposed of at
■'•ill.
Before a s-amp can ce drained, or a forest" cut, or a
steam polluted seme
jooa reason must be given, Human
convenience and economic gain would not count as good
Respect does not preclude use, nut it does
preclude
certain
sorts of use.
it is
inco catioie aoove all -itn property vie ano
>.itn regarding something as no lore than a
eans to tne user's eras. 43
Routley* Social theories, Self management, and Environmental Problems:
The respect position is not only incompatible witn the
property view, it is also incompatible
1th tne strong
dichotomy between use and nonuse:
me conventional wisdom of
western Society
tends to offer a false dichotomy of use
versus respectful nonuse - a false choice
wnicn cones out especially clearly again in
tne treat ent of animals.
Here the choice
presented in -estern thought is typically one
of exxoex use without respect or serious
constraint, of using animals for example in
the ways cnaracteristic of largescare
mass-production farming and a market economic
systep wnich are inconpatiole with respect,
ox on the otner nand of not making any use of
animals at all, for e x ampie, never making use
322 .
�Page 22
of animals for food or for farming purposes,
•hat is left out in unis choice is trie
alternative tne Indians and other non--.estern
teople have recognizee,
the alternative oi
li 'ited and respectful use, which enaoles use
to be made of animals, but does not allow
animals to oe used in an unconstrained way or
merely as means tc human ends.
44
44
Routley and Routley, human Chauvinism aid Environmental Ethics: 179.
bt^taKerVup tr^a^a ter °cn^t er*™ pe0fie' sever’di groups of Australian Aborigines, will
^either, then, is tne respect position a reverence
position tnat also arises from the use/nonuse oicnotoi y.
the lives, preferences, choices, and considerations of otner
species or objects of oral concern are not to be taken as
sacred and inviolable. out as has been pointed out before a
good reason must be given before interference can oe
orooKe . interference is acceptable, as in tne case of
’essential predation... nlch is essential to the normal
livelihood of the predator, and where tne predator takes tor
itself no more than it requires for its livelihood," 45
Routley, Richard.
in Defense of Cannibalism•;
32.
thus an alternative to tne western dichotomy of use versus
nonuse
is
to
mitigate,
if
possible,
tne
user's
considerations with the considerations of the item:
io so ise somethin i itnout treating it as
available for unlimited or unconstrained use
tor
numan
ends
is
characteristic
of
x;esfcicci.XuX use.
In contrast non-respectful
use treats the use of the Iten as constrained
by no considerations arising from the item
itself and tne user's relationship to it, but
as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare
ano so forth of otner humans. 4b
Routley and Routley.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
For there to be a respectful position that denies tne
dichotomy of unconstrained use versus respectful nonuse and
tnat allows tor the relationsnip Detween tne user and tne
item and the considerations of the item to be taken into
account, one fundamental change in tne present relationship
between humans and tne environment tnat must eventuate is
for individual users to take direct responsibility for their
impact:
Respect
positions
can
only
be
generally
179.
�Page 23
realized in a society in whicn tne basic
social structure and economy enables people
to take direct responsibility for tne impact
on tne natural world their needs and tneir
statisfaction create , such as in tne economy
of cooperative, involvement, 47
Routley and Routley. Social theories, Self "anagement, and Environmental Problems:
Human users taking direct responsibility tor tneir impact
snould lover tneir impact. If users bear tne responsibility
tor producing and managing what they need, then they should
produce, in a manner like unto tne 'taking' of essential
oreaation only wnat they neeo and should 'qo lighter' on tne
world:
323 .
..self-management can offer the alternative
of a
social^ in wnich nothing is
produced wnich uoes not correspond to genuine
needs an .i in which production is designed to
satisfy tnose needs «itn a minimum of
aste.
Tne possiclity of production of material
*nicn does not correspono to genuine neeos is
eliminated oy two factores in the ecomony of
cooperative exchange ano involvement;
first,
a direct relationsnip between tne possiblity
of use of an iter and direct expenditure of
labour on tne part of tne user, and second,
direct
cooperative
involvment
bet een
producers and users.
48
48
Routley and Routley.
social Theories, Self
anagement, and Environmental Problems:
Tne respect position, tnerefore, is intended to lower
the impact of human users on the entire environment, -nile
extending tne position's own impact goes far beyond tne
interrelations of human and other species. It is intended,
when applied to «estern cultures, to face among other issues
tne econonic/etnicai conflicts tnat nave been at tne core of
many of tne practical ethical problems concerning humans ana
nonhumans and that nave given rise to much of tne current
debate over inter-specific ethics.
ine respect position is
a strong repalcement to the Dominion Thesis that has been
tne ruleing and guiding principle of western though on
etnical relationsnips between numans and nonhumans. bike
the Dominion Thesis, tne respect position is a oasic set of
principles from whicn a wnoie range of problems, situations, '
and questions can oe approached. Tne alterations to the cut
of
-estern societies tnat would result from its adoption as
tne pattern of etmcal progress would oe more drastic tnan
that of either a Stewardship
Principle (or some other
weakened form of the Dominion Thesis) or an extension
principle, sucn as the Utilitarian extension proposed by
Singer.
fet these seeniniy drastic alterations, or some
313.
�Page 24
otnef
equally drastic set, r^ay be no more tnan *nat is
■■eeje.; to restyle current practices as a more just ano less
ar o i t rary .
�
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(SECTIC;. i'v'j
174
/al Plumwood 1 and Richard Rout ley
Peter
like
Singer,
so-e
basic
wish
Philosophic
to
question,
assumptions
underpinning estern can's attitudes loaros nis role in the
moral universe ana his relationship to nonhunan animals.
1
*vai •Plumwood has done most of ner work under ner married name:
• v a 1 “Routley.
*ln deference, however, to her wish tc establish herself under
•Plur »ooi that name
■ill oe used throughout this work.
In
a
passage reiininscent of Singer's call for
examination of unguestioneo assumptions, they state:
..nodern
moral
philosophers
--
fulfilling
tneir now established function of providing a
theoretical superstructure to explain and
justify
contemporary
rather
than
.oral
sensibilities
questioning
fundamental
asumptions -- tend to argue tnat tne bias
toward human interests, which is an integral
part
of
going ethical theories, is not just
hich is
both possible and aesiraole tc eliminate, out
another form of
class
cnauvinism
is ratner a restriction nctated by tne logic
of
evaluative
an-
.oral concepts, ana tnat
the
Page 2
coherent, possible, or viable
alternative to the "human chauvinism" of.
standard etnical theories. 2
there is no
“Richard “Routley “sand\& “Vai “Routley.
'‘Against the “inevitability of “Human
2
“Cnauvinisr .
“>ln\a “Goodpaster, “r.,“E. "&ar At *K.“ .
“Sayre, "o.eds\&.
“ttric
s ano “Problems of tne 21st “Century.
“ one “Lame, “.-Diversity of "-otre “Dame “t ress,
If
class
cnauvinism
Jo-7.
differential,
"is
discriminatory and inferior treatnent (oy sufficiently many
members of the class) for items outside the class, for which
there
is
not
suiXiciect
chauvinism is tne form of
justification"3,
class
chauvinism
in
then
which
human
the
species, uaao Sapleur., substantially morally discriminates
against everything nonhuman by an insufficiently justified
assumption of human rnoral uniqueness.
“R, “Routley “4<and\i. *v, “Routley, “Hunan "Chauvinisi? and “Environmental “Ethics.
“kln\& “ annison, “D.“S.,
c“Ror>bie, “m.“A., “aand\&
“R. “Routley,
“Environmental “Philosophy.
“Canberra, “A“ "u, 1980; 96.
*&eds\&.
The
contention
that
man
is tne sole subject of value and
Page J
morality
fallacy.
by
definition
This
runs
contention
aground
takes
the
the
seif-validating ana unchallengeable;
consideration oeing exclusive
to
on
a
definitional
definition ot moral
human
realm
to
be
The fallacy of the definitional move is that
of
believing
that
by
converting
the
substantive evaluative
theses
of
nu<an
chauvinism to matters of definition they
become somehow exempt from challenge or need
for
justification,
iris is comparable to
justifying discriminatory menbership for a
club by referring to the rules, similarly
conceived as self-validating and exempt from
question or need of justification. 4
v
v r'r sr °Ut3sy "&andX& "v • *Routiey.
'Against the 'Inevitability of 'Human
In this case the club rules define the Moral Club.
These
definitions
can
upon
either
Physical
characteristics or a set of properties that are logically
connected with qualification for moral consideration,
it is
onvious that the physical characteristics are not morally
relevant:
*
x
It is impossible to restrict moral terms to
particular species, when species distinctions
are
defined
in
terms
of
physical
characteristics
which
are
not
morally
relevant,
•ore generally, an attempt to derive a
logically
necessary
connection
net eet
humanity itself and the applicability of
morality is bound to fail, for creatures
anatomically ana zoologically aistinct fro
hurans
>hicii arc identical with humans in
terms ot morally relevant
features
arc
logically possible,
upsetting any logical
linkage. 5
5•
and Houtley.
W Koutley
■■
Against the inevitability of Human Chauvinism;
39.
X
rnerefore , the characteristics neeoed to support the
defintional
move
have
to
be
other
than physical
characteristics. However, if properties logically tiea „itn
moral considerations are examined closely, it is fauna that
they do not support the exclusive eligibility of hur ans to
tne Moral Clue. Three conditions or adequacy ore set down
for making tne Clue exclusive to humans:
Page 4
1.
The set of characteristics must
he
possessed
oy
at
least
all
properly
functioning humans,
since
tc
omit
any
si unit leant aroup usually considered subject
to iroral consiceratin, suer as infants, young
children,
prinitive tribesmen, etc., ano to
allow that it was ierrissiole to treat these
groups
in
the
ay
it
is considered
permissible to treat non-humans, that is, as
mere
instruments,
would
certainly
lc
repugnant to modern moral sensibilities and
would offend common intuitions as to the
orotherhood of mar., the vie- that all humans
are possessors of inalienable rights, Thus
human chauvinism , if it
is to produce a
coherent
theory which does not unacceptably
rule out some groups of humans, must find
so e set cf features cc on to the rust
diverse ' en ters of hu" anKiriu....
(luu loiax
Auclusloa
2.
in order tor nu an chauvinis;
to be
justified, this sec ot characteristics ust
not be possessed by any non-nuran.
Uiie
ioXai i-xclusiau
3. The set of characteristics must oe not
merely norally relevant but sufficient to
justify, in a ncn-circuiar way,
the cut-oil
of moral consideration at exactly tne right
point.
If human chauvinism is to avoio the
charge of arbitrariness and unjustifiability
and to demonstrate its inevitability ana tne
impossibility of alternatives, it rust erneroe
from tne characteristics why items not having
tne f ay oe used as i: ere instruments to serve
tne interests of
those which do possess
tne . b
(lac
Xb^Xxxi&euXai Ju&xxxXcaXXQa
liS&UuaXlbU )
b
“Routley and "Routley.
39-40.
"Against tne "Inevitability of "Human "Chauvinism J
But tne properties usually assumed to give humans
exclusive entry into tne moral Cluo when tested against
these conditions of adequacy either admit nonhumans or
exclude humans.
Thirty-two such properties are tested oy
Plumwood and Routely XuXb£ alia,
using
tools,
using
language, self-awareness,
ceing a■are of the Inevitability
ot one s own death, being aoie to answer questions about
moral
issues sucn as human chauvinism, having interests,
having projects, belonging to a social community,
being
morally responsible tor one's actions, etc., and all are
found anting on at least one count.
Page 5
However, the conditions of adequacy night oe challenged
as too stmgent. Yet, if tne '<oral Club is to be exclusive
to humans and neither arbitrary nor unjustified, then
condition 1 - tnat all functioning humans possess the
property - must apply, etherise tne requirerents for Club
member snip are drawn too narrowly and some humans are
excludes.
against this condition it might be argued tnat
numan is too
__
_____
_ _ and it is only persons (where
oread________
in scope
, .
re
j_eVdnt_ "para
parametre)
person is defined by some morally
relevant
e’tre) who
should
De considered,
this would mean that those humans
buran
, ,---- -—
-no
did not qualify as persons aouIo net oe eligible for
treatment as
oncers of tne
oral Clue or if they tie
treated as members that eligibiility was arbitrary and
unjust.
it it is the case that’all humans (persons) must
possess this property, then it must also be the case tnat no
nonhuman possesses it,
otherwise an Argument From Analogy
and Anoiiioiy applies.
if some nonhumans possess the property
or properties then the requirements for Club membership are
ara^n too broadly ana some nonnumans are eligible
_J. Finally,
it
is not enough to separate the eligible
- ’ J ~ ' •- from the
ineligible (or pernaps the edible from tne inediblej,
it
must oe snown why the ineiigiole are not only ineligible for
membership, but why tney cannot even oe consldereo for
membership, otherwise tne difference in treatment is not
justified.
To carry tne Club metaphor
..
a little farther,
pernaps too far, while remoers n.a,
ay h-.nave certain privileges,
this aoes not necessarily mean tnat
that in addition to not
enjoying these special privileges, nonrnembers can also oe
un*arrantly deprived of benefits common to memoers and
non-memoers.
why should membership devalue nonmenoers ano
put tneTi at the disposal of members?
it is o y this
condition that human chauvinism must show why humans are the
exclusive subjects of intrinsic value and the value of
nonhumans can be handled in terms of instrun.enr.al value to
humans.
If these conditions of adequacy stand, then
tne
definitional necessity of exclusiveness fails. Yet another
approach at making the realms of value ano
morality
exclusive to humans is to examine no.< values are thougnt to
operate.
. prototype argument tor this is laio out as
follows:
A.
values are
determined
through
tne
preference
rankings
of valuers
(tne aa
dfixacuafiie Karnes
,
Valuers'
preference rankings are determined through
valuer s interests (tne preXcifiace £aauci.ioa
thesis).
C.
valuers are humans (persons)
(tne saecsas assaaplioa).
I.
Therefore,
values are determines tnrouqn human interests
(tnrough tne interests ot persons).
8
Routley and Routley. Against the Inevitability of human Chauvinism:
The use of persons in this quotation is a reference to agru.rents aimed at
Page 6
saving tne exclusiveness of the doral Club by limiting membership to humans
with some given capacity, characteristic or excellence or combination of
these.
while this argument may succeed in preventing non- u.ans tror
consideration, it is at the cost of non-paradigr atic i,.<ins.
From this argument It is sometimes concluded that "not only
is it perfectly accceptatie for humans to reduce matters of
value and morality to natters of human interest, but
oreover there is no rational or possible alternative to
going
so;
any alternative is simply incoherent." 9
ithever, it this argument is disrantled it is snown to rest
on
a
set of false assumptions that even Charitable
tanipulation cannot save.
9
43.
Routley and Routley.
Against me Inevitability of Human Chauvinism;
an ambiguity resides in the use of 'determined through'
in precise
I,
if
'determined through' means 'have to ce
determined*, men Plumwood and Routley feel,
mat it is
’Odaliy
upgraded
"to
reveal the sneer necessity of
conclusion J." 10
10
“Routley and “Routley.
Against the inevitability of Human Chauvinism:
no-ever, this involves a similar modificiition of p r e tn i s e C
or eise a nodal fallacy is involved. The
C._ stronger
ci
necessary
sense is preferable in forcing tne conclusion,
J -- as shall be
seen snortly when premise C is considered, but tne more
cnaritaoie move for tne argument is to weaken the use of
'determined mrougn' to something like 'reflect ' or 'are a
ratter of'. Despite either modification to resolve the
ambiguity
of 'determined through' premise A is still
susceptide to the charge:
value rankings cannot however ce cashed in
for
preference
rankings
since,
as 1 s
well-known, preference rankings and value
rankings car
diverge;
a valuer can prefer
wnat has less value and can value what is not
, referred.
11
Premise a is , therefore ( modified to read:
Al Values are determined through the value
rankings of (appropriate) valuers,
12
11
"Routley and “Routley. Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism
44.
12
Ro tley and Routley,
Against me inevitability of num Chauvinism:
44.
Bypassing premise B for a moment, premise C,
the
St-ficieb aSiuuiptAob, can be seen as a "circular way of
reintroducing tne logical version of human chauvinism by
restricting tne class of valuers a priori to humans" and at
Page 7
Snr1 ^'?2Hy2enriy*-^rae'
13 11 is essential to the argument
lse1 c to oe a necessary condition that humans are
the only valuers.
ithout that the argument ooes not
human chauvinsitic conclusion.
if persons is
usea instead of humans, tnen it becomes
-ore defensible,
since not all humans are valuers, but not all valuers are
human,
if not all valuers are numar' or persons,
tnen to
sustain
the
human chauvinistic conclusion it becomes
necessary either to reject ail non-human (person) values or
i? i‘,’o e«- a "'ove m premise a such that 'interests' are
United to human (person) interests.
43-4.
Routley and Houtley.
Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism!
, „ It is just such a move at premise B ,
that ma k e s it,
tor them, tne most objectionable of the premises, Premise 6
is a group selfisnness
To
eirrsnness argument.
io show
tn
at
the
that
conclusion and particularly premise
‘
pre ise “B is
little more than an
argument for group
oup egoism in an environmental setting,
they
oisplay it against
ainst an argument baldly for
egoism.
if
pre ise A is recast replacing 'preferences'
ith 'values' as
ov°'v-i^2'preTn!ern ?rS0 0ds.to have 'preferences' replaced
attention in
is no- shifted to
interests .
interests can oe usea either in a weax and
- ,
-se so tnat anything tne valuer values is in tne
Ya|uer s interest
,ln stronger, but false sense tnat is
intended to support interests as ceing in the valuer's
advantage:
to sum. up tne dilemma for the argument then:
when. "interests" is usea in its weaker sense
premise u may be accepted out
tne argument
does not establish its inter, oea conclusion or
in any way sucpoert human chauvinism.
For
tne intended effect of the argument in the
cruae form is this; in determining values it
is
enough
to look at human advantage;
nothing else counts.
If tne argument -ere
correct,
tnen one could assess values bv
cneckmq out tne local (selfish) advantage of
hu ans,
or, more generally, tne aavanta ,e of
tne case class someho* assembled.
it, on thP
otner hano,
"interests":
is usea in its
strong sense, tne conclusion would license a
form of human crauvinis , but premise
no,
false.
14
Rout ley ano
Routley.
“Against the “Inevitability of “Human "Chauvinism:
Page 8
This argument has a second
,
aspect to it which they
explore.
if tne argument is not acceptable as it stands,
then supposelv, neither is tne alternative of rejecting its
conclusion.
Precise A is opposed to the conclusion D (~a or
D / D-> A) to shod
either one accepts the conclusion,
ith its
consequent instru entalist account of value,
or one is committed to an intrinsic or
cetacned value theory wnich takes values to
oe completely independent of valuers,
no
------------ , ano
and r.c
ay determined oy tneit, out, it is assumed,
the latter theory is a ell Known as untenable,
and rr.ay even _.
____ as involving mysticism
be seen
or as oeing irrational
inus,
it may te
conduced,
there is no real alternative to
hu-an chauvinism.
lb
#15
Routley and Routley.
Against tne inevitability of Human Chauvinism;
but this choice is rejectee «
as a x
false
«js>c one:
u < < c.
To reject the instrumentalist conclusion D is
bv no means to be commited tc a, or to the
view that tne valuers
. _____
__
,____
and
their
preference
rankings play no role in determining values
and tnat values are
a_ further
'set„
o
—
__ ___ .
of
items
mysterious independent iters
in the world
somehow perceived by valuers
through
a
special (even mystical and nonr ational) moral
sense.
16
Against, the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism:
Parallel to this dichotomy between A and u is the dichotomy
Detween instrumental and intrinsic values so central in tne
division and treatment of members from nonmembers in tne
hor a1 Club;
Tne dicnotomy frequently presentea between
instrumentalist accounts of. value, on tie one
hand, ana detached tneories
(or what die
mistakenly taken to 0e the same, intrinsic
tneories) is, for the same reason, a false
one.
Instrumental theories ore those men
attempt to
reduce
value
to
what
is
instrumental to or contributes to a stated
goal.
Typically such theories taxe tne goal
to oe tne furtherance of the interest of a
privileged class;
tor example, tne goal may
oe taken to be determined in terms of the
interests, concerns, advantage, or welfare of
tne .class of humans, or of persons, or of
sentient creatures, cej ending on t>e type of
cnauvinism.
In particular, human chauvinist
tneories
are,
characteristically,
instrumentalist theories.
in contrast, an
item is valued intrinsically where it is
16
Routley and Routley.
47.
47.
Page 9
valued for its own sake, and not merely as a
means
to
something
further;
and
an
intrinsic-value theory allo is that some items
are
intrinsically
valuable.
valuable,
. intrinsic
theories tnen,
then, contrast with
- it n ___
instr urn on cal
theories,, and *hat
vhat "intrinsic" tells us is no
more
tnan
that
tne
the
iter
taken
as
intrinsically valuable is not valued merely
as a means tc some goal, i.e.,
is, not merely
- - is
instrumentally valued. Accordingly
- 117 detached
value
theories,
since
< disjoint
1
from
instrumental theories, are a suo-ciass of
intrinsic value theories;
and they are a
proper suoclass since intrinsic values need
not be detached, lSomething may __
______ _
be valuaole
in itself without its ceing detached frott all
valuing experience.
17
17
Routley and Routley. Against tne inevitability 01 ■ uman •Chauvinism
Because detacned value theories are only a subclass of
intrinsic value theories the dichotomies bet een A and b and
between instrumental and instrinsic theories are false.
Since detached theories cannot be maintained and totally
instrumental value theories leao to an infinite regress,
which is manifest if, consistent witn tne theory, the goals
of a valuer are taken as instrumental, then neither of tnese
extremes is acceptable, but values do exist, so some other
vie-, besides those offered in the dichotomy must
be
advanced, Plumwood ana Routley advance one vie* tnat denies
the dichotomy, yet does not limit valuers to humans and does
not li it tne value of objects to human instrumental values;
A person is the source of value-judgments and
values .in one sense,
i.e.
s/he is tne
valuer;
out not in another, namely s/ne is
not responsible for a valued item having its
valued properties.
or is there any licence
for reducing tne values assignee to those
tnat serve tne interests of tne valuer.
18
18
Routley and Routley. Hunan chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
This solution seems to do little more than shift the
detached value argument back one step.
-hy snould tne
qualities of an item be valued except that a valuer places
some value on them? Tnat is to say, all items (objects of
moral concern) have qualities,
out
tnat some of these
Qualities
are valued ana some are not inaicates tne
(instrumental) choices of a valuer
(unless a theory of
detacher values, *hich has just teen rejected, is adopted.)
me intent behind this value theory is to avoid positing
detacned values,
yet to maintain sone basis for intrinsic
values tnat cannot be cashed in tor instrumental values.
io
158
47’8.
Page 10
do this requires that the intrinsic value of the qualities
not be seen also as instrumental values.
it is not,
tneretorej a natter of assigning intrinsic values to tne
goals of instrumental value tneories,
it is a matter of
finding a way in which a particular goal or item or being is
capable of possessing value that is neither detached from,
the notion of a valuer nor , if connected in some manner to
a valuer, merely a means to another end.
Asserting the
valued qualities are resident
in the iter; is intended to
separate it from the valuer's evaluation and denying the
reauction of values to the interests of tne valuer is
intended to provide for an intrinsic worth in items and
separate intrinsic values from purely instrumental values,
if tne intrinsic value of an object is
conceptually
different from its instrumental value, then tne intrinsic
value must be taken into consideration separate from its
instrumental uses and instrumental judgments about the item.
Therefore, the item (object of moral concern) is
granted
respect in, of ana tor itself and this is the ultimate goal
of the P1U' .-ood/Koutley position.
An item can have an Intrinsic and an instrumental
worth,
but this does not in and of itself remove the humans
bias to arcs intrunentai values or towards the properties
valued.
For this the aerial that humans (persons) are tne
only valuers is needed:
It is simply a (common) mistake to think mat
values and rights do not have a meaning, or
an application, outsice tne human context or
situation:
to establish tnis point (on which
i-oore rightly insisted) it is enough to point
out again that (hypothetical) valuers, not
necessarily nun an or persons, can assign
values with respect to situations and worlds
devoid of hunans ano of persons altogether.
19
houtley ano "Routley. “Human Chauvinisr and “Environmental “mthics:
19
it can now be asserted tnat items in the environment have a
value beyond those assignee to then by humans (persons)) ana
that ceings other than humans can be valuers,, but what is
left to do is to establish tne relative ranks or
'pecking
In this regari tne greater value
order' of valuers.
things
may
nave
assumption "that ever, trough other
instrinsic value, people <or humans are more valuable than
anything else, and rank more highlyi (no matter how large
their numoer) ' must be denied.
20
Houtley and Pout ley.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
The greater value assumption, a weaker form, ot human
chauvinism, is open to most of objections made against numao
chauvinisr.
and to examples contrasting morally repugnant
humans
ith norally non-repugnant nonhumans illustrating t.ne
171.
157-b.
Page 11
•
•
unacceptable outcomes of this assumption, such as:
if tnere is only roc
in one's life boat
for
one ano one fust cnccse oet-.een saving Adolf
Hitler and a combat ^hicn nas lived a decent
life and never narirea a living creature, one
is morally obliged to choose the former. 21
21
Routley and Routley.
Against tne Inevitability of Human Chauvinism:
5 7.
Having set aside tne arguments for
value
being
exclusive to humans tney no focus on arguments for morality
being exclusive to humans.
One such argument is tne
contractual argument:
J.
K.
L.
M.
N.
22
fne
only
justification
of
moral
principles (only X) is a contractual one,
i.e., the entry into contracts of agents
(Zry).
Agents only enter into contracts (only Z)
it it serves tneir. o*n interests.
(The
Ciaisl.
ifiii J
Humans (persons) are the only agents that
enter into contracts (tout Zj,
therefore, oy K ano i;
Humans
(persons)
only
enter
into
contracts (only Z) if it serves tneir own
interests.
Tnerefore, from J and
:
Tne
only
justification
for
moral
principles
(only X)
is the (selfisn)
interests of humans (persons). 22
"Routley ano "Routley.
"Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinisms
This entire contract argument can oe faulted as a
strawman, out tne general effect of the argument ano tne
conclusion still carry tne intention of human chauvinistic
arguments oased on the exclusiveness of morality to numans.
Thus tnis prototype is illustrative ana descriptive of the
sorts of conclusions in force and the sorts of premises usea
to support then.
Therefore, the counterarguments usea
against trie contractual argument and its close relatives
oesignate the sorts of attacxs that can be launched against
arguments for human cnauvlnis ano moral exclusiveness.
It is assumed tnat conditions other tnan contractual
ones
, e.g.
community based, can be substituted into
pre ■ ise J and with appropriate modifications to the rest of
tne argu ent tne same conclusion can be reached. Premise d
proports to set tne parameters of tne argument oy selecting
an activity with moral relevance that does not violate tne
second condition of adequacy previously set down.
In an
52.
Page 12
attempt to describe an exclusively hui<<an i oral context,
premise J's use o£ the ^oro 'only' to support entry into
contracts, a purely hu.an (person's) endeavour, makes it
obviously raise. turtnernore, in supporting the contract
-hdicinq as a purely human (person s) endeavour, however,
"premise J imports the very chauvinism that is at issue in
tne conclusion." 2J
23
“Routley ana “Routley.
Against tne inevitability of Human “Chauvinism:
53.
premise J is found to be faulty on several points.
If
moral obligation is tasen to ce a moral principle then
premise J
is not sufficient
to
include
all
moral
obligations.
"There is no actual contract underlying tne
principle that one ought not to be cruel to animals,
children, and otners not in a position to contract." 24 Ii
this too narrow scope »ere not enough to condemn tne theory,
then;
The social
contract
account
of
moral
obligation is defective because it implies
tnat moral obligations can really only hold
between responsible moral agents and attempts
to account for all. moral ooliqation as based
on contract.
but of course tne account is
correct as an account of the origin of some
tyr.es of moral ooligatlon;
there are moral
ooli ,ations of type that can only
hold
oetween
free and responsible agents and
others which only apply within a social and
political
context.
let other types of
ooligatlon, such as the obligation not to
cause suffering, can arise only with respect
to sentient or prefercnce-naving creatures -.•no are not necessarily morally responsible
-- ana could not significantly arise
itn
res.ect to a nonsentient such as a tree or a
rock.
25
Routley and Routley. Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism:
Routley ano Routley. Against tne Ir.evitablility of human Chauvinism:
24
25
A moral agent could have a moral obligation to a being
incapable of being or becoming a moral agent. Even when
precise J is amended to something besiaes a contractual,
foundation, it still comes to grief on tne sticking point of
obiigations.
Premise K, the egoist assumption;
is faulted on the same grounds as egoism
itself.
For agents sometimes enter into
contacts that are not in their awn interests
but are in tne interests of other persons or
54.
5b.
Page 13
creatures, or are undertaken on behalf of,
tor instance to protect, other items tr at do
not nave interests at all, e.g.,
rivers,
ouildings, forests.
Against the Inevitability of u an Chauvinism:
what is not pellucid nere, is that entering into a contract
on oenalf of another is not, or cannot, be in the interests
of the contracting agentand therefore a denial of premise K,
Entering into acontract that protects something that is
itself incapable of interests nay indirectly oe in the
interests of tne contracting agent even though tne agent's
interests are not directly recognized by tne contract.
by
example, an agent may enter into a contact that proctects a
virgin forest and the river that flos through it, in order
to protect the agent's access to water downstream of tne
forest.
Or pernaps even more indirectly, an agent ray sign
over his land as a wildflower sanctuary because
his
neighbour,
*no he nates,
is allergic to wildflowers.
It
would seer that wnat has to oe snown is that an agent would
enter a contract on behalf gf anotner -nen tne interests of
the other are directly opposed to tne interests of tne
conrtracting agent,
Opposition to tne contracting agent's
interests may oe, however, too strinqent a condition.
If
breaking the premise rests in showing tnat an agent will act
outside nis selfish interests, tnen it is only necessary to
snow tnat an agent
vould enter into a contract when his
selfish interests
-ere not involved.
In sucn a case,
entering a contract tc protect a river, building, or forest
could ce sufficlent.
26
-^outley and Routiey.
53.
Premise K can be amended to reflect the ability to
enter into contracts for beings or things other tnan tne
contracting agent:
27
However even if premise . K were amended to
ad-iiit that agents may enter into contracts on
oenalt of nonhuman items,
it would still
result in a form of numan chauvinis given
familiar -assumptions, since nonhun-an items
will
still
ce
unable to create moral
obligaions except through a human sponsor or
patron, who will presumably
aole to choose
-hetner or not to protect them. 27
"Routley and "Routiey.
"Against the "Inevitability of "Human "Chauvinism:
but if tnis modification is made and nonhuman items are
unable to create a moral, obligation on the agents
(agents
ceing under moral obligations only where they cnoose to De),
then tnis premise assumes tne conclusion ■. It is only the
interests of the humans
Involved tnat justify the moral
obligation imposed by tne contract.
53.
Page 14
Premise L is strengthened by trie use of
person* "tor
otherwise premises suer, as e and its variations are suspect,
since tnere is nothing,
legally or morally,
to prevent
consortia,
organizations, and other nonhumans from entering
into contracts (and tnese items are appropriately counted as
persons in the larger ieg.,1 sense)." 2t
28
-? 3 •
Routley and Routley.
Against the Inevitability of Hunan Chauvinism:
■<hile premise L may be the better by this move premises
j and k are both tne worse. J remains false and K is either
false or assumes the conclusion if modified to allow for
conditions tnat would save tne human chauvinistic elements
of it.
thus contractual arguments land alter natives of the
same form as this prototype) for the substantiation of a
human cnauvinistic-oased environmental ethics are lost.
ine
assumptions underlying tne premises are simply not. equal to
the task of supporting the conclusion. Further modification
of
the premises is at the expense oi violating the
conditions of adequacy for exclusive human membership in the
.'oral Clue.
if the restrictions (such as 'only') on
oremdses ltxe J (or variations of it) are removed, then
leeway is
left for including soie npnhumans oi excluding
some humans.
Cn the other hand,
restrictions may oe
retained and tne contractual portion is modified put the
result is tne sane.
ire -ore vital premise for establishing
tne human cnauvinistic conelusion, premises like K tnat 1ink
t?e exclusive numan justification ot moral actions to human
interests, either assume the conclusion or may re countered
by examples that snow them to be false.
Plum-ood and Routley conclude;
it is not possible to provide criteria
hich
would jusill* distinguishing,
lr the sharp
way standard western ethics do,
between
numans and certain nonhuman creatures, and
particularily those creatures which
have
preferences or ^referred states. For sucn
criteria appear to depend upon tne mistaken
assumption
that moral respect for other
creatures is due only when they can be shown
to
measure
up
to
some
ratner
axaltbai.ll4=u£.t.££aifi£d and JLaauea tests for
membership of a privileged class (essentially
an elitist view),
instead of upon,
say,
respect
for
tne
preferences
of other
creatures.
Accordingly tne
sharp
moral
distinction, commonly accepted in ethics bv
philosophers and ethers alike,
all
bureaus aea all olb££ aniial ^pbclax*. lac&£ a
Sall^laClQty; Cobfitbul
29
Page 15
29
103.
“Koutley ana “Routley.
“Chauvinisi
ar.) “•.nviron : ental “£tnicss
Having broken the exclusiveness of value and morality
to humans and naving disconnected the link of values and
morals to solely human interests,
■ nat alternatives are
there to human chauvinistic systens? Given tne analysis
just made of value and morality, Plumwood ano Routley
maintain:
what emerges
____ __ _ is
________
____ of
__ types of
__
____
a picture
oral
obligation as associated with a nest of rings
or annular bounaary
classes,
with
the
innermost
class,
consisting
of
highly
_
creatures,
intelligent,
social,
sentient
having tne full range of moral obligations
applicable to them, ana outer classes of sucn
nonsentient
items as trees and rocks having
only a much more restricted range of moral
obligations significantly applicable to them,
In
in some cases there
is no sharp division
between tne rings,
'but there is no single
uniform privileged class of items, no one
base class,
to which all ano only moral
principles directly apply, and moreover the
zoological ■class of humans is not one or tne
really significant boundary classes.
Tne
recognition
tnat
sone
types
of moral
ooiiqation only apply -<ithin tne context of a
particular
sort
of society, or through
contract, does nothing to support the case of
human cnauvinlsfi .
3
30
55.
Routley and “Routley.
-gainst tne inevitability of human Chauvinism
This notion of nested zones or an annular
classes ; ay be diagramed as in Diagram i. 31
picture
of
Page lb
31
"Routley, "Richard.
"Canberra, 1981: 2.
"In "defense of "Cannibalise,
"Unpublished paper.
The laoels for the rings or zones represent;
32
respectively different soils of objects
such
as,
objects
of
moral
concern,
/.elf are-having
objects,
preference-havers
(and
cnoice-na<ers),
right-nolders,
obligation-holders
and
responsibilitybearers,
trose contractually- co<ni!'ittea- and
tne different sorts of obligations that can
significantly apply to such objects.
ot all
the tyoes of objects indicated are distinct,
nor is the listing intended to be exhaustive
but rather illustrative.
for
strictly the
laoels given should oe expanded, as the
distinctions are categorical ones, so tnat
what matters is net whether an object is, tor
instance, contractually committed in sore
fasnion out whether it is tne sort of thing
that can be,
whether it can significantly
enter into or be committed by arrangements of
a contractual xina,
32
Routley and Routley.
human Cnauvinlsin and Environmental Ethics:
oreover,
tne categorical distinctions that demarcate the
various rings or zones are morally relevent categories.
ine
annular
picture
does
not. reject traditional ethical
categories, tut does reject the limitation of categories to
one snecies or case class.
.Also it rejects unjustified
distinctions tnat are not "...categorical distinctions .hich
tie analytically -itn ethical notions...."
33
107-8.
Page 17
Routley ana "Routley.
"Human "cnauvinis
and "Environmental "Ethics:
inis celng tne case:
it is certainly in no «ay species chauvinist
or nuian chauvinist. For none of tne zones
of tne annular picture couprises the class o£
humans
(or its
jincr variant tne class of
persons);
for tnis class is not of moral
relevance.
34
_Routley and Routley.
Human Chauvinism ana Environmental Ethics:
Returning again to tne metaphor of tne oral Club, under tr.e
annular ring picture membership in tne Club is automatic to
all objects of moral concern, out tne privileges within tne
Club are limited by moral capacities to use the facilities
ot me Club.
Tne obligations and the extent of those
ooligations of human members to nonhuman members rest upon
tne type of moral object . tne nonhuman is and on its
capacities (illustrated by its overlay on the annular rings)
not upon a comparison of tne nonhuman to tne human. For
example a being capaole of contractual obligation could
justifiaoly discriminate against a being unaole to make
contracts
with reference
to
contractual
ooligations,
regardless of
the species of tne t/o beings.
dy tie same
token,
it would be unjust of a
preference-haver
to
discriminate against another preference-haver solely because
tne two preference-havers were of uifferent species.
loo it snould be notes tnat Diagram 1 illustrates tne
position of humans as a species ano not tnat ot a particular
human. Any given nuran, as ith any given object of
noral
concern plotted on tne annular rings, .»ould not necessarily
mater? in each detail the plot of tne species to «nicn it
oelonjs:
Just as tnere are relevant divisions beyond
tne class of perference-havers , so tnere are
ithir. the class. Tnus tne suggestion tnat
tne class to.-a rds which noral obligations
(ano a corresponding Sait ot moral concern
which ta<es account ot creatures* states) ay
oe neld is bounded
by
tne
class
of
preference-havers,
does not ot course imply
tnat oo disxiUGXicas can be nade -iiwl- the
class of preference-navers with respect to
tne kind of behaviour appropriate to them.
For example, contractual obligations -- wnicn
Dy no means exnaust obligation -- can only be
nela directly
(as distinct from by way of
representative) with respect to
a
n.ucn
narrower class of creatures, from which many
•
108.
P a g e 1«
humans are excluded.
35
10 7.
3b
“Routley and “Routley.
“Human “Chauvinis
and “Environmental “Ethics;
The shift from determining moral regard by a comparison
o£ nonnumans to humans to a determination oy an examination
ot categorical distinctions expands tf.e range of nonhuman
objects of moral concern.
ay rejecting tne base class
assumption, value as determined oy use or production by the
base class is also rejected. inis does not mean tnat human
values *111 be rejected, but tnat values will no longer oe
judged solely in human terms and that human values -ill no
longer automatically taxe precedent over all other values,
inus a particular ecosystem, e.g. a swamp, is recognized a.,
having value other tnan the possible location of an oil
bearing geosyncline or a salt dome.
It is seen to nave
value as the home of a number of various flora and fauna
species with a complex set of inter-relationships and as a
system in itself that is not reducible to the interests of
one species or even group of species within it.
Inis last point tnat the value of an ecosystem, or any
similar complex of values, interests, preferences, etc,, is
not reducible to the values, interests, or preferences of
either the individual components or toe whole, ignoring tne
individual components, is called by them tne "no-reduction
position".
Inis position permits a middle ground between
tne extremes of particularistic and holistic views and
thereby provides a loc is for what they term "the ecological
outlook":
in a closely related
-ay,
the no-reduction
position can provide a suitable metaphysical
base for an ecological
outloox vor*
i
ax vuuxuurs
worldview,
in which man is seen
:
as .part
_
of a natural
community, part of natural systems seen as
integrated
wholes
and with .welfare and
interests
bound
whole, ......
ano not
__________ ____
__ up with the
.....................
as,
in tne typical .estern view, a separate,
self-contained actor standing outsue tne
syster
and manipulating it in the pursuit of
self-contained interests,
36
36
Routley, Vai and Richard Routley. Social rneories, oelf management,
and Environmental Problems.
“&“ln\s annison,
.s., iCRobbie,
.a. “ .anoX*
R. Routley, “&edsX&. Environmental Philosophy. Canberra, am), I960:
319.
One of the offsooots ot this no-reductior position is a
policy of respect for the systei , its parts, and for the
inter-relationships between parts and the parts and the
h ole;
Page 19
Tne no-reduction position can thus provide a
natural
foundation
for
a
genuinely
environmental ethic, one *nicn allows human
actions to be guided oy respect, cure and
concern for the natural world and rejects tne
"human
Egoist"
tnesis
that
tne
only
constraints on nunan action concerning nature
arise from tne interests of other numans.
For sucn relations of interdependence between
man and nature must give rise to constraints
on numan action in the same
*ay
tnat
appropriate
relations
of. interdependence
between en do, so tne thesis that action can
and must oe unconstrained by any concerns
other than human ones fails, as does tne
thesis tnat nature is no more than a means to
hu an ends, a mere tool.
37
37
Routley and Routley.
Social theories, Self management, and Environmentaifroblems:
Tne respect position .is cased on one or
general ooligation principles:
1.
ore
of
three
Ine general principle cf respect
. .. .. _ _ i for preference-navers
(.formerly
applied
only
to
human
preferences)
is
transferred to the larger arena of all oeinys or items
that can be placed in a disprefer red state> •
..the requisite, important and non-ar.itrary
distinction is to ce ora*n which narKS out
the class
of
creatures
to.-,arcs
-hicn
obligations
may ce held;
tnat is,
the
usually
recognisec
principles
oi
consideration
towards
others
(of
tne
privileged class) properly extend or should
be generalized to consideration for other
creatures
having
preferences,
and
xgg
geaaxal aeXeriSiCle GGliGaiiaa
-iu.cci„14i is fiat Lii put
aXfaets
XoXuui
PitfiXetfiaGfisfiaAzexsl iuia a dis^raXaxxfia state
1CC GQ GQGU reuses, 38
Routley and Routley,
2.
39
Hunan Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
Preferences alone, ho-.ever, are still too narro
to
develop an environmental ethic or ecological outlooK. So
tne second principle applies to beings or
iters
<itn an
interest'
or
'welfare',
v-nere rf...an 'interest' or
welfare in tne broaa sense is a Xclus or life-goal, as
possessed by living things, or an equilibrium or system
goal, as possessed oy living ecosystems." 39
Routley and Routley,
104.
'
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
106,
319.
Page 20
iherefore, tne second principle is:
that the -altaic or
of animate
objects and also such biological items as
ecosystems can ce affected in one way oi
another, e.g.
increased, decreased, upset.
Foi instance, the wellbeing of a coastal
community and of the individual trees in it
can ce reduced to zero oy sandmining, and it
can be seriously threatened by pumping vaste
detergent into trie nearoy ocean. Tnere is a
general ocligaiton principle corresponding
likewise to tnis more comprehensive class of
,»elf are-bearers, namely, dpX to jaopafoxse
ttfi ..ulijeiiju ui aaiuxai oPJecxs uc
-J.4--UU1 JiCu ±£aiGU.
4<)
40
3.
Routiey and Routiey.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics;
lOu- /.
Beyond preference-havers and beings or systems
ith
interests or welfares,
the environment contains items,
sucn as rocKS, soils and «:ater*ays tnat nave value, out no
preferences or interests;
unlike higher animals sucn items
cannot
literally be put into dispreferred states
(and In
obvious sense, as opposed to the
ider sense of 'interests' tied to welfare,
they have no interests),
out they can be
damaged or destroyeo or nave their Maiue
eroded or impaired. 41
41
Routiey ana Routiey.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics;
Tne three generalizable obligation principles
are
parallel in their structure and application and vary omv in
/.hat rings of the annular Picture that
they
cover.
Exclusiveness of the principles to a particuair ring,
however, snould not ce assumed.
ine principle of not
damaging or destroying the value of an object of in oral
concern could extend across the entire annular picture.
Thus tne overlay of a ^articular ouject of moral concern
will indicate which principle(s) of obligation may be
applied to a particular case. An object of moral concern,
e.g. a wornoat, may very veil be capdole of being placed in
a
dispreferred
state,
its
wellbeing
or
interests
jeopardizej, or devalued at one ana tne same time.
in tne
other hand, another object of moral concern, e.g. Ayers
Rock, may, perhaps, only be disvalued.
109.
Page 21
Further tne respect position not only gives generalized
principi.es of od! igat ion , but it also reverses tne common
notion of when tnese principles are applied:
Cn tne alternative thoroughgoing
respect
vie.'.,
whi.cn
is
illustrated o y various
nonexploitive non- estern ethics, one starts
from a restricted position, a position of no
interference and no exploitation, a position
at peace witn tne natural world so to say,
and allots interference -- not as on
■estern
tninxlng,
restricts i terference -- for aooa
reasons.
ine onus of ,-roof is tnus entirely
inverted:
good reasons are required lax
interference, not xa siax interference. 42
_____ Routley and Routley.
nunan Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
174.
<*?verLi? ’
onus 01 proof leads to shifts and
inversions in otner areas as well. Requiring good reasons
for interfering crings about a shift in tne notion of
property ownership. Operating under a respect position, it
can no longer oe assumed that tne environment or pieces of
lii?an QofSrivate Property t0 De done with or disposed of at
■'•ill.
Before a s-amp can ce drained, or a forest" cut, or a
steam polluted seme
jooa reason must be given, Human
convenience and economic gain would not count as good
Respect does not preclude use, nut it does
preclude
certain
sorts of use.
it is
inco catioie aoove all -itn property vie ano
>.itn regarding something as no lore than a
eans to tne user's eras. 43
Routley* Social theories, Self management, and Environmental Problems:
The respect position is not only incompatible witn the
property view, it is also incompatible
1th tne strong
dichotomy between use and nonuse:
me conventional wisdom of
western Society
tends to offer a false dichotomy of use
versus respectful nonuse - a false choice
wnicn cones out especially clearly again in
tne treat ent of animals.
Here the choice
presented in -estern thought is typically one
of exxoex use without respect or serious
constraint, of using animals for example in
the ways cnaracteristic of largescare
mass-production farming and a market economic
systep wnich are inconpatiole with respect,
ox on the otner nand of not making any use of
animals at all, for e x ampie, never making use
322 .
Page 22
of animals for food or for farming purposes,
•hat is left out in unis choice is trie
alternative tne Indians and other non--.estern
teople have recognizee,
the alternative oi
li 'ited and respectful use, which enaoles use
to be made of animals, but does not allow
animals to oe used in an unconstrained way or
merely as means tc human ends.
44
44
Routley and Routley, human Chauvinism aid Environmental Ethics: 179.
bt^taKerVup tr^a^a ter °cn^t er*™ pe0fie' sever’di groups of Australian Aborigines, will
^either, then, is tne respect position a reverence
position tnat also arises from the use/nonuse oicnotoi y.
the lives, preferences, choices, and considerations of otner
species or objects of oral concern are not to be taken as
sacred and inviolable. out as has been pointed out before a
good reason must be given before interference can oe
orooKe . interference is acceptable, as in tne case of
’essential predation... nlch is essential to the normal
livelihood of the predator, and where tne predator takes tor
itself no more than it requires for its livelihood," 45
Routley, Richard.
in Defense of Cannibalism•;
32.
thus an alternative to tne western dichotomy of use versus
nonuse
is
to
mitigate,
if
possible,
tne
user's
considerations with the considerations of the item:
io so ise somethin i itnout treating it as
available for unlimited or unconstrained use
tor
numan
ends
is
characteristic
of
x;esfcicci.XuX use.
In contrast non-respectful
use treats the use of the Iten as constrained
by no considerations arising from the item
itself and tne user's relationship to it, but
as constrained only in a derivative way, by
considerations of the convenience, welfare
ano so forth of otner humans. 4b
Routley and Routley.
Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics:
For there to be a respectful position that denies tne
dichotomy of unconstrained use versus respectful nonuse and
tnat allows tor the relationsnip Detween tne user and tne
item and the considerations of the item to be taken into
account, one fundamental change in tne present relationship
between humans and tne environment tnat must eventuate is
for individual users to take direct responsibility for their
impact:
Respect
positions
can
only
be
generally
179.
Page 23
realized in a society in whicn tne basic
social structure and economy enables people
to take direct responsibility for tne impact
on tne natural world their needs and tneir
statisfaction create , such as in tne economy
of cooperative, involvement, 47
Routley and Routley. Social theories, Self "anagement, and Environmental Problems:
Human users taking direct responsibility tor tneir impact
snould lover tneir impact. If users bear tne responsibility
tor producing and managing what they need, then they should
produce, in a manner like unto tne 'taking' of essential
oreaation only wnat they neeo and should 'qo lighter' on tne
world:
323 .
..self-management can offer the alternative
of a
social^ in wnich nothing is
produced wnich uoes not correspond to genuine
needs an .i in which production is designed to
satisfy tnose needs «itn a minimum of
aste.
Tne possiclity of production of material
*nicn does not correspono to genuine neeos is
eliminated oy two factores in the ecomony of
cooperative exchange ano involvement;
first,
a direct relationsnip between tne possiblity
of use of an iter and direct expenditure of
labour on tne part of tne user, and second,
direct
cooperative
involvment
bet een
producers and users.
48
48
Routley and Routley.
social Theories, Self
anagement, and Environmental Problems:
Tne respect position, tnerefore, is intended to lower
the impact of human users on the entire environment, -nile
extending tne position's own impact goes far beyond tne
interrelations of human and other species. It is intended,
when applied to «estern cultures, to face among other issues
tne econonic/etnicai conflicts tnat nave been at tne core of
many of tne practical ethical problems concerning humans ana
nonhumans and that nave given rise to much of tne current
debate over inter-specific ethics.
ine respect position is
a strong repalcement to the Dominion Thesis that has been
tne ruleing and guiding principle of western though on
etnical relationsnips between numans and nonhumans. bike
the Dominion Thesis, tne respect position is a oasic set of
principles from whicn a wnoie range of problems, situations, '
and questions can oe approached. Tne alterations to the cut
of
-estern societies tnat would result from its adoption as
tne pattern of etmcal progress would oe more drastic tnan
that of either a Stewardship
Principle (or some other
weakened form of the Dominion Thesis) or an extension
principle, sucn as the Utilitarian extension proposed by
Singer.
fet these seeniniy drastic alterations, or some
313.
Page 24
otnef
equally drastic set, r^ay be no more tnan *nat is
■■eeje.; to restyle current practices as a more just ano less
ar o i t rary .
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Box 3: Environmental Ethics
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https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/6ef0b9e2ef93f843eb517882e681cbb3.pdf
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Inquiry, 21, 133-79
Nuclear Energy and Obligations
to the Future
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain, Braidwood, Australia
The paper considers the morality of nuclear energy development as it concerns
future people, especially the creation of highly toxic nuclear wastes requiring longterm storage. On the basis of an example with many parallel moral features it is
argued that the imposition of such costs and risks on the future is morally unacceptable. The paper goes on to examine in detail possible ways of escaping this
conclusion, especially the escape route of denying that moral obligations of the
appropriate type apply to future people. The bulk of the paper comprises discussion
of this philosophical issue, including many arguments against assigning obligations
to the future drawn both from analyses of obligation and from features of the future
such as uncertainty and indeterminacy. A further escape through appeal to moral
conflict is also considered, and in particular two conflict arguments, the Poverty
and Lights-going-out arguments are briefly discussed. Both these escape routes are
rejected and it is concluded that if the same standards of behaviour are applied to
the future as to the present, nuclear energy development is morally unacceptable.
I. The Bus Example
Suppose we consider a bus, a bus which we hope is to make a very long
journey. This bus, a third world bus, carries both passengers and freight.
The bus sets down and picks up many different passengers in the course of
its long journey and the drivers change many times, but because of the way
the bus line is managed and the poor service on the route it is nearly always
full to overcrowded, with passengers hanging off the back, and as in
Afghanistan, passengers riding on the roof, and chickens and goats in the
freight compartment.
Early in the bus's journey someone consigns on it, to a far distant
destination, a package containing a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is
packaged in a very thin container, which as the consigner well knows is
unlikely to contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned,
and certainly will not do so if the bus should encounter any trouble, for
example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very
hot, if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort
commonly found on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some
1
�134 R. and V. Routley
passenger should interfere deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or
perhaps try to steal some of the freight, as also frequently happens. All of
these things, let us suppose, have happened on some of the bus's previous
journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people and animals on the bus, while others
could be maimed or contract serious diseases.
There does not seem much doubt about what most of us would say about
the morality of the consigner's action, and there is certainly no doubt
about what the passengers would say. The consigner's action in putting
the safety of the occupants of the bus at risk is appalling. What could
excuse such an action, what sort of circumstances might justify it, and
what sort of case could the consigner reasonably put up? The consigner
might say that it is by no means certain that the gas will escape; he himself
is an optimist and therefore feels that such unfavourable possible outcomes should be ignored. In any case the bus might have an accident and
the passengers be killed long before the container gets a chance to leak; or
the passengers might change to another bus and leave the lethal parcel
behind.
He might say that it is the responsibility of the passengers and the driver
to ensure that the journey is a smooth one, and that if they fail to do so, the
results are not his fault. He might say that the journey is such a long one
that many of the passengers may have become mere mindless vegetables
or degenerate wretches about whose fate no decent person need concern
himself, or that they might not care about losing their lives or health or
possessions anyway by that time.
Most of these excuses will seem little more than a bad joke, and certainly would not usually be reckoned any sort of justification. The main
argument the consigner of the lethal parcel employs, however, is that his
own pressing needs justify his actions. He has no option but to consign his
potentially lethal parcel, he says, since the firm he owns, and which has
produced the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits and
cannot afford to produce a better container or to stop the production of the
gas. If the firm goes out of business, the consigner says, his wife will leave
him, and he will lose his family happiness, the comfortable way of life to
which he has become accustomed and sees now as a necessity; his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others; not only will the
firm's customers be inconvenienced but he, the consigner, will have to
break some business contracts; the inhabitants of the local village through
loss of spending and cancellation of the Multiplier Effect will suffer finan-
�Obligations to the Future 135
cial hardship, and, worst of all, the tiny flow of droplets that the poor of the
village might receive (theoretically at any rate) as a result of the trickling
down of these good things would dry up entirely. In short, some basic and
some perhaps uncomfortable changes will be needed in the village.
Even if the consigner's story were accepted at face value - and it would
be wise to look critically at his story - only someone whose moral sensibilities had been paralysed by the disease of galloping economism could see
such a set of considerations, based on 'needs', comfort, and the goal of
local prosperity, as justifying the consigner's action.
One is not generally entitled to thus simply transfer the risks and costs
arising from one's own life onto other uninvolved parties, to get oneself
out of a hole of one's own making by creating harm or risk of harm to
someone else who has had no share in creating the situation. To create
serious risks and costs, especially risks to life or health for such others,
simply to avoid having to make some changes to a comfortable life style, or
even for a somewhat better reason, is usually thought deserving of moral
condemnation, and sometimes considered a crime; for example, the action
of a company in creating risks to the lives or health of its workers or
customers to prevent itself from going bankrupt. What the consigner says
may be an explanation of his behaviour, but it is not a justification.
The problem raised by nuclear waste disposal is by no means a perfect
analogy to the bus case, since, for example, the passengers on the nuclear
bus cannot get off the bus or easily throw out the lethal package. In many
crucial moral respects, however, the nuclear waste storage problem as it
affects future people, the passengers in the bus we are considering, resembles the consignment of the faultily packaged lethal gas. Not only are
rather similar moral principles involved, but a rather similar set of arguments to the lamentable excuses the consigner presents have been seriously put up to justify nuclear development, the difference being that in the
nuclear case these arguments have been widely accepted. There is also
some parallel in the risks involved; there is no known safe way to package
the highly toxic wastes generated by nuclear plants that will be spread
around the world if large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.1 The
wastes problem will not be a slight one, with each one of the more than
2,000 reactors envisaged by the end of the century, producing on average
annual wastes containing one thousand times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.2 The wastes include not merely the spent fuels and their
radioactive by-products, but also everything they contaminate, from fuel
containers to the thousands of widely distributed decommissioned nuclear
�136 R. and V. Routley
reactors which will have to be abandoned, still in a highly radioactive
condition, after the expiry of their expected lifetimes of about thirty years,
and which have been estimated to require perhaps one and a half million
years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.3 The wastes must be kept
suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime; for
fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or
so, and for the actinides (transuranic elements) which include plutonium,
there is a half-million to a million-year storage problem.4
Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed longterm methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of
waste that have been produced over the last twenty years.5 With present
known short-term surface methods of storage there is a continued need for
human intervention to keep the material isolated from the environment,
while with proposed longer-term methods such as storage in salt mines or
granite to the risk of human interference there are added the risks of
leakage, e.g. through water seepage, and of disturbance, for example
through climatic change, earth movements, etc. The risks are significant:
no reasonable person with even a limited acquaintance with the history of
human affairs over the last 3,000 years could be confident of safe storage
by methods involving human intervention over the enormous time periods
involved. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and
climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period which has
seen a number of ice ages and great fluctuations in climate for example,
could be confident that the waste material could be safely stored for the
vast periods of time required. Much of this waste is highly toxic; for
example, even a beachball sized quantity of plutonium appropriately
distributed is enough to give every person on the planet lung cancer - so
that a leak of even a small part of this waste material could involve huge
loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of
immense areas of land.6
Given the enormous costs which could be involved for the future, it is
plainly grossly inadequ'ate'to merely speculate concerning untested, but
possibly or even probably, safe methods for disposal of wastes. Yet none
of the proposed methods has been properly tested, and they may prove to
involve all sorts of unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
�Obligations to the Future 137
geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long-term storage method could be devised, there is the
problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it would be, especially if, as seems likely, such a
method proved expensive economically and politically, seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future not
previously encountered in human affairs, and certainly not conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.7 Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless
guarding of long-term storage sites through perhaps a million years of
possible future human activity, weapons-grade radioactive material will
be accessible, over much of the million-year storage period, to any party
who is in a position to retrieve it.
Our behaviour in creating this nightmare situation for the future is
certainly no better than that of the consigner in the bus example. Industrialized countries, in order to get out of a mess of their own making essentially the creation of economies dependent on an abundance" of
non-renewable energy in a situation where it is in fact in limited supply opt for a 'solution' which may enable them to avoid the making of uncomfortable changes during the lifetime of those now living, at the expense of
passing heavy burdens on to the inhabitants of the earth at a future time burdens in the shape of costs and risks which, just as in the bus case, may
adversely affect the life and health of future people and their opportunity
to lead a decent life.8
It is sometimes suggested that analogies like the bus example are defective; that morally they are crucially different from the nuclear case, since
future people, unlike the passengers in the bus, will benefit directly from
nuclear development, which will provide an abundance of energy for the
indefinite future. But this is incorrect. Nuclear fission creates wastes
which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the breeder
reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only 150 years. It will do
nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose
lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 30,000
generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks,
without any corresponding benefits, in order to provide for the extravagant energy use of only five generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop-gap, it
seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a
�138 R. and V. Routley
transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a
future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be
very much worse placed to cope with it.9 For they may well have to face
the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world not only
burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in
which, if the nuclear proponents' dream of global industrialization is
realized, more and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use, and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and
soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of
the basis of life, are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the
idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission
energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The 'solution' then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at
a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but
which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Just as in the bus
case, contemporary industrial society proposes to get itself out of a hole of
its own making by creating risk of harm, and by transferring costs and
risks, to someone else who has had no part in producing the situation and
who will obtain no clear benefit. It has clear alternatives to this action.
That it does not take them is due essentially to its unwillingness to avoid
changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to its desire to protect the
interests of those who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the same standards of behaviour and
moral principles that we acknowledge (in principle if perhaps often not in
fact) in the contemporary world, it will not be easy to avoid the conclusion
that the situation involves injustice with respect to future people on a
grand scale. It seems to us that there are only two plausible moves that
might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued
that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the
contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the
recipients of our nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly,
an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course
to say that there are no circumstances in which such an action might
possibly be justifiable, or at least where the case is less clearcut. It is the
same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the
�Obligations to the Future 139
package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances
might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We turn now to the
first of these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development, to the philosophical question of our obligations to the future.
II. Obligations to the Distant Future
The area in which these philosophical problems arise is that of the distant
(i.e. non-immediate) future, that is, the future with which people alive
today will make no direct contact; the immediate future provides comparatively few problems for moral theories. The issues involved, although of
far more than academic interest, have not received any great attention in
recent philosophical literature, despite the fact that the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail
to pass, and also raises a number of questions in political philosophy
concerning the adequacy of accepted institutions which leave out of
account the interests of future people.
Moral philosophers have predictably differed on the issue. But contrary
to the picture painted in a recent, widely read, and influential work
discussing it, Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature, a good many
philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come
down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and
interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately
future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories
- those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take
them seriously or who assign them less weight, those who deny, or who
are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are
moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those like Passmore
and Golding who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on
both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the
view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there
are no moral obligations to the future beyond those to the next generation.
• According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally
unconstrained; there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act
deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply, that we don't have obligations to
the (non-immediate) future, i.e. those who have opted for the uncon-
�140 R. and V. Routley
strained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as
presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation
is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration
and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral
obligation, or requirements for moral obligation, which would rule out
obligations to the non-immediate future are these: First, there are those
accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held
be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will
not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course
they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have for their rights
against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would
require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariantly
over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not
be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institution would do it for them.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out
the distant future as a field of moral obligation, as they not only require a
commonality, or some sort of common basis, which cannot be guaranteed
in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or
reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of
moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange, the interests of future people
must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be
parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the
distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground
moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as
sympathy and love. There are some difficulties also about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has no sympathy. On
the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for
future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary
�Obligations to the Future 141
people have no obligations to future people and can harm them as it suits
them.
What all these views have in common is a naturalistic picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something
(e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some
characteristic one can fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).10
Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually
thought to characterize it, such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features), are lost, especially where there is a choice
of whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so
of whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as
to exclude people in the distant future.
However, the view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act as one likes with respect to them, is a
very difficult one to sustain. Consider the example of a scientific group
which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb which is to be set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of
its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate
descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the
distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the
action. The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in
the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being unduly expensive or badly
designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to
future people. The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of examples: A firm discovers it can make a
handsome profit from mining, processing, and manufacturing a new type
of material which, although it causes no problems for present people or
their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years
decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any
consideration for the harm it does to future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view might seem childishly
obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which
they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have a number of
philosophers writing on the issue endorsed this position, but it is the clear
�142 R. and V. Routley
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of economic theory. It does not appear, on the other hand,
that those who opt for the unconstrained position have considered such
examples and endorsed them as morally acceptable, despite their being
clearly implied by their position. We suspect that when it is brought out
that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being
free to act implies, among other things being free to inflict pointless harm,
most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to
assert that it was not what they intended. What those who have put
forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in mind in denying
moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives. The view that the future can take
care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present. But it is not. It is not as if, in cases such as those discussed above
and the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of
itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so must acquire many
of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting
the present and immediate future. The thesis seems thus to assume an
incorrect model of an independent and unrelated future.
Also, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people
does not amount to the same as saying that we are free to do as we like with
respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving
them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have, or has not
acquired, an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been
involved - that one has no responsibility for his life - does not imply that
one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him
or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could
seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
failure to make an important distinction between, on the one hand, acquired or assumed obligations towards somebody, for which some act of
acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and on the
other hand moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should
not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of
acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and
kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or
be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be
contracted. In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a
causal agent aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his
�Obligations to the Future 143
action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or assumed. Thus
there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can
apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied. They apply as a
result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a
reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to
what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet)
exist. While it may be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people
must make special sacrifices of an heroic kind for future people, or even to
help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to
be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the bus example, the
consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never
assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not
know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them, and that they
are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special
obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue in respect of both the
bus and the nuclear case is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility
for the lives of the people involved.
The confusion of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off
non-acquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral
obligation' in philosophy to indicate any type of deontic constraint, while
in natural language it is used to indicate something which has to be
assumed or acquired. Hence the equation and at least one root of the
unconstrained position, that is of the belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to a more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent position. Passmore's position in [1] is a striking example of the second ambivalent
position. On the one hand Passmore regularly gives the impression of one
championing future people; for example, in the final sentence of [1] he
says, concerning men a century hence:
My sole concern is that we should do nothing which will reduce their
freedom of thought and action, whether by destroying.the natural
world which makes that freedom possible or the social traditions
which permit and encourage it.
�144 R. and V. Routley
Earlier (esp. pp. 84-85) Passmore appears to endorse the principle 'that we
ought not to act so as certainly to harm posterity' and claims (p. 98) that,
even where there are uncertainties, 'these uncertainties do not justify
negligence'. Nevertheless, though obligations concerning non-immediate
posterity are thus admitted, the main thrust of Passmore's argument is
entirely different, being in favour of the unconstrained position according
to which we have no obligations to non-immediate posterity. Thus his
conclusion (p. 91):
So whether we approach the problem of obligations to posterity by
way of Bentham and Sidgwick, Rawls or Golding, we are led to
something like the same conclusion: our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able
to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and
that is all.11
Passmore's position is, to all appearances, simply inconsistent. There are
two ways one might try to render it consistent, but neither is readily
available to Passmore. The first is by taking advantage of the distinction
between moral constraints and acquired obligations, but a basis for this
distinction is not evident in Passmore's work and indeed the distinction is
antithetical to the analyses of obligation that Passmore tries to synthesize
with his own analysis in terms of loves. The second, sceptical, route to
consistency is by way of the argument that we shall consider shortly, that
there is always gross uncertainty with respect to the distant future, uncertainty which relieves us in practice of any moral constraints regarding the
distant future. But though Passmore's writing strongly suggests this uncertainty argument (especially his sympathetic discussion of the Premier
of Queensland's argument against conservationists [p. 77]), he also rules it
out with the claim that uncertainties do not justify negligence.12
Many of the accounts of moral obligation that give rise to the unconstrained position are fused in Passmore's work, again not entirely consistently, since the different accounts exploited do not give uniform results.
Thus the primary account of obligation is said to be in terms of loves though the account is never satisfactorily formulated or developed - and it
is suggested that because our loves do not extend into the distant future,
neither do our obligations. This sentimental account of obligation will
obviously lead to different results from utilitarian accounts of obligation,
which however Passmore appeals to in his discussion of wilderness. In yet
other places in [1], furthermore, social contract and moral community
�Obligations to the Future 145
views are appealed to - see, e.g., the treatment of animals, of preservation, and of duties to nature. In the case of obligations to future people,
however, Passmore does try to sketch an argument - what we call the
convergence argument - that all the accounts lead in the end to the
unconstrained position.
As well as the convergence argument, and various uncertainty arguments to be considered later, Passmore appears to endorse several other
arguments in favour of his theme that there are in practice no obligations to
the distant future. In particular, he suggests that such obligations would in
practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be
encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive
generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves,
only to the succeeding generation. We outline three objections to this
chain account. First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the
future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no
question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations,
since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a
way which may create individual responsibility, and which can't necessarily be sheeted home to an entire generation. Secondly, such chains, since
they are non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant
future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as
examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the
cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which
show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence
matters.13 Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be
achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant
future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible
with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by,
ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written
off as 'never-never land' examples, since many cases of environmental
exploitation might be seen as of just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case
but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term
depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overcropping. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations
in the way the chain picture suggests.
�146 R. and V. Routley
Passmore tries to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms
of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally
required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired
obligation and between obligation and supererogation, this is just to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an
unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm, than
one is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from beating and
robbing some stranger and leaving him to starve.
Passmore's most sustained argument for the unconstrained position is a
convergence argument, that different analyses of obligations, including
his own, lead to the one conclusion. This style of argument is hardly
convincing when there are well-known accounts of obligation which do
not lead to the intended conclusion, e.g. deontological accounts such as
those of Kant and of modern European schools, and teleological accounts
such as those of Moore (in [8]). But such unfavourable positions are either
rapidly passed over or ignored in Passmore's historical treatment and
narrow selection of historical figures. The style of argument becomes even
less persuasive when it is discovered that the accounts of the main authorities appealed to, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Rawls,14 do not lead, without
serious distortion, to the intended conclusion. Indeed Passmore has twisted the historical and textual evidence to suit his case, as we now try to
indicate.
Consider Bentham first. Passmore's assumption, for which no textual
evidence is cited, ls is that no Benthamite calculation can take account of a
future more extensive than the immediate future (cf. pp. 87-88). The
assumption seems to be based simply on the fact that Bentham remarked
that 'the value of the pleasure or pain to each person to be considered in
any estimate will be greater or less in virtue of the following circumstances'. '3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness'
([10], p. 16). But this does nothing to show that future persons are discounted: the certainty and propinquity do not concern persons, but the
utilities of the persons concerned. As regards which persons are concerned in any calculation Bentham is quite explicit, detailing how
to take an exact account. . . of the general tendency of any act.. . .5 .
Take an account of the number of persons whose interests appear to
be concerned; and repeat the above process [summation of values of
pleasure and of pain] with respect to each. ([10], p. 16)
�Obligations to the Future 147
It follows that Bentham's calculation takes account of everyone (and, in
his larger scheme, every sentient creature) whose interests appear to be
concerned: if the interests of people in the distant future appear to be
concerned - as they are in conservation issues - they are to be included in
the calculation. And there is independent evidence16 that in Bentham's
view the principle of utility was not temporally restricted: 'that is useful
which, taking all times and all persons into consideration, leaves a balance
of happiness' ([10], pp. 17-18, our italics). Thus the future cut-off that
Passmore has attributed to Bentham is contradicted by Bentham's own
account.
The case of Sidgwick is more complex, because there is isolated oscillation in his application of utilitarianism between use of utility and of
(something like) expected utility (see [11], pp. 381,414): Sidgwick's utilitarianism is, in its general characterization, essentially that of Bentham:
the conduct which . . . is objectively right is that which will produce
the greatest amount of happiness on the whole; that is, taking into
account all those whose happiness is affected by the conduct. ([11], p.
411)
All includes all sentient beings, both existing and to exist, as Sidgwick goes
on to explain (p. 414). In particular, in answer to the question 'How far are
we to consider the interests of posterity when they seem to conflict with
those of existing human beings?' Sidgwick writes ([11], p. 414, our italics):
It seems, however, clear that the time at which a man exists cannot
affect the value of his happiness from a universal point of view; and
that the interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as
those of his contemporaries, except in so far as the effect of his
actions on posterity - and even the existence of human beings to be
affected - must necessarily be more uncertain.
But Passmore manages, first of all, to give a different sense to what
Sidgwick is saying by adjusting the quotation, by omitting the clause we
have italicized, which equalizes the degree of concern for present and
future persons, and by italicizing the whole except-clause, thereby placing
much greater emphasis than Sidgwick does on uncertainty. For according
to Sidgwick's impartiality principle, 'the mere difference in time is not a
�148 R. and V. Routley
reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of one
-amount than to that of another' ([11], p. 381; see also p. 124). The apparent
tension in Sidgwick's theory as to whether uncertainty should be taken
into account is readily removed by resort to a modern distinction between
values and expected values (i.e. probability weighted values); utilitarian
rightness is defined as before in terms of the net happiness of all concerned
over all time without mention of uncertainty or probabilities, but it is
distinguished from probable rightness (given present information), in the
utilitarian sense,17 which is defined in terms of the expected net happiness
of those concerned, using present probabilities. It is the latter notion, of
probable rightness, that practical reasoning is commonly concerned with
and that decision theory studies; and it is this that Passmore supposes
Sidgwick is using ([1], p. 84). But it is evident that the utilitarian determination of probable rightness, like that of rightness, will sometimes take
into account the distant future - as Sidgwick's discussion of utilitarian
determination of optimum population (immediately following his remark
on uncertainty) does. So how does Passmore contrive to reverse matters,
to have Sidgwick's position lead to his own unconstrained conclusion?
The answer is: By inserting an additional assumption of his own - which
Sidgwick would certainly have rejected - that the uncertainties entitle us
to ignore the distant future. What Passmore has implicitly assumed in his
claim ([1], p. 85) that 'utilitarian principles [such as Sidgwick's] are not
strong enough' 'to justify the kinds of sacrifice some conservationists now
call upon us to make' is his own thesis that 'The uncertainty of harms we
are hoping to prevent would in general entitle us to ignore them.. .'. From
a decision-theory viewpoint this is simply irrational18 unless the probabilities of damage are approaching zero. We will deal with the essentially
sceptical uncertainty arguments on which Passmore's position depends
shortly: here it is enough to observe that Sidgwick's position does not lead
to anything like that which Passmore attributes to him - without uncertainty assumptions which Sidgwick would have rejected (for he thought
that future people'will certainly have pleasure and suffer pain).
We can also begin to gauge from Passmore's treatment of nineteenthcentury utilitarians, such as Bentham and Sidgwick, the extent of the
distortion which underlies his more general historical case for the unconstrained position which, so he claims,
represents accurately enough what, over the last two centuries, men
have seen as their duty to posterity as a whole. . . . ([1], p. 91)
�Obligations to the Future 149
The treatment accorded Rawls in only marginally more satisfactory.
Passmore supposes that Rawls's theory of justice leads directly to the
unconstrained position ([1], p. 87 and p. 91), whereas Rawls claims ([5], p.
293) that we have obligations to future people just as to present ones. But
the situation is more complicated than Rawls's claim would indicate, as we
now try to explain in a summary way (more detail is given in the Appendix). For, in order to justify this claim on his theory (with its present
time-of-entry interpretation), Rawls has to invoke additional and dubious
motivational assumptions; even so the theory which thus results does not
yield the intended conclusion, but a conclusion inconsistent with Rawls's
claim. However, by changing the time-of-entry interpretation to an omnitemporal one, Rawls's claim does result from the theory so amended.
Moreover, the amended theory also yields, by exactly Rawls's argument
for a just saving rate, a resource conservation policy, and also a case
against nuclear development. Accordingly Passmore's other claims regarding Rawls are mistaken, e.g. that the theory cannot justify a policy of
resource conservation. Rawls does not emerge unscathed either. As on
the issue of whether his contract is a necessary condition for obligations,
so on obligations which the contract yields to the distant future, Rawls is
far from consistent. Furthermore, institutions such as qualified market
and voting systems are recommended as just though from a future perspective their results are far from that. Rawls, then, does not take obligations to the future with full seriousness.
In sum, it is not true that the theory of Rawls, any more than the theories
of the historical figures actually discussed by Passmore, unequivocally
supports the unconstrained position.
III. Uncertainty and Indeterminacy Arguments
Although there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the qualified
position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant
future: there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the
present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much
in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much
less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present
�150 R. and V. Routley
people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in most
modern economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of an (opportunity cost) discount rate. The attempt to
apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds
of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal
constraints, and cannot determine what those constraints are. There are,
moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt one which
discounts the future is to beg all the questions at issue. The discounting
move often has the same result as the unconstrained position; if, for
instance, we consider the cancer example and consider costs as payable
compensation, it is evident that, over a sufficiently long period of time,
discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no
recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short,
even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to
achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about fifteen years,19 and application of such rates would
simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type the
whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would
violate moral constraints.20
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis
concerning the distant future.21 But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and
benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases
where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very
much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much)
higher probabilities obtain. So in the case of conflict between the present
and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the
people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower
�Obligations to the Future 151
probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the
present, assuming that anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it can't be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it
is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so
years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of
future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful or trivial benefits for some
present people, in the shape of the opportunity to continue unnecessarily
high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted, such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action is acceptable
provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit
approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability
frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned, or for
dealing with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a
firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm
stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits
involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party
to another. Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different
parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself
by imposing costs ony ? - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted by some proponents of nuclear energy,
who attempt to dismiss the costs to future people with the soothing remark
that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The transfer point
is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on by McCracken
[16] in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between
nuclear risks and those from cigarette smoking. In the latter case those
who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming
extent* those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In
contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be
risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also
those of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related
to a person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
�152 R. and V. Routley
happiness sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different
parties, and the introduction of probability considerations does not change
the principles involved but merely complicates analyses. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some
moral problems such as the bus example do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the bus example
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and
important ones used by philosophers and others to argue for the position
that we cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our
actions on the distant future. There are two strands to the uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently entangled. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalized uncertainty argument
which runs as follows: In contrast to the exact information we can obtain
about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our
actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly, and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the
present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More
formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information; there is no reliable information at present as regards the distant future; therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
The first argument is essentially a variation on a sceptical argument in
epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace
'obligations' by 'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument
above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the
degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate
future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral
consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the
future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and
�Obligations to the Future 153
the adjacent future and present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and
constantly do act on the basis of such 'unreliable' information as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels 'uncertainty'; for scepticproof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. A
good example is again the bus case. We do not need to know for certain
that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not,
in order for us to condemn the consigner's action. It is enough that there is
a significant risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the
decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and the prospects of the
passengers quite uncertain; the resolution of the problem is still clearly in
favour of the so-called 'speculative' and 'unreliable'. But if we do not
require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the
future? Why should we require epistemic standards for the future which
the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and
adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a
necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant
future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard. But such an
epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests,
in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it
already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each
class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in
practice take the interests of future people into account, because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what
the likely consequences of actions upon it will be and therefore, however
good our intentions to the people of the distant future, in practice we have
no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain
incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no
rational ground for choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can also be put in this way: If moral principles are, like other
principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as 'if* has character
h then x is wrong, for every (action) x', then what the argument claims is
�154 R. and V. Routley
that we can never obtain the information about future actions which would
enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral
principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be
applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary
action of the 'It is wrong to do x' type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument have to be conceded.
If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the
effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or
hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply
theoretically to the future, will not be applicable in practice for obtaining
any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant future will
impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future is always so grossly
uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of
uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent)
fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude
constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is
commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be
needed in some cases is the creation of"a significant risk. Again there is
considerable uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at
all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of
much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have
any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in girls' names or
men's footwear, or what brands of ice cream people will be eating if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3,000
years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to
have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will
need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or
the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of
non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. While it is true that there are many areas in which the morally relevant
information needed is uncertain or unavailable, and in which we cannot
therefore determine satisfactorily how to act, there are certainly others in
�Obligations to the Future 155
which uncertainty in morally relevant areas is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient
for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases,
especially where spatially remote people are involved. The case of nuclear
waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people,
seems to be of the latter sort. Here there is no gross indeterminacy or
uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what
may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage
does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as we can see
from the bus example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the corresponding defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty
arguments used to write off probable harm to future people as outside the
scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both
of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the
other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example,
we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because
we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not
be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would
affect us (cf. Passmore [1]). But this is to insist upon complete certainty of
a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where
there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part,
because they may be morons or forever plugged into enjoyment- or other
machines (Golding [12]). Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist
approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain
properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating
consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says
that the solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn't
looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. Neither the contemporary
nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a
lapse into universal moronity or universal pleasure-machine escapism is a
serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast
�156 R. and V. Routley
with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable
risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilization through destruction of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to
future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the
argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent
storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped
waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real
possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still
does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and
that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this
type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may
discover a cure for cancer, and the fact that this appears to be a real and not
merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm in the
example discussed above, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer
in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was
certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases, before such
actions could be considered admissible, what would be required is far
more than a possibility, real or not22 - it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique
for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of most of these uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the bus example, where the
consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of
his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to
deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the
bus may break down and they may all change to a different bus leaving the
parcel behind, or the bus may crash, killing all the passengers before the
container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities, of course, but
there is no positive reason to believe that they are any more than that, that
is they are not real possibilities. The strategy is to stress such outside
possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross
uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will
�Obligations to the Future 157
break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities,
that uncertainty about the future is so great as to preclude the consigners'
taking account of the passengers' welfare and of the real possibility of
harm from his parcel, and thereby excuse his action. A related strategy is
to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby
imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints .This move
implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty, or at
least a very high probability, of harm is required before an action can be
judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree
of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat
the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not
so.
An argument closely related to the uncertainty arguments is based on
the non-existence and indeterminacy of the future.23 An item is indeterminate in a given respect if its properties in that respect are, as a matter of
logic, not settled (nor are they settlable in a non-arbitrary fashion). The
respects in which future items are indeterminate are well enough known
for a few examples to serve as reminders: all the following are indeterminate: the population of Australia at 2001, its distribution, its age structure,
the preferences of its members for folk music, wilderness, etc., the size
and shape of Wollongong, the average number of rooms in its houses and
in its office blocks, and so on. Philosophical discussion of such indeterminacy is as old as Aristotle's sea battle and as modern as truth-value gaps
and fuzzy logics, and many positions have been adopted on the existence
and determinacy of future items. Nevertheless theories that there are
obligations to the future are not sensitive to the metaphysical position
adopted concerning the existence or non-existence of the future. Any
theory which denied obligations to the future on the metaphysical grounds
that the future did not exist, and did not have properties, so that the
present could not be related to it, would be committed to denying such
obvious facts as that the present could causally influence the future, that
present people could be great-grandparents of purely future people, and so
on, and hence would have to be rejected on independent grounds. This is
not to say that there are not important problems about the existence or
non-existence of future items, problems which are perhaps most straightforwardly handled by a Meinongian position which allows that items
which do not exist may have properties. The non-existence of the future
�158 R. and V. Routley
does raise problems for standard theories which buy the Ontological
Assumption (the thesis that what does not exist does not have properties),
especially given the natural (and correct) inclination to say that the future
does not (now) exist; but such theories can adopt various strategies for
coping with these problems (e.g. the adoption of a platonistic position
according to which the future does now exist, or the allowance for certain
sorts of relations between existents at different times), although the satisfactoriness of these strategies is open to question (cf. [4]). Thus whether or
not the Ontological Assumption is assumed and however it is applied, it
will be allowed that future items will have properties even if they do not
have them now, and that is enough to provide the basis for moral concern
about the future. Thus the thesis of obligations to the future does not
presuppose any special metaphysical position on the existence of the
future.
If the non-existence of future items creates no special problems for
obligations to the future, the same is not true of their indeterminacy.
Whether the indeterminacy of future items is seen as a logical feature of
the future which results from the non-existence of purely future items or
whether one adopts a (mistaken) platonistic view of the future as existing
and sees the indeterminacy as an epistemological one resulting from our
inability to know the character of these entities - that is, we cannot
completely know the future .though it exists and has a definite characterwhichever view we take indeterminacy still creates major difficulties for
certain ethical theories and their treatment of the future.
The difficulties arise for theories which appear to require a high level of
determinacy with respect to the number and character of future items, in
particular calculus-type theories such as utilitarianism in its usual forms,
where the calculations are critically dependent on such information as
numbers, totals, and averages, information which so far as the future is
concerned is generally indeterminate. The fact that this numerical information is typically indeterminate means that insofar as head-count utilitarianism requires determinate information on numbers, it is in a similar
position to theories discussed earlier; it may apply theoretically to future
people, but since the calculations cannot be applied to them their interests
will be left out of account. And, in fact, utilitarianism for the most part
does not, and perhaps cannot, take future creatures and their interests
seriously; there is little discussion as to how the difficulties or impossibility of calculations regarding the open future are to be obtained. Non-platonistic utilitarianism is in logical difficulty on this matter, while platonis-
�Obligations to the Future 159
tic utilitarianism - which faces a range of other objections - is inapplicable
because of epistemic indeterminacy. We have yet another case of a theory
of the sort that applies theoretically but in practice doesn't take the future
seriously. But far from this showing that future people's interests should
be left out of account, what these considerations show are deficiencies in
these sorts of theories, which require excessive determinacy of information. This kind of information is commonly equally unavailable for the
accepted areas of moral constraint, the present and immediate future; and
the resolution of moral issues is often not heavily dependent on knowledge
of such specific determinate features as numbers or other determinate
features. For example, we do not need to know how many people there
will be on the bus, how intelligent they are, what their preferences are or
how badly they will be injured, in order to reach the conclusion that the
consigner's action in despatching his parcel is a bad one. Furthermore, it is
only the ability of moral considerations to continue to apply in the absence
of determinate information about such things as numbers that makes it
possible to take account of the possible effects of action, as the risks
associated with action - something which is quite essential even for the
present if moral considerations are to apply in the normal and accepted
way. For it is essential in order to apply moral considerations in the
accepted way that we consider alternative worlds, in order to take account
of options, risks, and alternative outcomes; but these alternative or counterfactual worlds are not in so different a position from the future with
respect to determinacy; for example, there is indeterminacy with respect
to the number of people who may be harmed in the bus case or in apossible
nuclear reactor melt-down. These alternative worlds, like the distant
future, are indeterminate in some respects, but not totally indeterminate.
It might still be thought that the indeterminacy of the future, for example
with respect to number and exact character, would at least prevent the
interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict
with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown, how can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future where this information is available in a more
or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of
sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people,
when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are
indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the
future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by ignoring
�160 R. and V. Routley
such factors. Nor are such distributional problems as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to
focus on them would suggest. It should be conceded then that there will be
cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts
very difficult or indeed impossible to resolve - a realistic ethical theory
will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other
conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution
of the issue, e.g. the bus example which is a conflict case of a type. In
particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing
numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to
know only the most general probable characteristics of future people.
Moreover, even where numbers are relevant often only bounds will be
required, exact numerical counts only being required where, for instance,
margins are narrow; e.g. issues may be resolved as in parliament where a
detailed vote (or division) is only required when the issue is close. It is
certainly not necessary then to have complete determinacy to resolve all
cases of conflict.
The question we must ask then is what features of future people could
disqualify them from moral consideration or reduce their claims to it to
below those of present people? The answer is: in principle None. Prima
facie moral principles are universalizable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.24 But universalizability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are
capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present; in other words, a theory
that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as
regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup such as
(white-skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that
would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been
looking at, uncertainty and indeterminacy; what we have argued is that it
would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral
claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect
certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or practical
course of action given only present information). In particular they do not
affect cases of the sort being considered, the nuclear one, where highly
determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics
of the class likely to be harmed or certainty of damage are not required.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is
not needed: it is enough to require that the temporal position of a person
�Obligations to the Future 161
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration;25 inversely that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this
universalizability, there is the same obligation to future people as to the
present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and
their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of
the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions' causing harm or
damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob
future people of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not free us of these obligations. If, in a closely
comparable case concerning the present, the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent
grounds for requiring greater certainty of harm in the future case under
consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for
proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion
tentatively reached in our first section, that proposals for nuclear development in the present state of technology for future waste disposal are
immoral.
IV. Overriding Consideration Arguments
In the first part we noticed that the consigner's action could not be justified
by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the
firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact
that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
We also observed that the principle on which this assessment was based,
that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these
sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the
nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are thus
most commonly advanced to promote nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment,
investment, and consumption-do not even begin to show that the nuclear
alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct (and there is reason to doubt
that most of them are),26 the arguments would fail because economics
must operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice
versa.
�162 R. and V. Routley
What one does have to consider, however, are moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is
the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the bus case,
the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is
taken the village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a
justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the
passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs
and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so
clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in
such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on
competing duties to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such
moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives),
and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument-for example, if in the bus
case it turns out that the villagers have another option to starving or to the
sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way - then
the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. We want to argue
that suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument,
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse
than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these
arguments as well. In short, the arguments depend essentially on the
presentation of false dichotomies.
The first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialized countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often
claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the
standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment
and poverty in the industrialized nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third
world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to
increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the
�Obligations to the Future 163
diversion of great amounts of available capital into an industry which is not
only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps
to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for
labour use. 27 The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third
world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and
economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive
amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
and creates negligible employment, while politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralized entrenched power and reduces the
chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large
part of the problem.28 The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of
people of the third world does not, of course, mean that it is not in the
interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernized and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually
organized; but it is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands
these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor.
The poverty argument then is a fraud. Nuclear energy will not be used to
help the poor.29 Both for the third world and for the industrialized countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources,30 alternatives which are
morally acceptable and socially preferable to nuclear development, and
which have far better prospects for helping the poor.31
The second major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to
a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and
institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technological, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable
institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The
argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.32 .
The lights-going-out argument raises rather sharply questions as to
what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary
for a good society. These are questions which deserve much fuller treatment than we can allot them here, but a few brief points should be made.
The argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to
existing high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are
uniformly and uniquely valuable; it also assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it can't be changed in the direction of energy
�164 R. and V. Routley
conservation or alternative energy sources without collapse. Such a society has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept. The assumption that technological society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all, it
has survived events such as world wars which have required major social
and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western
society's demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse,
not only would it be committed to a programme of increasing destruction,
but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would
very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base
which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary
society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but
if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions? but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the
political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue
that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable,
presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, e.g. from history, is that no very high level of material
affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower
energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable
than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we believe it is, it is not necessary to presuppose such
a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of
the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of wellbeing is required to consume less energy than at present, and certainly far
less than the large increase over present levels of consumption which is
assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.33 What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going
out in western civilization, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the
time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy
Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
�Obligations to the Future 165
is obtained by nuclear-fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralized,
controlled, and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy
source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power,
and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether
capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political
system and over people's lives, even more than they do at present. Very
persuasive arguments have been advanced by civil liberties groups and
others in a number of countries to suggest that such a society would tend to
become authoritarian, if only as an outcome of its response to the threat
posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation.34
There are reasons to believe then that with nuclear development what
we would be passing on to future generations would be some of the worst
aspects of our society (e.g. the consumerism, growing concentration of
power, destruction of the natural environment, and latent authoritarianism), while certain valuable aspects would be lost or threatened. Political
freedom is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives which
do not involve such unacceptable consequences are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the
loss of all that is valuable, but the development of alternative technologies
and life-styles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and
further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly
centralized nuclear option.35 The lights-going-out argument, as a moral
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false
dichotomy. Thus both the escape routes, the appeal to moral conflict and
to the appeal to futurity, are closed.
If then we apply the same standards of morality to the future as we
acknowledge for the present - as we have argued we should - the conclusion that the proposal to develop nuclear energy on a large scale is a crime
against the future is inevitable, since both the escape routes are closed.
There are, of course, also many other grounds for ruling it out as morally
unacceptable, for saying that it-is not only a crime against the distant future
but also a crime against the present and immediate future. These other
grounds for moral concern about nuclear energy, as it affects the present
and immediate future, include problems arising from the possibility of
catastrophic releases of radioactive fuel into the environment or of waste
material following an accident such as reactor melt-down, of unscheduled
discharges of radiation into the environment from a plant fault, of proli-
�166 R. and V. Routley
feration of nuclear weapons, and of deliberate release or threat of release
of radioactive materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion. All these
are important issues, of much moral interest. What we want to claim,
however, is that on the basis of its effects on the future alone, the nuclear
option is morally unacceptable.
Appendix
Passmore's Treatment ofRawls,
and What Really Happens on Rawls's Theory
Passmore takes it that Rawls's theory yields an unconstrained position
but, according to Rawls, the theory leads to quite the opposite result;
namely,
persons in different generations [and not merely neighbouring generations] have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound
by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to
define justice between persons at different moments of time.. . . The
derivation of these duties and obligations may seem at first a somewhat far-fetched application of the central doctrine. Nevertheless
these requirements would be acknowledged in the original position
[where the parties do not know to which generation they belong], and
so the conception of justice as fairness covers these matters without
any change in its basic idea. ([5], p. 293; the second insert is drawn
from p. 287)
Through judicious use of the veil of ignorance and the time of entry of
parties to the original contract position, Rawls's contract theory, unlike
simpler explicit contract theories, can yield definite obligations to distant
future people,36 for example, we ought to save at a just rate for future
people.
But, as Rawls remarks (p. 284), 'the question of justice between generations . . . subjects any ethical theory to severe if not impossible tests'. It is
doubtful that Rawls's theory as formulated passes the tests; for the theory
as formulated does not yield the stated conclusion, but a conclusion
inconsistent with the thesis that there are the same obligations to future
people as to contemporaries. Exactly how these obligations arise from the
initial agreement depends critically on the interpretation of the time of
�Obligations to the Future 167
entry of the parties into the agreement. Insofar as Rawls insists upon the
present-time-of-entry interpretation (p. 139), he has to introduce supplementary motivational assumptions in order to (try to) secure the desired
bondings between generations, in particular to ensure that the generation
of the original position saves for any later generation, even their immediate successors ([5], p. 140 and p. 292). Rawls falls back on-what is as we
have seen inadequate to the task, since it does not exclude one generation
damaging another remote generation in a way that bypasses mutually
successive generations - 'ties of sentiment between successive generations' (p. 292): to this limited extent Passmore has a point, for such a social
contract on its own (without additional assumptions about the motives of
the parties to the agreement) does not furnish obligations even to our
immediate successors. This is indicative also of the unsatisfactory instability of Rawls's theory under changes, its sensitivity to the way the original
agreement is set up, to the motivation of parties, their time of entry, what
they can know, etc.
To arrive at a more adequate account of obligations to the distant future
under Rawls's theory, let us adopt, to avoid the additional, dubious and
unsatisfactory, motivational assumptions Rawls invokes, one of the alternative - and non -equivalent - time-of-entry interpretations that Rawls lists
(p. 146), that of persons alive at some time in simultaneous agreement. Let
us call this, following Rawls's notation (on p. 140), interpretation 4b (it is
perhaps unnecessary to assume for 4b any more than 4a that all people
need be involved: it may be enough given the equivalencizing effect of the
veil of ignorance that some are, and as with the particular quantifier it is
quite unnecessary to be specific about numbers). Then of course the
parties, since they are, for all they know, of different generations, will
presumably agree on a just savings rate, and also to other just distribution
principles, simply on the basis of Rawlsian rationality, i.e. advancing their
own interests, without additional motivation assumptions. This more
appealing omnitemporal interpretation of time of entry into the agreement,
which gives a superior account of obligation to the future consistent with
Rawls's claim, Rawls in some places puts down as less than best (p. 292)
but in his most detailed account of the original position simply dismisses
(p. 139):
To conceive of the original position [as a gathering of people living at
different times] would be to stretch fantasy too far; the conception
would cease to be a natural guide to intuition.
�168 R. and V. Rout ley
This we question: it would be a better guide to intuition than a position
(like 4a) which brings out intuitively wrong results; it is a more satisfactory
guide, for example, to justice between generations than the present-timeof-entry interpretation, which fails conspicuously to allow for the range of
potential persons (all of whom are supposed to qualify on Rawls's account
for just treatment, cf. § 77). Moreover, it stretches fantasy no further than
science fiction or than some earlier contract accounts.36 But it does
require changes in the way the original position is conceived, and it does
generate metaphysical difficulties for orthodox ontological views (though
not to the same extent for the Meinongian view we prefer); for, to consider
the latter, either time travel is possible or the original hypothetical position
is an impossible situation, with people who live at different times assembled at the same time. The difficulties - of such an impossible meeting help to reveal that what Rawls's theory offers is but a colourful representation of obligations in terms of a contract agreed upon at a meeting.
The metaphysical difficulties do not concern merely possible people,
because all those involved are sometime-actual people; nor are there
really serious difficulties generated by the fact that very many of these
people do not exist, i.e. exist now. The more serious difficulties are either
those of time travel, e.g. that future parties relocated into the present may
be able to interfere with their own history, or, if time travel is ruled out
logically or otherwise, that future parties may be advantaged (or disadvantaged) by their knowledge of history and technology, and that accordingly fairness is lost. As there is considerable freedom in how we choose to
(re)arrange the original position, we shall suppose that time travel is
rejected as a means of entering the original position. For much less than
travel is required; some sort of limited communicational network which
filters out, for example, all historical data (and all cultural or species
dependent material) would suffice; and in any case if time travel were not
excluded essentially the present-time-of-entry interpretation would serve,
though fairness would again be put in doubt. The filtered communicational
hook-up by which the omnitemporal position is engineered still has - if
fairness is to be seen to be built into the decision making - to be combined
with a reinterpreted veil of ignorance, so that parties do not know where
they are located temporally any more than they know who they are
characterwise. This implies, among other things, limitations on the parties' knowledge of factual matters, such as available technology and world
and local history; for otherwise parties could work out their location,
temporal or spatial. For example, if some party knew, as Rawls supposes,
�Obligations to the Future 169
the general social facts, then he would presumably be aware of the history
of his time and so of where history ends, that is of the date of his
generation, his time (his present), and so be aware of his temporal location. These are already problems for Rawls's so-called 'present-time-ofentry interpretation' - it is, rather, a variable-time-of-entry interpretation
- given that the parties may be, as Rawls occasionally admits (e.g. p. 287),
of any one generation, not necessarily the present: either they really do
have to be ofthepresent time or they cannot be assumed to know as much
as Rawls supposes.37 There is, however, no reason why the veil of ignorance should not be extended so as to avoid this problem; and virtually any
extension that solves the problem for the variable-time-of-entry interpretation should serve, so it seems, for the omnitemporal one. We shall
assume then that the parties know nothing which discloses their respective
locations (i.e. in effect we write in conditions for universalizability of
principles decided upon). There are still gaps between the assumptions of
the omnitemporal position as roughly sketched and the desired conclusion
concerning obligations to the future, but (the matter is beginning to look
non-trivially provable given not widely implausible assumptions and) the
intuitive arguments are as clear as those in [5], indeed they simply restate
arguments to obligations given by Rawls.
Rawls's theory, under interpretation 4b, admits of nice application to
the problems of just distribution of material resources and of nuclear
power. The just distribution, or rate of usage, of material resources38 over
time is an important conservation issue to which Rawls's theory seems to
apply, just as readily, and in a similar fashion, to that in which it applies to
the issue of a just rate of savings. In fact the argument from the original
position for a just rate of saving - whatever its adequacy - can by simply
mimicked to yield an argument for just distribution of resources over
generations. Thus, for example:
persons in the original position are to ask themselves how much they
would be willing to save [i.e. conserve] at each stage of advance on
the assumption that all other generations are to save at the same rate
[conserve resources to the same extent]. . . . In effect, then, they
must choose a just savings principle [resources distribution principle]
that assigns an appropriate rate of accumulation to [degree of resource conservation at] each level of advance. ([5], p. 287; our
bracketed options give the alternative argument)
�170 R. and V. Routley
Just as 'they try to piece together a just savings schedule' (p. 289), so they
can try to piece together a just resource distribution policy. Just as a case
for resource conservation can be made out by appeal to the original
position, since it is going to be against the interests of, to the disadvantage
of, later parties to find themselves in a resource depleted situation (thus,
on Rawlsian assumptions, they will bargain hard for a share of resources),
so, interestingly, a case against a rapid programme of nuclear power
development can be devised. The basis of a case against large-scale
nuclear development is implicit in Rawls's contract theory under interpretation 4b, though naturally the theory is not applied in this sort of way
by Rawls. To state the case in its crude but powerful form: people from
later generations in the original position are bound to take it as against their
interests to simply carry the waste can for energy consumed by an earlier
generation. (We have already argued that they will find no convincing
overriding considerations that make it worth their while to carry the waste
can.) Thus not only has Passmore misrepresented the obligations to the
future that Rawls's theory admits; he is also wrong in suggesting (p. 87 and
p. 91) that Rawls's theory cannot justify a policy of resource conservation
which includes reductions in present consumption.
There is, in this connection, an accumulation of errors in Passmore,
some of which spill over to Rawls, which it is worth trying to set out. First,
Passmore claims ([1], p. 86; cf. also p. 90) that 'Rawls does not so much
mention the saving of natural resources'. In fact the 'husbanding of natural
resources' is very briefly considered ([5], p. 271). It is true, however, that
Rawls does not reveal any of the considerable power that his theory,
properly interpreted, has for natural resource conservation, as implying a
just distribution of natural resources over time. Secondly, Passmore attempts ([1], pp. 87 ff.) to represent the calls of conservationists for a
reduction in present resource usage and for a more just distribution as a
call for heroic self-sacrifices; this is part of his more general attempt to
represent every moral constraint with respect to the non-immediate future
as a matter of self-sacrifice. 'Rawls's theory', Passmore says (on p. 87),
'leaves no room for heroic sacrifice', and so, he infers, leaves no room for
conservation. Not only is the conclusion false, but the premiss also:
Rawls's theory allows for supererogation, as Rawls explains ([5], p. 117).
But resource conservation is, like refraining from nuclear development,
not a question of heroic self-sacrifice; it is in part a question of obligations
or duties to the distant future. And Rawls's theory allows not only for
obligations as well as supererogation, but also for natural duties. Rawls's
�Obligations to the Future 171
contract, unlike the contracts of what is usually meant by a 'contract
theory', is by no means exhaustive of the moral sphere:
But even this wider [contract] theory fails to embrace all moral
relationships, since it would seem to include only our relations with
other persons and to leave out of account how we are to conduct
ourselves towards,animals and the rest of nature. I do not contend
that the contract notion offers a way to approach these questions
which are certainly of the first importance; and I shall have to put
them aside, (p. 17)
The important class of obligations beyond the scope of the contract theory
surely generates obligations between persons which even the wider contract theory likewise cannot explain. The upshot is that such a contract
account, even if sufficient for the determination of obligations, is not
necessary. To this extent Rawls' s theory is not a full social contract theory
at all. However, Rawls appears to lose sight of the fact that his contract
theory delivers only a sufficient condition when he claims, for example (p.
298), that 'one feature of the contract doctrine is that it places an upper
bound on how much a generation can be asked to save for the welfare of
later generations'. For greater savings may sometimes be required to meet
obligations beyond those that the contract doctrine delivers. In short,
Rawls appears to have slipped into assuming, inconsistently, that his
contract theory is a necessary condition.
Although Rawls's theory caters for justice between generations and
allows the derivation of important obligations to people in the distant
future, the full theory is far from consistent on these matters and there are
significant respects in which Rawls does not take justice to the future
seriously. The most conspicuous symptoms of this are that justice to the
future is reduced to a special case, justice between generations, and that
the only aspect of justice between generations that Rawls actually considers is a just savings rate; there is, for example, no proper examination of
the just distribution of resources among generations, though these resources, Rawls believes, provide the material base of the just institutions that
he wants to see maintained. In fact Rawls strongly recommends a system
of markets as a just means for the allocation of most goods and services,
recognizing their well-known limitations only in the usual perfunctory
fashion ([5], pp. 270 ff.). Yet market systems are limited by a narrow time
horizon, and are quite ill-equipped to allocate resources in a just fashion
�172 R. and V. Rout ley
over a time span of several generations. Similarly Rawls's endorsement of
democratic voting procedures as in many cases a just method of determining procedures depends upon the assumptions that everyone with ah
interest is represented. But given his own assumptions about obligations
to the future and in respect of potential persons this is evidently not the
case. Catering in a just fashion for the interests of future people poses
serious problems for any method of decision that depends upon people
being present to represent their own interests.
Some of the more conservative, indeed reactionary, economic assumptions in Rawls emerge with the assumption that all that is required for
justice between generations is a just savings rate, that all we need to pass
on to the future are the things that guarantee appropriate savings such as
capital, factories, and machines. But the transmission of these things is
quite insufficient for justice to the future, and neither necessary nor
sufficient as a foundation for a good life for future generations. What is
required for justice is the transmission in due measure of what is valuable.
Rawls has, however, taken value accumulation as capital accumulation,
thereby importing one of the grossest economic assumptions, that capital
reflects value. But of course the accumulation of capital may conflict with
the preservation of what is valuable. It is for this sort of reason (and thus,
in essence, because of the introduction of supplementary economistic
theses which are not part of the pure contract theory) that Rawls's theory
is a reactionary one from an environmental point of view; on the theory as
presented (i.e. the contract theory plus all the supplementary assumptions) there is no need to preserve such things as wilderness or natural
beauty. The savings doctrine supposes that everything of value for transmission to the future is negotiable in the market or tradeable; but then
transmission of savings can by no means guarantee that some valuable
things, not properly represented in market systems, are not eliminated or
not passed on, thereby making future people worse off. It becomes evident
in this way, too, how culturally-bound Rawls's idea of ensuring justice to
future generations through savings is. It is not just that the idea does not
apply, without a complete overhaul, to non-industrial societies such as
those of hunter-gatherers; it does not apply to genuinely post-industrial
societies either. Consideration of such alternative societies suggests that
whafis required, in place of capital accumulation, is that we pass on what
is necessary for a good life, that we ensure that the basics are fairly
distributed over time and not eroded, e.g. that in the case of the forest
people that the forest is maintained. The narrowness of Rawls's picture,
�Obligations to the Future 173
which makes no due allowance for social or cultural diversity (from the
original contractual position on) or for individual diversity arises in part
from his underlying and especially narrow socio-economic assumption as
to what people want:
What men want is meaningful work in free association with others,
these associations regulating their relations to one another within a
framework of just basic institutions. ([5], p. 290)
This may be what many Harvard men want; but as a statement of what
men want it supplies neither sufficient nor even necessary conditions.39
NOTES
1 Thus according to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110; our italics).
There is at present no generally accepted means by which high level waste can be
permanently isolated from the environment and remain safe for very long periods.
. . . Permanent disposal of high-level solid wastes in stable geological formations is
regarded as the most likely solution, but has yet to be demonstrated as feasible. It is
not certain that such methods and disposal sites will entirely prevent radioactive
releases following disturbances caused by natural processes or human activity.
The Fox Report also quoted approvingly ([2], p. 187; our italics) the conclusion of the
British (Flowers) Report [6]:
There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until
it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exist s to ensure the
safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.
Although the absence of a satisfactory storage method has been conceded by some
leading proponents of nuclear development, e.g. Weinberg ([3], pp. 32-33), it is now
disputed by others. In particular, the headline for Cohen [15], which reads 'A substantial
body of evidence indicates that the high level radioactive wastes generated by U.S.
nuclear power plants can be stored satisfactorily in deep geological formations', has
suggested to many readers - what it was no doubt intended to suggest- that there is really
no problem about the disposal of radioactive wastes after all. Cohen presents, however,
no new hard evidence, no evidence not already available to the British and Australian
Commissions ([2] and [6]). Moreover the evidence Cohen does outline fails conspicuously
to measure up to the standards rightly required by the Flowers and Fox Reports. Does
Cohen offer a commercial-scale procedure for waste disposal which can be demonstrated
as safe? Far from it:
�174 R. and V. Routley
The detailed procedures for handling the high-level wastes are not yet definite, but
present indications are that. . . . (Cohen [1], p. 24; our italics)
Does Cohen 'demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt' the long-term safety of burial of
wastes, deep underground? Again, far from it:
On the face of it such an approach appears to be reasonably safe. . . . (p. 24; our
italics)
Cohen has apparently not realized what is required.
At issue here are not so much scientific or empirical issues as questions of methodology, of standards of evidence required for claims of safety, and above all, of values, since
claims of safety, for example, involve implicit evaluations concerning what counts as an
acceptable risk, an admissible cost, etc. In the headline 'a substantial body of evidence
. . . indicates that. . . wastes . . . can be stored satisfactorily' the key words (italicized)
are evaluative or elastic, and the strategy of Cohen's case is to adopt very low standards
for their application. But in view of what is at stake it is hardly acceptable to do this, to
dress up in this way what are essentially optimistic assurances and untested speculations
about storage, which in any case do little to meet the difficulties and uncertainties that
have been widely pointed out as regards precisely the storage proposals Cohen outlines,
namely human or natural interference or disturbance.
2 See [18], pp. 24-25.
3 On all these points, see [14], esp. p. 141. According to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110):
Parts of the reactor structure will be highly radioactive and their disposal could be
very difficult. There is at present no experience of dismantling a full size reactor.
4 See, in particular, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Friends
of the Earth Energy Paper, San Francisco 1973, p. 47; also [3], p. 32 and [14], p. 149.
5 As the discussion in [14], pp. 153-7, explains.
6 Cf. [17], pp. 35-36, [18] and, for much detail, J. R. Goffman and A. R. Tamplin, Poisoned
Power, Rodale Press, Emmau Pa. 1971.
7 On the pollution and waste disposal record of the infant nuclear industry, see [14] and
[17].
The record of many countries on pollution control, where in many cases available
technologies for reducing or removing pollution are not applied because they are considered too expensive or because they adversely affect the interests of some powerful group,
provides clear historical evidence that the problem of nuclear waste disposal would not
end simply with the devising of a 'safe' technology for disposal, even if one could be
devised which provided a sufficient guarantee of safety and was commercially feasible.
The fact that present economic and political arrangements are overwhelmingly weighted
in favour of the interests and concerns of (some) contemporary humans makes it not
unrealistic to expect the long-term nuclear waste disposal, if it involved any significant
cost at all, when public concern about the issue died down, would be seen to conflict with
the interests of contemporary groups, and that these latter interests would in many cases
be favoured. Nor, as the history of movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament shows, could generalized public concern in the absence of direct personal
interest, be relied upon to be sustained for long enough to ensure implementation of costly
or troublesome long-term disposal methods - even in those places where public concern
exists and is a politically significant force.
It must be stressed then that the problem is not merely one of disposal technique.
Historical and other evidence points to the conclusion that many of the most important
risks associated with nuclear waste disposal are not of the kind which might be amenable
�Obligations to the Future
175
to technical solutions in the laboratory. A realistic assessment of potential costs to the
future from nuclear development cannot overlook these important non-technical risk
factors.
8 Of course the effect on people is not the only factor which has to be taken into consideration in arriving at a moral judgment. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does
not confine its scope to human life. But since the harm nuclear development is likely to
cause to non-human life can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be
made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way.
9 Proponents of nuclear power often try to give the impression that future people will not
just bear costs from nuclear development but will also be beneficiaries, because nuclear
powerprovides an 'abundant' or even 'unlimited' source of energy; thus Weinberg ([3], p.
34): 'an all but infinite source of relatively cheap and clean energy'. A good example of an
attempt to create the impression that 'abundant' and 'cheap' energy from nuclear fission
will be available to 'our descendants', i.e. all future people, is found in the last paragraph
of Cohen [15]. Such claims are most misleading, since fission power even with the breeder
reactor has only about the same prospective lifetime as coal-produced electricity (a point
that can be derived using data in A. Parker, 'World Energy Resources: A Survey', Energy
Policy, Vol. 3 [1975], pp. 58-66), and it is quite illegitimate to assume that nuclear fusion,
for which there are still major unsolved problems, will have a viable, clean technology by
the time fission runs out, or, for that matter, that it ever will. Thus while some few
generations of the immediate future may obtain some benefits as well as costs, there is a
very substantial chance that tho se of the more distant future will obtain nothing but costs.
10 These feelings, of which Smith's and Hume's sympathy is representative, are but the
feeling echoes of obligation. At most, sympathy explains the feeling of obligation or lack
of it, and this provides little guide as to whether there is an obligation or not - unless one
interprets moral sympathy, the feeling of having a obligation, or being obligated, itself as
a sufficient indication of obligation, in which case moral sympathy is a non-explanatory
correlate in the feelings department of obligation itself and cannot be truly explanatory of
the ground of it; unless, in short, moral sympathy reduces to an emotive rewrite of moral
obligation.
11 Elsewhere in [1] Passmore is especially exercised that our institutions and intellectual
traditions - presumably only the better ones - should be passed on to posterity, and that
we should strive to make the world a better place, if not eventually an ideal one.
12 This is not the only philosophically important issue in environmental ethics on which
Passmore is inconsistent. Consider his: 'over-arching intention: to consider whether the
solution of ecological problems demands a moral or metaphysical revolution' (p. x),
whether the West needs a new ethic and a new metaphysics. Passmore's answer in [1] is
an emphatic No.
Only insofar as Western moralists have [made various erroneous suggestions] can
the West plausibly be said to need a 'new ethic'. What it needs, for the most part, is
not so much a 'new ethic' as adherence to a perfectly familiar ethic.
For the major sources of our ecological disasters - apart from ignorance - are
greed and shortsightedness, which amount to much the same thing. . . There is no
novelty in the view that greed is evil; no need of a new ethic to tell us as much. (p. 187)
'The view that the West now needs. . . a new concept of nature' is similarly dismissed (p.
186, cf. p. 72). But in his paper [1*] (i.e. 'Attitudes to Nature', Royal Institute of
Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 8, Macmillan, London 1975), which is said to be an attempt to
bring together and to reformulate some of the basic philosophical themes of [1], Passmore's answer is Yes, and quite different themes, inconsistent with those of [1], are
advanced:
�176 R. and V. Routley
[T]he general conditions I have laid down . . . have not been satisfied in most of the
traditional philosophies of nature. To that degree it is true, I think, that we do need a
'new metaphysics' which is genuinely not anthropocentric. . . . A 'new metaphysics', if it is not to falsify the facts, will have to be naturalistic, but not reductionist.
The working out of such a metaphysics is, in my judgement, the most important task
which lies ahead of philosophy. ([1*], pp. 260-1)
A new ethic accompanies this new metaphysics.
The emergence of new moral attitudes to nature is bound up, then, with the emergence of a more realistic philosophy of nature. That is the only adequate foundation
for effective ecological concern. ([1*], p. 264)
This is a far cry from the theme of [1] that ecological problems can be solved within the
traditions of the West.
13 Put differently, the causal linkage can bypass intermediate generations, especially given
action at a temporal distance: the chain account implies that there are no moral constraints in initiating such causal linkages. The chain picture accordingly seems to presuppose an unsatisfactory Humean model of causation, demanding contiguity and excluding
action at a distance.
14 Golding we shall concede to Passmore, though even here the case is not clearcut. For
Golding writes towards the end of his article ([12], p. 96):
My discussion, until this point, has proceeded on the view that we have obligations
to future generations. But do we? I am not sure that the question can be answered in
the affirmative with any certainty. I shall conclude this note with a very brief
discussion of some of the difficulties.
All of Passmore's material on Golding is drawn from this latter and, as Golding says,
'speculative' discussion.
15 There is no textual citation for Bentham at all for the chapter of [1] concerned, viz. Ch. 4,
'Conservation'.
16 As Passmore himself at first concedes ([1], p. 84):
If, as Bentham tells us, in deciding how to act men ought to take account of the
effects of their actions on every sentient being, they obviously ought to take account
of the pleasure and pains of the as yet unborn.
17 Neither rightness nor probable lightness in the hedonistic senses correspond to these
notions in the ordinary sense; so at least [13] argues, following much anti-utilitarian
literature.
18 On this irrationality different theories agree: the rational procedure, for example according to the minimax rule for decision-making under uncertainty, is to minimize that
outcome which maximizes harm.
19 Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to follow the market (cf.
P. A. Samuelson, Economics, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York 1967, p. 351). Thus the
rates have little moral relevance.
20 Cf. Rawls [5], p. 287: 'From a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting
future well-being on the basis of pure time preference.'
21 What the probabilities would be depends on the theory of probability adopted: a Carnapian theory, e.g., would lead back to the unconstrained position.
�Obligations to the Future 177
22 A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate. A real
possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. The contrast is with mere
logical possibility.
23 Thus, to take a simple special case, economists dismiss distant future people from their
assessments of utility, welfare, etc., on the basis of their non-existence; cf. Ng ('the utility
of a non-existent person is zero') and Harsanyi ('only existing people [not even "nonexisting potential individuals"] can have real utility levels since they are the only ones
able to enjoy objects with a positive utility, suffer from objects with a negative utility, and
feel indifferent to objects with zero utility') (see Appendix B of Y. K. Ng, 'Preference,
Welfare, and Social Welfare', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preference, Choice
and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National University, August 1977, pp. 24, 26-27).
Non-existent people have no experiences, no preferences; distant future people do not
exist; therefore distant future people have no utility assignments - so the sorites goes. But
future people at least will have wants, preferences, and so on, and these have to be taken
into account in adequate utility assessments (which should be assessed over afuture time
horizon), no matter how much it may complicate or defeat calculations.
24 There are problems about formulating universalizability satisfactorily, but they hardly
affect the point. The requisite universalizability can in fact be satisfactorily brought out
from the semantical analysis of deontic notions such as obligation, and indeed argued for
on the basis of such an analysis which is universal in form. The lawlikeness requirement,
which can be similarly defended, is essentially that imposed on genuine scientific laws by
logical empiricists (e.g. Carnap and Hempel), that such laws should contain no proper
names or the like, no reference to specific locations or times.
25 Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick [11], p. 414), and
in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and Rousseau toRawls ([5], p. 293).
How the principle is argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlying theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
26 See esp. R. Lanoue, NuclearPlants:The MoreTheyBuild, The More You Pay, Centerfor
Study of Responsive Law, Washington DC 1976; also [14], pp. 212 ff.
27 On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and Energy,
Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC 1977, pp. 1-7, and also the
details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner [7]. On the absorption
of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as well [18], p. 23. On the employment
issues, see too H. E. Daly in [9], p. 149. A more fundamental challenge to the poverty
argument appears in I. Illich, Energy and Equality, Calder & Boyars, London 1974,
where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the
opposite of what the poor need.
28 For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful,
Blond & Briggs, London 1973. As to the capital and other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and
also [7] and [9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy technology will tend to
promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries, see the paper of Waiko and other
papers in the Melanesian Environment (ed. by J. H. Winslow), Australian National
University Press, Canberra 1977.
29 This fact is implicitly recognized in [2], p. 56.
30 A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Friends of
the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 1976); see also [17],
[6], [7], [14], pp. 233 ff., and Schumacher, op. cit.
31 This is also explained in [2], p. 56.
32 An argument like this is suggested in Passmore [1], Chs. 4 and 7, with respect to the
question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance
of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned by what appears to be a future-
�178 R. and V. Routley
directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be fortunate, the best way to take care of the future
(and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to
go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has
all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
33 See [14], p. 66, p. 191, and also [7].
34 For such arguments see esp. M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A
Comment on the Individual, the State and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council
for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London
1976.
35 For a recent sketch of one such alternative which is outside the framework of the
conventional option of centralized bureaucratic socialism, see E. Callenbach's novel,
Ecotopia, Banyan Tree Books, Berkeley, California 1975. For the outline of a liberation
socialist alternative see Radical Technology (ed. by G. Boyle and P. Harper), Undercurrents Limited, London 1976, and references therein.
36 Some earlier contract theories also did. Burke's contract (in E. Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France, Dent, London 1910, pp. 93-94) 'becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and
those who are not yet born'. Thus Burke's contract certainly appears to lead to obligations to distant future generations. Needless to say, there are metaphysical difficulties,
which however Burke never considers, about contracts between parties at widely separated temporal locations.
37 Several of the preceding points we owe to M. W. Jackson.
38 Resources such as soil fertility and petroleum could even be a primary social goods on
Rawls's very hazy general account of these goods ([5], pp. 62, 97): are these 'something a
rational man wants whatever else he wants'? The primary social goods should presumably be those which are necessary for the good and just life -which will however vary with
culture.
39 We have benefited from discussion with Ian Hughes and Frank Muller and useful
comments on the paper from Brian Martin and Derek Browne.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London 1974.
[2] Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra 1977.
[3] A. M. Weinberg, 'Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy", Science, Vol. 177 (July 1972),
pp. 27-34.
•
[4] R. Routley, 'Exploring Meinong's Jungle II. Existence is Existence Now', Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic (to appear).
[5] J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1971.
[6] Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of the British Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution, London 1976.
[7] B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York 1976.
[8] G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1903.
[9] B. Commoner, H. Boksenbaum and M. Corr (Eds.), Energy and Human Welfare - A
Critical Analysis, Vol. III, Macmillan, New York 1975.
�Obligations to the Future 179
[10] J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 1, published under the superintendence of J. Bowring, with an intro. by J. H. Burton; William Tait, Edinburgh 1843.
[11] H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London 1962 (reissue).
[12] M. P. Golding, 'Obligations to Future Generations', Monist, Vol. 56 (1972), pp. 85-99.
[13] R. and V. Routley, 'An Expensive Repair Kit for Utilitarianism', presented at the
Colloquium on Preference, Choice and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National
University, August 1977.
[14] R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne
1977.
[15] B. L. Cohen, 'The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Fission Reactors', Scientific
American, Vol. 236 (June 1977), pp. 22-31.
[16] S. McCracken, 'The Waragainst the Atom' .Commentary (September 1977), pp. 33-47.
[17] A. B. Lovins and J. H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy
Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco 1975.
[18] A. Roberts, "The Politics of Nuclear Power', Arena, No. 41 (1976), pp. 22-47.
�
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Inquiry, 21, 133-79
Nuclear Energy and Obligations
to the Future
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain, Braidwood, Australia
The paper considers the morality of nuclear energy development as it concerns
future people, especially the creation of highly toxic nuclear wastes requiring longterm storage. On the basis of an example with many parallel moral features it is
argued that the imposition of such costs and risks on the future is morally unacceptable. The paper goes on to examine in detail possible ways of escaping this
conclusion, especially the escape route of denying that moral obligations of the
appropriate type apply to future people. The bulk of the paper comprises discussion
of this philosophical issue, including many arguments against assigning obligations
to the future drawn both from analyses of obligation and from features of the future
such as uncertainty and indeterminacy. A further escape through appeal to moral
conflict is also considered, and in particular two conflict arguments, the Poverty
and Lights-going-out arguments are briefly discussed. Both these escape routes are
rejected and it is concluded that if the same standards of behaviour are applied to
the future as to the present, nuclear energy development is morally unacceptable.
I. The Bus Example
Suppose we consider a bus, a bus which we hope is to make a very long
journey. This bus, a third world bus, carries both passengers and freight.
The bus sets down and picks up many different passengers in the course of
its long journey and the drivers change many times, but because of the way
the bus line is managed and the poor service on the route it is nearly always
full to overcrowded, with passengers hanging off the back, and as in
Afghanistan, passengers riding on the roof, and chickens and goats in the
freight compartment.
Early in the bus's journey someone consigns on it, to a far distant
destination, a package containing a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is
packaged in a very thin container, which as the consigner well knows is
unlikely to contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned,
and certainly will not do so if the bus should encounter any trouble, for
example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very
hot, if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort
commonly found on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some
1
134 R. and V. Routley
passenger should interfere deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or
perhaps try to steal some of the freight, as also frequently happens. All of
these things, let us suppose, have happened on some of the bus's previous
journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people and animals on the bus, while others
could be maimed or contract serious diseases.
There does not seem much doubt about what most of us would say about
the morality of the consigner's action, and there is certainly no doubt
about what the passengers would say. The consigner's action in putting
the safety of the occupants of the bus at risk is appalling. What could
excuse such an action, what sort of circumstances might justify it, and
what sort of case could the consigner reasonably put up? The consigner
might say that it is by no means certain that the gas will escape; he himself
is an optimist and therefore feels that such unfavourable possible outcomes should be ignored. In any case the bus might have an accident and
the passengers be killed long before the container gets a chance to leak; or
the passengers might change to another bus and leave the lethal parcel
behind.
He might say that it is the responsibility of the passengers and the driver
to ensure that the journey is a smooth one, and that if they fail to do so, the
results are not his fault. He might say that the journey is such a long one
that many of the passengers may have become mere mindless vegetables
or degenerate wretches about whose fate no decent person need concern
himself, or that they might not care about losing their lives or health or
possessions anyway by that time.
Most of these excuses will seem little more than a bad joke, and certainly would not usually be reckoned any sort of justification. The main
argument the consigner of the lethal parcel employs, however, is that his
own pressing needs justify his actions. He has no option but to consign his
potentially lethal parcel, he says, since the firm he owns, and which has
produced the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits and
cannot afford to produce a better container or to stop the production of the
gas. If the firm goes out of business, the consigner says, his wife will leave
him, and he will lose his family happiness, the comfortable way of life to
which he has become accustomed and sees now as a necessity; his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others; not only will the
firm's customers be inconvenienced but he, the consigner, will have to
break some business contracts; the inhabitants of the local village through
loss of spending and cancellation of the Multiplier Effect will suffer finan-
Obligations to the Future 135
cial hardship, and, worst of all, the tiny flow of droplets that the poor of the
village might receive (theoretically at any rate) as a result of the trickling
down of these good things would dry up entirely. In short, some basic and
some perhaps uncomfortable changes will be needed in the village.
Even if the consigner's story were accepted at face value - and it would
be wise to look critically at his story - only someone whose moral sensibilities had been paralysed by the disease of galloping economism could see
such a set of considerations, based on 'needs', comfort, and the goal of
local prosperity, as justifying the consigner's action.
One is not generally entitled to thus simply transfer the risks and costs
arising from one's own life onto other uninvolved parties, to get oneself
out of a hole of one's own making by creating harm or risk of harm to
someone else who has had no share in creating the situation. To create
serious risks and costs, especially risks to life or health for such others,
simply to avoid having to make some changes to a comfortable life style, or
even for a somewhat better reason, is usually thought deserving of moral
condemnation, and sometimes considered a crime; for example, the action
of a company in creating risks to the lives or health of its workers or
customers to prevent itself from going bankrupt. What the consigner says
may be an explanation of his behaviour, but it is not a justification.
The problem raised by nuclear waste disposal is by no means a perfect
analogy to the bus case, since, for example, the passengers on the nuclear
bus cannot get off the bus or easily throw out the lethal package. In many
crucial moral respects, however, the nuclear waste storage problem as it
affects future people, the passengers in the bus we are considering, resembles the consignment of the faultily packaged lethal gas. Not only are
rather similar moral principles involved, but a rather similar set of arguments to the lamentable excuses the consigner presents have been seriously put up to justify nuclear development, the difference being that in the
nuclear case these arguments have been widely accepted. There is also
some parallel in the risks involved; there is no known safe way to package
the highly toxic wastes generated by nuclear plants that will be spread
around the world if large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.1 The
wastes problem will not be a slight one, with each one of the more than
2,000 reactors envisaged by the end of the century, producing on average
annual wastes containing one thousand times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.2 The wastes include not merely the spent fuels and their
radioactive by-products, but also everything they contaminate, from fuel
containers to the thousands of widely distributed decommissioned nuclear
136 R. and V. Routley
reactors which will have to be abandoned, still in a highly radioactive
condition, after the expiry of their expected lifetimes of about thirty years,
and which have been estimated to require perhaps one and a half million
years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.3 The wastes must be kept
suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime; for
fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or
so, and for the actinides (transuranic elements) which include plutonium,
there is a half-million to a million-year storage problem.4
Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed longterm methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of
waste that have been produced over the last twenty years.5 With present
known short-term surface methods of storage there is a continued need for
human intervention to keep the material isolated from the environment,
while with proposed longer-term methods such as storage in salt mines or
granite to the risk of human interference there are added the risks of
leakage, e.g. through water seepage, and of disturbance, for example
through climatic change, earth movements, etc. The risks are significant:
no reasonable person with even a limited acquaintance with the history of
human affairs over the last 3,000 years could be confident of safe storage
by methods involving human intervention over the enormous time periods
involved. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and
climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period which has
seen a number of ice ages and great fluctuations in climate for example,
could be confident that the waste material could be safely stored for the
vast periods of time required. Much of this waste is highly toxic; for
example, even a beachball sized quantity of plutonium appropriately
distributed is enough to give every person on the planet lung cancer - so
that a leak of even a small part of this waste material could involve huge
loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of
immense areas of land.6
Given the enormous costs which could be involved for the future, it is
plainly grossly inadequ'ate'to merely speculate concerning untested, but
possibly or even probably, safe methods for disposal of wastes. Yet none
of the proposed methods has been properly tested, and they may prove to
involve all sorts of unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
Obligations to the Future 137
geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long-term storage method could be devised, there is the
problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it would be, especially if, as seems likely, such a
method proved expensive economically and politically, seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future not
previously encountered in human affairs, and certainly not conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.7 Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless
guarding of long-term storage sites through perhaps a million years of
possible future human activity, weapons-grade radioactive material will
be accessible, over much of the million-year storage period, to any party
who is in a position to retrieve it.
Our behaviour in creating this nightmare situation for the future is
certainly no better than that of the consigner in the bus example. Industrialized countries, in order to get out of a mess of their own making essentially the creation of economies dependent on an abundance" of
non-renewable energy in a situation where it is in fact in limited supply opt for a 'solution' which may enable them to avoid the making of uncomfortable changes during the lifetime of those now living, at the expense of
passing heavy burdens on to the inhabitants of the earth at a future time burdens in the shape of costs and risks which, just as in the bus case, may
adversely affect the life and health of future people and their opportunity
to lead a decent life.8
It is sometimes suggested that analogies like the bus example are defective; that morally they are crucially different from the nuclear case, since
future people, unlike the passengers in the bus, will benefit directly from
nuclear development, which will provide an abundance of energy for the
indefinite future. But this is incorrect. Nuclear fission creates wastes
which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the breeder
reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only 150 years. It will do
nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose
lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 30,000
generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks,
without any corresponding benefits, in order to provide for the extravagant energy use of only five generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop-gap, it
seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a
138 R. and V. Routley
transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a
future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be
very much worse placed to cope with it.9 For they may well have to face
the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world not only
burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in
which, if the nuclear proponents' dream of global industrialization is
realized, more and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use, and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and
soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of
the basis of life, are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the
idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission
energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The 'solution' then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at
a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but
which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Just as in the bus
case, contemporary industrial society proposes to get itself out of a hole of
its own making by creating risk of harm, and by transferring costs and
risks, to someone else who has had no part in producing the situation and
who will obtain no clear benefit. It has clear alternatives to this action.
That it does not take them is due essentially to its unwillingness to avoid
changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to its desire to protect the
interests of those who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the same standards of behaviour and
moral principles that we acknowledge (in principle if perhaps often not in
fact) in the contemporary world, it will not be easy to avoid the conclusion
that the situation involves injustice with respect to future people on a
grand scale. It seems to us that there are only two plausible moves that
might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued
that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the
contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the
recipients of our nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly,
an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course
to say that there are no circumstances in which such an action might
possibly be justifiable, or at least where the case is less clearcut. It is the
same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the
Obligations to the Future 139
package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances
might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We turn now to the
first of these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development, to the philosophical question of our obligations to the future.
II. Obligations to the Distant Future
The area in which these philosophical problems arise is that of the distant
(i.e. non-immediate) future, that is, the future with which people alive
today will make no direct contact; the immediate future provides comparatively few problems for moral theories. The issues involved, although of
far more than academic interest, have not received any great attention in
recent philosophical literature, despite the fact that the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail
to pass, and also raises a number of questions in political philosophy
concerning the adequacy of accepted institutions which leave out of
account the interests of future people.
Moral philosophers have predictably differed on the issue. But contrary
to the picture painted in a recent, widely read, and influential work
discussing it, Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature, a good many
philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come
down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and
interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately
future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories
- those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take
them seriously or who assign them less weight, those who deny, or who
are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are
moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those like Passmore
and Golding who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on
both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the
view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there
are no moral obligations to the future beyond those to the next generation.
• According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally
unconstrained; there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act
deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply, that we don't have obligations to
the (non-immediate) future, i.e. those who have opted for the uncon-
140 R. and V. Routley
strained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as
presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation
is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration
and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral
obligation, or requirements for moral obligation, which would rule out
obligations to the non-immediate future are these: First, there are those
accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held
be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will
not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course
they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have for their rights
against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would
require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariantly
over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not
be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institution would do it for them.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out
the distant future as a field of moral obligation, as they not only require a
commonality, or some sort of common basis, which cannot be guaranteed
in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or
reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of
moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange, the interests of future people
must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be
parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the
distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground
moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as
sympathy and love. There are some difficulties also about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has no sympathy. On
the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for
future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary
Obligations to the Future 141
people have no obligations to future people and can harm them as it suits
them.
What all these views have in common is a naturalistic picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something
(e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some
characteristic one can fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).10
Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually
thought to characterize it, such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features), are lost, especially where there is a choice
of whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so
of whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as
to exclude people in the distant future.
However, the view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act as one likes with respect to them, is a
very difficult one to sustain. Consider the example of a scientific group
which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb which is to be set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of
its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate
descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the
distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the
action. The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in
the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being unduly expensive or badly
designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to
future people. The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of examples: A firm discovers it can make a
handsome profit from mining, processing, and manufacturing a new type
of material which, although it causes no problems for present people or
their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years
decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any
consideration for the harm it does to future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view might seem childishly
obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which
they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have a number of
philosophers writing on the issue endorsed this position, but it is the clear
142 R. and V. Routley
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of economic theory. It does not appear, on the other hand,
that those who opt for the unconstrained position have considered such
examples and endorsed them as morally acceptable, despite their being
clearly implied by their position. We suspect that when it is brought out
that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being
free to act implies, among other things being free to inflict pointless harm,
most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to
assert that it was not what they intended. What those who have put
forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in mind in denying
moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives. The view that the future can take
care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present. But it is not. It is not as if, in cases such as those discussed above
and the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of
itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so must acquire many
of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting
the present and immediate future. The thesis seems thus to assume an
incorrect model of an independent and unrelated future.
Also, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people
does not amount to the same as saying that we are free to do as we like with
respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving
them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have, or has not
acquired, an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been
involved - that one has no responsibility for his life - does not imply that
one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him
or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could
seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
failure to make an important distinction between, on the one hand, acquired or assumed obligations towards somebody, for which some act of
acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and on the
other hand moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should
not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of
acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and
kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or
be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be
contracted. In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a
causal agent aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his
Obligations to the Future 143
action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or assumed. Thus
there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can
apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied. They apply as a
result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a
reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to
what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet)
exist. While it may be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people
must make special sacrifices of an heroic kind for future people, or even to
help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to
be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the bus example, the
consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never
assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not
know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them, and that they
are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special
obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue in respect of both the
bus and the nuclear case is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility
for the lives of the people involved.
The confusion of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off
non-acquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral
obligation' in philosophy to indicate any type of deontic constraint, while
in natural language it is used to indicate something which has to be
assumed or acquired. Hence the equation and at least one root of the
unconstrained position, that is of the belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to a more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent position. Passmore's position in [1] is a striking example of the second ambivalent
position. On the one hand Passmore regularly gives the impression of one
championing future people; for example, in the final sentence of [1] he
says, concerning men a century hence:
My sole concern is that we should do nothing which will reduce their
freedom of thought and action, whether by destroying.the natural
world which makes that freedom possible or the social traditions
which permit and encourage it.
144 R. and V. Routley
Earlier (esp. pp. 84-85) Passmore appears to endorse the principle 'that we
ought not to act so as certainly to harm posterity' and claims (p. 98) that,
even where there are uncertainties, 'these uncertainties do not justify
negligence'. Nevertheless, though obligations concerning non-immediate
posterity are thus admitted, the main thrust of Passmore's argument is
entirely different, being in favour of the unconstrained position according
to which we have no obligations to non-immediate posterity. Thus his
conclusion (p. 91):
So whether we approach the problem of obligations to posterity by
way of Bentham and Sidgwick, Rawls or Golding, we are led to
something like the same conclusion: our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able
to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and
that is all.11
Passmore's position is, to all appearances, simply inconsistent. There are
two ways one might try to render it consistent, but neither is readily
available to Passmore. The first is by taking advantage of the distinction
between moral constraints and acquired obligations, but a basis for this
distinction is not evident in Passmore's work and indeed the distinction is
antithetical to the analyses of obligation that Passmore tries to synthesize
with his own analysis in terms of loves. The second, sceptical, route to
consistency is by way of the argument that we shall consider shortly, that
there is always gross uncertainty with respect to the distant future, uncertainty which relieves us in practice of any moral constraints regarding the
distant future. But though Passmore's writing strongly suggests this uncertainty argument (especially his sympathetic discussion of the Premier
of Queensland's argument against conservationists [p. 77]), he also rules it
out with the claim that uncertainties do not justify negligence.12
Many of the accounts of moral obligation that give rise to the unconstrained position are fused in Passmore's work, again not entirely consistently, since the different accounts exploited do not give uniform results.
Thus the primary account of obligation is said to be in terms of loves though the account is never satisfactorily formulated or developed - and it
is suggested that because our loves do not extend into the distant future,
neither do our obligations. This sentimental account of obligation will
obviously lead to different results from utilitarian accounts of obligation,
which however Passmore appeals to in his discussion of wilderness. In yet
other places in [1], furthermore, social contract and moral community
Obligations to the Future 145
views are appealed to - see, e.g., the treatment of animals, of preservation, and of duties to nature. In the case of obligations to future people,
however, Passmore does try to sketch an argument - what we call the
convergence argument - that all the accounts lead in the end to the
unconstrained position.
As well as the convergence argument, and various uncertainty arguments to be considered later, Passmore appears to endorse several other
arguments in favour of his theme that there are in practice no obligations to
the distant future. In particular, he suggests that such obligations would in
practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be
encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive
generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves,
only to the succeeding generation. We outline three objections to this
chain account. First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the
future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no
question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations,
since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a
way which may create individual responsibility, and which can't necessarily be sheeted home to an entire generation. Secondly, such chains, since
they are non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant
future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as
examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the
cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which
show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence
matters.13 Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be
achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant
future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible
with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by,
ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written
off as 'never-never land' examples, since many cases of environmental
exploitation might be seen as of just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case
but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term
depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overcropping. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations
in the way the chain picture suggests.
146 R. and V. Routley
Passmore tries to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms
of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally
required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired
obligation and between obligation and supererogation, this is just to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an
unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm, than
one is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from beating and
robbing some stranger and leaving him to starve.
Passmore's most sustained argument for the unconstrained position is a
convergence argument, that different analyses of obligations, including
his own, lead to the one conclusion. This style of argument is hardly
convincing when there are well-known accounts of obligation which do
not lead to the intended conclusion, e.g. deontological accounts such as
those of Kant and of modern European schools, and teleological accounts
such as those of Moore (in [8]). But such unfavourable positions are either
rapidly passed over or ignored in Passmore's historical treatment and
narrow selection of historical figures. The style of argument becomes even
less persuasive when it is discovered that the accounts of the main authorities appealed to, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Rawls,14 do not lead, without
serious distortion, to the intended conclusion. Indeed Passmore has twisted the historical and textual evidence to suit his case, as we now try to
indicate.
Consider Bentham first. Passmore's assumption, for which no textual
evidence is cited, ls is that no Benthamite calculation can take account of a
future more extensive than the immediate future (cf. pp. 87-88). The
assumption seems to be based simply on the fact that Bentham remarked
that 'the value of the pleasure or pain to each person to be considered in
any estimate will be greater or less in virtue of the following circumstances'. '3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness'
([10], p. 16). But this does nothing to show that future persons are discounted: the certainty and propinquity do not concern persons, but the
utilities of the persons concerned. As regards which persons are concerned in any calculation Bentham is quite explicit, detailing how
to take an exact account. . . of the general tendency of any act.. . .5 .
Take an account of the number of persons whose interests appear to
be concerned; and repeat the above process [summation of values of
pleasure and of pain] with respect to each. ([10], p. 16)
Obligations to the Future 147
It follows that Bentham's calculation takes account of everyone (and, in
his larger scheme, every sentient creature) whose interests appear to be
concerned: if the interests of people in the distant future appear to be
concerned - as they are in conservation issues - they are to be included in
the calculation. And there is independent evidence16 that in Bentham's
view the principle of utility was not temporally restricted: 'that is useful
which, taking all times and all persons into consideration, leaves a balance
of happiness' ([10], pp. 17-18, our italics). Thus the future cut-off that
Passmore has attributed to Bentham is contradicted by Bentham's own
account.
The case of Sidgwick is more complex, because there is isolated oscillation in his application of utilitarianism between use of utility and of
(something like) expected utility (see [11], pp. 381,414): Sidgwick's utilitarianism is, in its general characterization, essentially that of Bentham:
the conduct which . . . is objectively right is that which will produce
the greatest amount of happiness on the whole; that is, taking into
account all those whose happiness is affected by the conduct. ([11], p.
411)
All includes all sentient beings, both existing and to exist, as Sidgwick goes
on to explain (p. 414). In particular, in answer to the question 'How far are
we to consider the interests of posterity when they seem to conflict with
those of existing human beings?' Sidgwick writes ([11], p. 414, our italics):
It seems, however, clear that the time at which a man exists cannot
affect the value of his happiness from a universal point of view; and
that the interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as
those of his contemporaries, except in so far as the effect of his
actions on posterity - and even the existence of human beings to be
affected - must necessarily be more uncertain.
But Passmore manages, first of all, to give a different sense to what
Sidgwick is saying by adjusting the quotation, by omitting the clause we
have italicized, which equalizes the degree of concern for present and
future persons, and by italicizing the whole except-clause, thereby placing
much greater emphasis than Sidgwick does on uncertainty. For according
to Sidgwick's impartiality principle, 'the mere difference in time is not a
148 R. and V. Routley
reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of one
-amount than to that of another' ([11], p. 381; see also p. 124). The apparent
tension in Sidgwick's theory as to whether uncertainty should be taken
into account is readily removed by resort to a modern distinction between
values and expected values (i.e. probability weighted values); utilitarian
rightness is defined as before in terms of the net happiness of all concerned
over all time without mention of uncertainty or probabilities, but it is
distinguished from probable rightness (given present information), in the
utilitarian sense,17 which is defined in terms of the expected net happiness
of those concerned, using present probabilities. It is the latter notion, of
probable rightness, that practical reasoning is commonly concerned with
and that decision theory studies; and it is this that Passmore supposes
Sidgwick is using ([1], p. 84). But it is evident that the utilitarian determination of probable rightness, like that of rightness, will sometimes take
into account the distant future - as Sidgwick's discussion of utilitarian
determination of optimum population (immediately following his remark
on uncertainty) does. So how does Passmore contrive to reverse matters,
to have Sidgwick's position lead to his own unconstrained conclusion?
The answer is: By inserting an additional assumption of his own - which
Sidgwick would certainly have rejected - that the uncertainties entitle us
to ignore the distant future. What Passmore has implicitly assumed in his
claim ([1], p. 85) that 'utilitarian principles [such as Sidgwick's] are not
strong enough' 'to justify the kinds of sacrifice some conservationists now
call upon us to make' is his own thesis that 'The uncertainty of harms we
are hoping to prevent would in general entitle us to ignore them.. .'. From
a decision-theory viewpoint this is simply irrational18 unless the probabilities of damage are approaching zero. We will deal with the essentially
sceptical uncertainty arguments on which Passmore's position depends
shortly: here it is enough to observe that Sidgwick's position does not lead
to anything like that which Passmore attributes to him - without uncertainty assumptions which Sidgwick would have rejected (for he thought
that future people'will certainly have pleasure and suffer pain).
We can also begin to gauge from Passmore's treatment of nineteenthcentury utilitarians, such as Bentham and Sidgwick, the extent of the
distortion which underlies his more general historical case for the unconstrained position which, so he claims,
represents accurately enough what, over the last two centuries, men
have seen as their duty to posterity as a whole. . . . ([1], p. 91)
Obligations to the Future 149
The treatment accorded Rawls in only marginally more satisfactory.
Passmore supposes that Rawls's theory of justice leads directly to the
unconstrained position ([1], p. 87 and p. 91), whereas Rawls claims ([5], p.
293) that we have obligations to future people just as to present ones. But
the situation is more complicated than Rawls's claim would indicate, as we
now try to explain in a summary way (more detail is given in the Appendix). For, in order to justify this claim on his theory (with its present
time-of-entry interpretation), Rawls has to invoke additional and dubious
motivational assumptions; even so the theory which thus results does not
yield the intended conclusion, but a conclusion inconsistent with Rawls's
claim. However, by changing the time-of-entry interpretation to an omnitemporal one, Rawls's claim does result from the theory so amended.
Moreover, the amended theory also yields, by exactly Rawls's argument
for a just saving rate, a resource conservation policy, and also a case
against nuclear development. Accordingly Passmore's other claims regarding Rawls are mistaken, e.g. that the theory cannot justify a policy of
resource conservation. Rawls does not emerge unscathed either. As on
the issue of whether his contract is a necessary condition for obligations,
so on obligations which the contract yields to the distant future, Rawls is
far from consistent. Furthermore, institutions such as qualified market
and voting systems are recommended as just though from a future perspective their results are far from that. Rawls, then, does not take obligations to the future with full seriousness.
In sum, it is not true that the theory of Rawls, any more than the theories
of the historical figures actually discussed by Passmore, unequivocally
supports the unconstrained position.
III. Uncertainty and Indeterminacy Arguments
Although there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the qualified
position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant
future: there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the
present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much
in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much
less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present
150 R. and V. Routley
people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in most
modern economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of an (opportunity cost) discount rate. The attempt to
apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds
of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal
constraints, and cannot determine what those constraints are. There are,
moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt one which
discounts the future is to beg all the questions at issue. The discounting
move often has the same result as the unconstrained position; if, for
instance, we consider the cancer example and consider costs as payable
compensation, it is evident that, over a sufficiently long period of time,
discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no
recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short,
even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to
achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about fifteen years,19 and application of such rates would
simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type the
whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would
violate moral constraints.20
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis
concerning the distant future.21 But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and
benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases
where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very
much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much)
higher probabilities obtain. So in the case of conflict between the present
and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the
people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower
Obligations to the Future 151
probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the
present, assuming that anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it can't be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it
is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so
years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of
future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful or trivial benefits for some
present people, in the shape of the opportunity to continue unnecessarily
high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted, such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action is acceptable
provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit
approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability
frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned, or for
dealing with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a
firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm
stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits
involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party
to another. Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different
parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself
by imposing costs ony ? - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted by some proponents of nuclear energy,
who attempt to dismiss the costs to future people with the soothing remark
that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The transfer point
is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on by McCracken
[16] in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between
nuclear risks and those from cigarette smoking. In the latter case those
who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming
extent* those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In
contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be
risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also
those of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related
to a person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
152 R. and V. Routley
happiness sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different
parties, and the introduction of probability considerations does not change
the principles involved but merely complicates analyses. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some
moral problems such as the bus example do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the bus example
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and
important ones used by philosophers and others to argue for the position
that we cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our
actions on the distant future. There are two strands to the uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently entangled. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalized uncertainty argument
which runs as follows: In contrast to the exact information we can obtain
about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our
actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly, and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the
present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More
formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information; there is no reliable information at present as regards the distant future; therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
The first argument is essentially a variation on a sceptical argument in
epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace
'obligations' by 'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument
above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the
degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate
future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral
consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the
future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and
Obligations to the Future 153
the adjacent future and present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and
constantly do act on the basis of such 'unreliable' information as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels 'uncertainty'; for scepticproof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. A
good example is again the bus case. We do not need to know for certain
that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not,
in order for us to condemn the consigner's action. It is enough that there is
a significant risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the
decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and the prospects of the
passengers quite uncertain; the resolution of the problem is still clearly in
favour of the so-called 'speculative' and 'unreliable'. But if we do not
require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the
future? Why should we require epistemic standards for the future which
the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and
adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a
necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant
future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard. But such an
epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests,
in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it
already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each
class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in
practice take the interests of future people into account, because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what
the likely consequences of actions upon it will be and therefore, however
good our intentions to the people of the distant future, in practice we have
no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain
incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no
rational ground for choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can also be put in this way: If moral principles are, like other
principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as 'if* has character
h then x is wrong, for every (action) x', then what the argument claims is
154 R. and V. Routley
that we can never obtain the information about future actions which would
enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral
principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be
applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary
action of the 'It is wrong to do x' type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument have to be conceded.
If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the
effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or
hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply
theoretically to the future, will not be applicable in practice for obtaining
any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant future will
impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future is always so grossly
uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of
uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent)
fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude
constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is
commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be
needed in some cases is the creation of"a significant risk. Again there is
considerable uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at
all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of
much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have
any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in girls' names or
men's footwear, or what brands of ice cream people will be eating if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3,000
years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to
have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will
need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or
the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of
non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. While it is true that there are many areas in which the morally relevant
information needed is uncertain or unavailable, and in which we cannot
therefore determine satisfactorily how to act, there are certainly others in
Obligations to the Future 155
which uncertainty in morally relevant areas is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient
for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases,
especially where spatially remote people are involved. The case of nuclear
waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people,
seems to be of the latter sort. Here there is no gross indeterminacy or
uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what
may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage
does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as we can see
from the bus example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the corresponding defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty
arguments used to write off probable harm to future people as outside the
scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both
of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the
other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example,
we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because
we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not
be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would
affect us (cf. Passmore [1]). But this is to insist upon complete certainty of
a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where
there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part,
because they may be morons or forever plugged into enjoyment- or other
machines (Golding [12]). Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist
approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain
properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating
consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says
that the solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn't
looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. Neither the contemporary
nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a
lapse into universal moronity or universal pleasure-machine escapism is a
serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast
156 R. and V. Routley
with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable
risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilization through destruction of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to
future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the
argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent
storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped
waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real
possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still
does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and
that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this
type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may
discover a cure for cancer, and the fact that this appears to be a real and not
merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm in the
example discussed above, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer
in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was
certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases, before such
actions could be considered admissible, what would be required is far
more than a possibility, real or not22 - it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique
for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of most of these uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the bus example, where the
consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of
his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to
deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the
bus may break down and they may all change to a different bus leaving the
parcel behind, or the bus may crash, killing all the passengers before the
container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities, of course, but
there is no positive reason to believe that they are any more than that, that
is they are not real possibilities. The strategy is to stress such outside
possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross
uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will
Obligations to the Future 157
break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities,
that uncertainty about the future is so great as to preclude the consigners'
taking account of the passengers' welfare and of the real possibility of
harm from his parcel, and thereby excuse his action. A related strategy is
to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby
imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints .This move
implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty, or at
least a very high probability, of harm is required before an action can be
judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree
of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat
the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not
so.
An argument closely related to the uncertainty arguments is based on
the non-existence and indeterminacy of the future.23 An item is indeterminate in a given respect if its properties in that respect are, as a matter of
logic, not settled (nor are they settlable in a non-arbitrary fashion). The
respects in which future items are indeterminate are well enough known
for a few examples to serve as reminders: all the following are indeterminate: the population of Australia at 2001, its distribution, its age structure,
the preferences of its members for folk music, wilderness, etc., the size
and shape of Wollongong, the average number of rooms in its houses and
in its office blocks, and so on. Philosophical discussion of such indeterminacy is as old as Aristotle's sea battle and as modern as truth-value gaps
and fuzzy logics, and many positions have been adopted on the existence
and determinacy of future items. Nevertheless theories that there are
obligations to the future are not sensitive to the metaphysical position
adopted concerning the existence or non-existence of the future. Any
theory which denied obligations to the future on the metaphysical grounds
that the future did not exist, and did not have properties, so that the
present could not be related to it, would be committed to denying such
obvious facts as that the present could causally influence the future, that
present people could be great-grandparents of purely future people, and so
on, and hence would have to be rejected on independent grounds. This is
not to say that there are not important problems about the existence or
non-existence of future items, problems which are perhaps most straightforwardly handled by a Meinongian position which allows that items
which do not exist may have properties. The non-existence of the future
158 R. and V. Routley
does raise problems for standard theories which buy the Ontological
Assumption (the thesis that what does not exist does not have properties),
especially given the natural (and correct) inclination to say that the future
does not (now) exist; but such theories can adopt various strategies for
coping with these problems (e.g. the adoption of a platonistic position
according to which the future does now exist, or the allowance for certain
sorts of relations between existents at different times), although the satisfactoriness of these strategies is open to question (cf. [4]). Thus whether or
not the Ontological Assumption is assumed and however it is applied, it
will be allowed that future items will have properties even if they do not
have them now, and that is enough to provide the basis for moral concern
about the future. Thus the thesis of obligations to the future does not
presuppose any special metaphysical position on the existence of the
future.
If the non-existence of future items creates no special problems for
obligations to the future, the same is not true of their indeterminacy.
Whether the indeterminacy of future items is seen as a logical feature of
the future which results from the non-existence of purely future items or
whether one adopts a (mistaken) platonistic view of the future as existing
and sees the indeterminacy as an epistemological one resulting from our
inability to know the character of these entities - that is, we cannot
completely know the future .though it exists and has a definite characterwhichever view we take indeterminacy still creates major difficulties for
certain ethical theories and their treatment of the future.
The difficulties arise for theories which appear to require a high level of
determinacy with respect to the number and character of future items, in
particular calculus-type theories such as utilitarianism in its usual forms,
where the calculations are critically dependent on such information as
numbers, totals, and averages, information which so far as the future is
concerned is generally indeterminate. The fact that this numerical information is typically indeterminate means that insofar as head-count utilitarianism requires determinate information on numbers, it is in a similar
position to theories discussed earlier; it may apply theoretically to future
people, but since the calculations cannot be applied to them their interests
will be left out of account. And, in fact, utilitarianism for the most part
does not, and perhaps cannot, take future creatures and their interests
seriously; there is little discussion as to how the difficulties or impossibility of calculations regarding the open future are to be obtained. Non-platonistic utilitarianism is in logical difficulty on this matter, while platonis-
Obligations to the Future 159
tic utilitarianism - which faces a range of other objections - is inapplicable
because of epistemic indeterminacy. We have yet another case of a theory
of the sort that applies theoretically but in practice doesn't take the future
seriously. But far from this showing that future people's interests should
be left out of account, what these considerations show are deficiencies in
these sorts of theories, which require excessive determinacy of information. This kind of information is commonly equally unavailable for the
accepted areas of moral constraint, the present and immediate future; and
the resolution of moral issues is often not heavily dependent on knowledge
of such specific determinate features as numbers or other determinate
features. For example, we do not need to know how many people there
will be on the bus, how intelligent they are, what their preferences are or
how badly they will be injured, in order to reach the conclusion that the
consigner's action in despatching his parcel is a bad one. Furthermore, it is
only the ability of moral considerations to continue to apply in the absence
of determinate information about such things as numbers that makes it
possible to take account of the possible effects of action, as the risks
associated with action - something which is quite essential even for the
present if moral considerations are to apply in the normal and accepted
way. For it is essential in order to apply moral considerations in the
accepted way that we consider alternative worlds, in order to take account
of options, risks, and alternative outcomes; but these alternative or counterfactual worlds are not in so different a position from the future with
respect to determinacy; for example, there is indeterminacy with respect
to the number of people who may be harmed in the bus case or in apossible
nuclear reactor melt-down. These alternative worlds, like the distant
future, are indeterminate in some respects, but not totally indeterminate.
It might still be thought that the indeterminacy of the future, for example
with respect to number and exact character, would at least prevent the
interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict
with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown, how can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future where this information is available in a more
or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of
sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people,
when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are
indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the
future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by ignoring
160 R. and V. Routley
such factors. Nor are such distributional problems as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to
focus on them would suggest. It should be conceded then that there will be
cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts
very difficult or indeed impossible to resolve - a realistic ethical theory
will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other
conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution
of the issue, e.g. the bus example which is a conflict case of a type. In
particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing
numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to
know only the most general probable characteristics of future people.
Moreover, even where numbers are relevant often only bounds will be
required, exact numerical counts only being required where, for instance,
margins are narrow; e.g. issues may be resolved as in parliament where a
detailed vote (or division) is only required when the issue is close. It is
certainly not necessary then to have complete determinacy to resolve all
cases of conflict.
The question we must ask then is what features of future people could
disqualify them from moral consideration or reduce their claims to it to
below those of present people? The answer is: in principle None. Prima
facie moral principles are universalizable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.24 But universalizability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are
capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present; in other words, a theory
that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as
regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup such as
(white-skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that
would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been
looking at, uncertainty and indeterminacy; what we have argued is that it
would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral
claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect
certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or practical
course of action given only present information). In particular they do not
affect cases of the sort being considered, the nuclear one, where highly
determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics
of the class likely to be harmed or certainty of damage are not required.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is
not needed: it is enough to require that the temporal position of a person
Obligations to the Future 161
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration;25 inversely that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this
universalizability, there is the same obligation to future people as to the
present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and
their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of
the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions' causing harm or
damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob
future people of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not free us of these obligations. If, in a closely
comparable case concerning the present, the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent
grounds for requiring greater certainty of harm in the future case under
consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for
proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion
tentatively reached in our first section, that proposals for nuclear development in the present state of technology for future waste disposal are
immoral.
IV. Overriding Consideration Arguments
In the first part we noticed that the consigner's action could not be justified
by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the
firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact
that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
We also observed that the principle on which this assessment was based,
that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these
sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the
nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are thus
most commonly advanced to promote nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment,
investment, and consumption-do not even begin to show that the nuclear
alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct (and there is reason to doubt
that most of them are),26 the arguments would fail because economics
must operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice
versa.
162 R. and V. Routley
What one does have to consider, however, are moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is
the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the bus case,
the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is
taken the village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a
justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the
passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs
and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so
clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in
such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on
competing duties to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such
moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives),
and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument-for example, if in the bus
case it turns out that the villagers have another option to starving or to the
sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way - then
the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. We want to argue
that suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument,
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse
than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these
arguments as well. In short, the arguments depend essentially on the
presentation of false dichotomies.
The first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialized countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often
claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the
standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment
and poverty in the industrialized nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third
world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to
increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the
Obligations to the Future 163
diversion of great amounts of available capital into an industry which is not
only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps
to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for
labour use. 27 The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third
world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and
economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive
amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
and creates negligible employment, while politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralized entrenched power and reduces the
chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large
part of the problem.28 The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of
people of the third world does not, of course, mean that it is not in the
interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernized and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually
organized; but it is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands
these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor.
The poverty argument then is a fraud. Nuclear energy will not be used to
help the poor.29 Both for the third world and for the industrialized countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources,30 alternatives which are
morally acceptable and socially preferable to nuclear development, and
which have far better prospects for helping the poor.31
The second major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to
a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and
institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technological, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable
institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The
argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.32 .
The lights-going-out argument raises rather sharply questions as to
what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary
for a good society. These are questions which deserve much fuller treatment than we can allot them here, but a few brief points should be made.
The argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to
existing high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are
uniformly and uniquely valuable; it also assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it can't be changed in the direction of energy
164 R. and V. Routley
conservation or alternative energy sources without collapse. Such a society has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept. The assumption that technological society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all, it
has survived events such as world wars which have required major social
and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western
society's demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse,
not only would it be committed to a programme of increasing destruction,
but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would
very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base
which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary
society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but
if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions? but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the
political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue
that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable,
presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, e.g. from history, is that no very high level of material
affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower
energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable
than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we believe it is, it is not necessary to presuppose such
a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of
the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of wellbeing is required to consume less energy than at present, and certainly far
less than the large increase over present levels of consumption which is
assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.33 What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going
out in western civilization, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the
time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy
Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
Obligations to the Future 165
is obtained by nuclear-fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralized,
controlled, and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy
source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power,
and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether
capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political
system and over people's lives, even more than they do at present. Very
persuasive arguments have been advanced by civil liberties groups and
others in a number of countries to suggest that such a society would tend to
become authoritarian, if only as an outcome of its response to the threat
posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation.34
There are reasons to believe then that with nuclear development what
we would be passing on to future generations would be some of the worst
aspects of our society (e.g. the consumerism, growing concentration of
power, destruction of the natural environment, and latent authoritarianism), while certain valuable aspects would be lost or threatened. Political
freedom is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives which
do not involve such unacceptable consequences are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the
loss of all that is valuable, but the development of alternative technologies
and life-styles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and
further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly
centralized nuclear option.35 The lights-going-out argument, as a moral
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false
dichotomy. Thus both the escape routes, the appeal to moral conflict and
to the appeal to futurity, are closed.
If then we apply the same standards of morality to the future as we
acknowledge for the present - as we have argued we should - the conclusion that the proposal to develop nuclear energy on a large scale is a crime
against the future is inevitable, since both the escape routes are closed.
There are, of course, also many other grounds for ruling it out as morally
unacceptable, for saying that it-is not only a crime against the distant future
but also a crime against the present and immediate future. These other
grounds for moral concern about nuclear energy, as it affects the present
and immediate future, include problems arising from the possibility of
catastrophic releases of radioactive fuel into the environment or of waste
material following an accident such as reactor melt-down, of unscheduled
discharges of radiation into the environment from a plant fault, of proli-
166 R. and V. Routley
feration of nuclear weapons, and of deliberate release or threat of release
of radioactive materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion. All these
are important issues, of much moral interest. What we want to claim,
however, is that on the basis of its effects on the future alone, the nuclear
option is morally unacceptable.
Appendix
Passmore's Treatment ofRawls,
and What Really Happens on Rawls's Theory
Passmore takes it that Rawls's theory yields an unconstrained position
but, according to Rawls, the theory leads to quite the opposite result;
namely,
persons in different generations [and not merely neighbouring generations] have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound
by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to
define justice between persons at different moments of time.. . . The
derivation of these duties and obligations may seem at first a somewhat far-fetched application of the central doctrine. Nevertheless
these requirements would be acknowledged in the original position
[where the parties do not know to which generation they belong], and
so the conception of justice as fairness covers these matters without
any change in its basic idea. ([5], p. 293; the second insert is drawn
from p. 287)
Through judicious use of the veil of ignorance and the time of entry of
parties to the original contract position, Rawls's contract theory, unlike
simpler explicit contract theories, can yield definite obligations to distant
future people,36 for example, we ought to save at a just rate for future
people.
But, as Rawls remarks (p. 284), 'the question of justice between generations . . . subjects any ethical theory to severe if not impossible tests'. It is
doubtful that Rawls's theory as formulated passes the tests; for the theory
as formulated does not yield the stated conclusion, but a conclusion
inconsistent with the thesis that there are the same obligations to future
people as to contemporaries. Exactly how these obligations arise from the
initial agreement depends critically on the interpretation of the time of
Obligations to the Future 167
entry of the parties into the agreement. Insofar as Rawls insists upon the
present-time-of-entry interpretation (p. 139), he has to introduce supplementary motivational assumptions in order to (try to) secure the desired
bondings between generations, in particular to ensure that the generation
of the original position saves for any later generation, even their immediate successors ([5], p. 140 and p. 292). Rawls falls back on-what is as we
have seen inadequate to the task, since it does not exclude one generation
damaging another remote generation in a way that bypasses mutually
successive generations - 'ties of sentiment between successive generations' (p. 292): to this limited extent Passmore has a point, for such a social
contract on its own (without additional assumptions about the motives of
the parties to the agreement) does not furnish obligations even to our
immediate successors. This is indicative also of the unsatisfactory instability of Rawls's theory under changes, its sensitivity to the way the original
agreement is set up, to the motivation of parties, their time of entry, what
they can know, etc.
To arrive at a more adequate account of obligations to the distant future
under Rawls's theory, let us adopt, to avoid the additional, dubious and
unsatisfactory, motivational assumptions Rawls invokes, one of the alternative - and non -equivalent - time-of-entry interpretations that Rawls lists
(p. 146), that of persons alive at some time in simultaneous agreement. Let
us call this, following Rawls's notation (on p. 140), interpretation 4b (it is
perhaps unnecessary to assume for 4b any more than 4a that all people
need be involved: it may be enough given the equivalencizing effect of the
veil of ignorance that some are, and as with the particular quantifier it is
quite unnecessary to be specific about numbers). Then of course the
parties, since they are, for all they know, of different generations, will
presumably agree on a just savings rate, and also to other just distribution
principles, simply on the basis of Rawlsian rationality, i.e. advancing their
own interests, without additional motivation assumptions. This more
appealing omnitemporal interpretation of time of entry into the agreement,
which gives a superior account of obligation to the future consistent with
Rawls's claim, Rawls in some places puts down as less than best (p. 292)
but in his most detailed account of the original position simply dismisses
(p. 139):
To conceive of the original position [as a gathering of people living at
different times] would be to stretch fantasy too far; the conception
would cease to be a natural guide to intuition.
168 R. and V. Rout ley
This we question: it would be a better guide to intuition than a position
(like 4a) which brings out intuitively wrong results; it is a more satisfactory
guide, for example, to justice between generations than the present-timeof-entry interpretation, which fails conspicuously to allow for the range of
potential persons (all of whom are supposed to qualify on Rawls's account
for just treatment, cf. § 77). Moreover, it stretches fantasy no further than
science fiction or than some earlier contract accounts.36 But it does
require changes in the way the original position is conceived, and it does
generate metaphysical difficulties for orthodox ontological views (though
not to the same extent for the Meinongian view we prefer); for, to consider
the latter, either time travel is possible or the original hypothetical position
is an impossible situation, with people who live at different times assembled at the same time. The difficulties - of such an impossible meeting help to reveal that what Rawls's theory offers is but a colourful representation of obligations in terms of a contract agreed upon at a meeting.
The metaphysical difficulties do not concern merely possible people,
because all those involved are sometime-actual people; nor are there
really serious difficulties generated by the fact that very many of these
people do not exist, i.e. exist now. The more serious difficulties are either
those of time travel, e.g. that future parties relocated into the present may
be able to interfere with their own history, or, if time travel is ruled out
logically or otherwise, that future parties may be advantaged (or disadvantaged) by their knowledge of history and technology, and that accordingly fairness is lost. As there is considerable freedom in how we choose to
(re)arrange the original position, we shall suppose that time travel is
rejected as a means of entering the original position. For much less than
travel is required; some sort of limited communicational network which
filters out, for example, all historical data (and all cultural or species
dependent material) would suffice; and in any case if time travel were not
excluded essentially the present-time-of-entry interpretation would serve,
though fairness would again be put in doubt. The filtered communicational
hook-up by which the omnitemporal position is engineered still has - if
fairness is to be seen to be built into the decision making - to be combined
with a reinterpreted veil of ignorance, so that parties do not know where
they are located temporally any more than they know who they are
characterwise. This implies, among other things, limitations on the parties' knowledge of factual matters, such as available technology and world
and local history; for otherwise parties could work out their location,
temporal or spatial. For example, if some party knew, as Rawls supposes,
Obligations to the Future 169
the general social facts, then he would presumably be aware of the history
of his time and so of where history ends, that is of the date of his
generation, his time (his present), and so be aware of his temporal location. These are already problems for Rawls's so-called 'present-time-ofentry interpretation' - it is, rather, a variable-time-of-entry interpretation
- given that the parties may be, as Rawls occasionally admits (e.g. p. 287),
of any one generation, not necessarily the present: either they really do
have to be ofthepresent time or they cannot be assumed to know as much
as Rawls supposes.37 There is, however, no reason why the veil of ignorance should not be extended so as to avoid this problem; and virtually any
extension that solves the problem for the variable-time-of-entry interpretation should serve, so it seems, for the omnitemporal one. We shall
assume then that the parties know nothing which discloses their respective
locations (i.e. in effect we write in conditions for universalizability of
principles decided upon). There are still gaps between the assumptions of
the omnitemporal position as roughly sketched and the desired conclusion
concerning obligations to the future, but (the matter is beginning to look
non-trivially provable given not widely implausible assumptions and) the
intuitive arguments are as clear as those in [5], indeed they simply restate
arguments to obligations given by Rawls.
Rawls's theory, under interpretation 4b, admits of nice application to
the problems of just distribution of material resources and of nuclear
power. The just distribution, or rate of usage, of material resources38 over
time is an important conservation issue to which Rawls's theory seems to
apply, just as readily, and in a similar fashion, to that in which it applies to
the issue of a just rate of savings. In fact the argument from the original
position for a just rate of saving - whatever its adequacy - can by simply
mimicked to yield an argument for just distribution of resources over
generations. Thus, for example:
persons in the original position are to ask themselves how much they
would be willing to save [i.e. conserve] at each stage of advance on
the assumption that all other generations are to save at the same rate
[conserve resources to the same extent]. . . . In effect, then, they
must choose a just savings principle [resources distribution principle]
that assigns an appropriate rate of accumulation to [degree of resource conservation at] each level of advance. ([5], p. 287; our
bracketed options give the alternative argument)
170 R. and V. Routley
Just as 'they try to piece together a just savings schedule' (p. 289), so they
can try to piece together a just resource distribution policy. Just as a case
for resource conservation can be made out by appeal to the original
position, since it is going to be against the interests of, to the disadvantage
of, later parties to find themselves in a resource depleted situation (thus,
on Rawlsian assumptions, they will bargain hard for a share of resources),
so, interestingly, a case against a rapid programme of nuclear power
development can be devised. The basis of a case against large-scale
nuclear development is implicit in Rawls's contract theory under interpretation 4b, though naturally the theory is not applied in this sort of way
by Rawls. To state the case in its crude but powerful form: people from
later generations in the original position are bound to take it as against their
interests to simply carry the waste can for energy consumed by an earlier
generation. (We have already argued that they will find no convincing
overriding considerations that make it worth their while to carry the waste
can.) Thus not only has Passmore misrepresented the obligations to the
future that Rawls's theory admits; he is also wrong in suggesting (p. 87 and
p. 91) that Rawls's theory cannot justify a policy of resource conservation
which includes reductions in present consumption.
There is, in this connection, an accumulation of errors in Passmore,
some of which spill over to Rawls, which it is worth trying to set out. First,
Passmore claims ([1], p. 86; cf. also p. 90) that 'Rawls does not so much
mention the saving of natural resources'. In fact the 'husbanding of natural
resources' is very briefly considered ([5], p. 271). It is true, however, that
Rawls does not reveal any of the considerable power that his theory,
properly interpreted, has for natural resource conservation, as implying a
just distribution of natural resources over time. Secondly, Passmore attempts ([1], pp. 87 ff.) to represent the calls of conservationists for a
reduction in present resource usage and for a more just distribution as a
call for heroic self-sacrifices; this is part of his more general attempt to
represent every moral constraint with respect to the non-immediate future
as a matter of self-sacrifice. 'Rawls's theory', Passmore says (on p. 87),
'leaves no room for heroic sacrifice', and so, he infers, leaves no room for
conservation. Not only is the conclusion false, but the premiss also:
Rawls's theory allows for supererogation, as Rawls explains ([5], p. 117).
But resource conservation is, like refraining from nuclear development,
not a question of heroic self-sacrifice; it is in part a question of obligations
or duties to the distant future. And Rawls's theory allows not only for
obligations as well as supererogation, but also for natural duties. Rawls's
Obligations to the Future 171
contract, unlike the contracts of what is usually meant by a 'contract
theory', is by no means exhaustive of the moral sphere:
But even this wider [contract] theory fails to embrace all moral
relationships, since it would seem to include only our relations with
other persons and to leave out of account how we are to conduct
ourselves towards,animals and the rest of nature. I do not contend
that the contract notion offers a way to approach these questions
which are certainly of the first importance; and I shall have to put
them aside, (p. 17)
The important class of obligations beyond the scope of the contract theory
surely generates obligations between persons which even the wider contract theory likewise cannot explain. The upshot is that such a contract
account, even if sufficient for the determination of obligations, is not
necessary. To this extent Rawls' s theory is not a full social contract theory
at all. However, Rawls appears to lose sight of the fact that his contract
theory delivers only a sufficient condition when he claims, for example (p.
298), that 'one feature of the contract doctrine is that it places an upper
bound on how much a generation can be asked to save for the welfare of
later generations'. For greater savings may sometimes be required to meet
obligations beyond those that the contract doctrine delivers. In short,
Rawls appears to have slipped into assuming, inconsistently, that his
contract theory is a necessary condition.
Although Rawls's theory caters for justice between generations and
allows the derivation of important obligations to people in the distant
future, the full theory is far from consistent on these matters and there are
significant respects in which Rawls does not take justice to the future
seriously. The most conspicuous symptoms of this are that justice to the
future is reduced to a special case, justice between generations, and that
the only aspect of justice between generations that Rawls actually considers is a just savings rate; there is, for example, no proper examination of
the just distribution of resources among generations, though these resources, Rawls believes, provide the material base of the just institutions that
he wants to see maintained. In fact Rawls strongly recommends a system
of markets as a just means for the allocation of most goods and services,
recognizing their well-known limitations only in the usual perfunctory
fashion ([5], pp. 270 ff.). Yet market systems are limited by a narrow time
horizon, and are quite ill-equipped to allocate resources in a just fashion
172 R. and V. Rout ley
over a time span of several generations. Similarly Rawls's endorsement of
democratic voting procedures as in many cases a just method of determining procedures depends upon the assumptions that everyone with ah
interest is represented. But given his own assumptions about obligations
to the future and in respect of potential persons this is evidently not the
case. Catering in a just fashion for the interests of future people poses
serious problems for any method of decision that depends upon people
being present to represent their own interests.
Some of the more conservative, indeed reactionary, economic assumptions in Rawls emerge with the assumption that all that is required for
justice between generations is a just savings rate, that all we need to pass
on to the future are the things that guarantee appropriate savings such as
capital, factories, and machines. But the transmission of these things is
quite insufficient for justice to the future, and neither necessary nor
sufficient as a foundation for a good life for future generations. What is
required for justice is the transmission in due measure of what is valuable.
Rawls has, however, taken value accumulation as capital accumulation,
thereby importing one of the grossest economic assumptions, that capital
reflects value. But of course the accumulation of capital may conflict with
the preservation of what is valuable. It is for this sort of reason (and thus,
in essence, because of the introduction of supplementary economistic
theses which are not part of the pure contract theory) that Rawls's theory
is a reactionary one from an environmental point of view; on the theory as
presented (i.e. the contract theory plus all the supplementary assumptions) there is no need to preserve such things as wilderness or natural
beauty. The savings doctrine supposes that everything of value for transmission to the future is negotiable in the market or tradeable; but then
transmission of savings can by no means guarantee that some valuable
things, not properly represented in market systems, are not eliminated or
not passed on, thereby making future people worse off. It becomes evident
in this way, too, how culturally-bound Rawls's idea of ensuring justice to
future generations through savings is. It is not just that the idea does not
apply, without a complete overhaul, to non-industrial societies such as
those of hunter-gatherers; it does not apply to genuinely post-industrial
societies either. Consideration of such alternative societies suggests that
whafis required, in place of capital accumulation, is that we pass on what
is necessary for a good life, that we ensure that the basics are fairly
distributed over time and not eroded, e.g. that in the case of the forest
people that the forest is maintained. The narrowness of Rawls's picture,
Obligations to the Future 173
which makes no due allowance for social or cultural diversity (from the
original contractual position on) or for individual diversity arises in part
from his underlying and especially narrow socio-economic assumption as
to what people want:
What men want is meaningful work in free association with others,
these associations regulating their relations to one another within a
framework of just basic institutions. ([5], p. 290)
This may be what many Harvard men want; but as a statement of what
men want it supplies neither sufficient nor even necessary conditions.39
NOTES
1 Thus according to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110; our italics).
There is at present no generally accepted means by which high level waste can be
permanently isolated from the environment and remain safe for very long periods.
. . . Permanent disposal of high-level solid wastes in stable geological formations is
regarded as the most likely solution, but has yet to be demonstrated as feasible. It is
not certain that such methods and disposal sites will entirely prevent radioactive
releases following disturbances caused by natural processes or human activity.
The Fox Report also quoted approvingly ([2], p. 187; our italics) the conclusion of the
British (Flowers) Report [6]:
There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until
it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exist s to ensure the
safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.
Although the absence of a satisfactory storage method has been conceded by some
leading proponents of nuclear development, e.g. Weinberg ([3], pp. 32-33), it is now
disputed by others. In particular, the headline for Cohen [15], which reads 'A substantial
body of evidence indicates that the high level radioactive wastes generated by U.S.
nuclear power plants can be stored satisfactorily in deep geological formations', has
suggested to many readers - what it was no doubt intended to suggest- that there is really
no problem about the disposal of radioactive wastes after all. Cohen presents, however,
no new hard evidence, no evidence not already available to the British and Australian
Commissions ([2] and [6]). Moreover the evidence Cohen does outline fails conspicuously
to measure up to the standards rightly required by the Flowers and Fox Reports. Does
Cohen offer a commercial-scale procedure for waste disposal which can be demonstrated
as safe? Far from it:
174 R. and V. Routley
The detailed procedures for handling the high-level wastes are not yet definite, but
present indications are that. . . . (Cohen [1], p. 24; our italics)
Does Cohen 'demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt' the long-term safety of burial of
wastes, deep underground? Again, far from it:
On the face of it such an approach appears to be reasonably safe. . . . (p. 24; our
italics)
Cohen has apparently not realized what is required.
At issue here are not so much scientific or empirical issues as questions of methodology, of standards of evidence required for claims of safety, and above all, of values, since
claims of safety, for example, involve implicit evaluations concerning what counts as an
acceptable risk, an admissible cost, etc. In the headline 'a substantial body of evidence
. . . indicates that. . . wastes . . . can be stored satisfactorily' the key words (italicized)
are evaluative or elastic, and the strategy of Cohen's case is to adopt very low standards
for their application. But in view of what is at stake it is hardly acceptable to do this, to
dress up in this way what are essentially optimistic assurances and untested speculations
about storage, which in any case do little to meet the difficulties and uncertainties that
have been widely pointed out as regards precisely the storage proposals Cohen outlines,
namely human or natural interference or disturbance.
2 See [18], pp. 24-25.
3 On all these points, see [14], esp. p. 141. According to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110):
Parts of the reactor structure will be highly radioactive and their disposal could be
very difficult. There is at present no experience of dismantling a full size reactor.
4 See, in particular, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Friends
of the Earth Energy Paper, San Francisco 1973, p. 47; also [3], p. 32 and [14], p. 149.
5 As the discussion in [14], pp. 153-7, explains.
6 Cf. [17], pp. 35-36, [18] and, for much detail, J. R. Goffman and A. R. Tamplin, Poisoned
Power, Rodale Press, Emmau Pa. 1971.
7 On the pollution and waste disposal record of the infant nuclear industry, see [14] and
[17].
The record of many countries on pollution control, where in many cases available
technologies for reducing or removing pollution are not applied because they are considered too expensive or because they adversely affect the interests of some powerful group,
provides clear historical evidence that the problem of nuclear waste disposal would not
end simply with the devising of a 'safe' technology for disposal, even if one could be
devised which provided a sufficient guarantee of safety and was commercially feasible.
The fact that present economic and political arrangements are overwhelmingly weighted
in favour of the interests and concerns of (some) contemporary humans makes it not
unrealistic to expect the long-term nuclear waste disposal, if it involved any significant
cost at all, when public concern about the issue died down, would be seen to conflict with
the interests of contemporary groups, and that these latter interests would in many cases
be favoured. Nor, as the history of movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament shows, could generalized public concern in the absence of direct personal
interest, be relied upon to be sustained for long enough to ensure implementation of costly
or troublesome long-term disposal methods - even in those places where public concern
exists and is a politically significant force.
It must be stressed then that the problem is not merely one of disposal technique.
Historical and other evidence points to the conclusion that many of the most important
risks associated with nuclear waste disposal are not of the kind which might be amenable
Obligations to the Future
175
to technical solutions in the laboratory. A realistic assessment of potential costs to the
future from nuclear development cannot overlook these important non-technical risk
factors.
8 Of course the effect on people is not the only factor which has to be taken into consideration in arriving at a moral judgment. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does
not confine its scope to human life. But since the harm nuclear development is likely to
cause to non-human life can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be
made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way.
9 Proponents of nuclear power often try to give the impression that future people will not
just bear costs from nuclear development but will also be beneficiaries, because nuclear
powerprovides an 'abundant' or even 'unlimited' source of energy; thus Weinberg ([3], p.
34): 'an all but infinite source of relatively cheap and clean energy'. A good example of an
attempt to create the impression that 'abundant' and 'cheap' energy from nuclear fission
will be available to 'our descendants', i.e. all future people, is found in the last paragraph
of Cohen [15]. Such claims are most misleading, since fission power even with the breeder
reactor has only about the same prospective lifetime as coal-produced electricity (a point
that can be derived using data in A. Parker, 'World Energy Resources: A Survey', Energy
Policy, Vol. 3 [1975], pp. 58-66), and it is quite illegitimate to assume that nuclear fusion,
for which there are still major unsolved problems, will have a viable, clean technology by
the time fission runs out, or, for that matter, that it ever will. Thus while some few
generations of the immediate future may obtain some benefits as well as costs, there is a
very substantial chance that tho se of the more distant future will obtain nothing but costs.
10 These feelings, of which Smith's and Hume's sympathy is representative, are but the
feeling echoes of obligation. At most, sympathy explains the feeling of obligation or lack
of it, and this provides little guide as to whether there is an obligation or not - unless one
interprets moral sympathy, the feeling of having a obligation, or being obligated, itself as
a sufficient indication of obligation, in which case moral sympathy is a non-explanatory
correlate in the feelings department of obligation itself and cannot be truly explanatory of
the ground of it; unless, in short, moral sympathy reduces to an emotive rewrite of moral
obligation.
11 Elsewhere in [1] Passmore is especially exercised that our institutions and intellectual
traditions - presumably only the better ones - should be passed on to posterity, and that
we should strive to make the world a better place, if not eventually an ideal one.
12 This is not the only philosophically important issue in environmental ethics on which
Passmore is inconsistent. Consider his: 'over-arching intention: to consider whether the
solution of ecological problems demands a moral or metaphysical revolution' (p. x),
whether the West needs a new ethic and a new metaphysics. Passmore's answer in [1] is
an emphatic No.
Only insofar as Western moralists have [made various erroneous suggestions] can
the West plausibly be said to need a 'new ethic'. What it needs, for the most part, is
not so much a 'new ethic' as adherence to a perfectly familiar ethic.
For the major sources of our ecological disasters - apart from ignorance - are
greed and shortsightedness, which amount to much the same thing. . . There is no
novelty in the view that greed is evil; no need of a new ethic to tell us as much. (p. 187)
'The view that the West now needs. . . a new concept of nature' is similarly dismissed (p.
186, cf. p. 72). But in his paper [1*] (i.e. 'Attitudes to Nature', Royal Institute of
Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 8, Macmillan, London 1975), which is said to be an attempt to
bring together and to reformulate some of the basic philosophical themes of [1], Passmore's answer is Yes, and quite different themes, inconsistent with those of [1], are
advanced:
176 R. and V. Routley
[T]he general conditions I have laid down . . . have not been satisfied in most of the
traditional philosophies of nature. To that degree it is true, I think, that we do need a
'new metaphysics' which is genuinely not anthropocentric. . . . A 'new metaphysics', if it is not to falsify the facts, will have to be naturalistic, but not reductionist.
The working out of such a metaphysics is, in my judgement, the most important task
which lies ahead of philosophy. ([1*], pp. 260-1)
A new ethic accompanies this new metaphysics.
The emergence of new moral attitudes to nature is bound up, then, with the emergence of a more realistic philosophy of nature. That is the only adequate foundation
for effective ecological concern. ([1*], p. 264)
This is a far cry from the theme of [1] that ecological problems can be solved within the
traditions of the West.
13 Put differently, the causal linkage can bypass intermediate generations, especially given
action at a temporal distance: the chain account implies that there are no moral constraints in initiating such causal linkages. The chain picture accordingly seems to presuppose an unsatisfactory Humean model of causation, demanding contiguity and excluding
action at a distance.
14 Golding we shall concede to Passmore, though even here the case is not clearcut. For
Golding writes towards the end of his article ([12], p. 96):
My discussion, until this point, has proceeded on the view that we have obligations
to future generations. But do we? I am not sure that the question can be answered in
the affirmative with any certainty. I shall conclude this note with a very brief
discussion of some of the difficulties.
All of Passmore's material on Golding is drawn from this latter and, as Golding says,
'speculative' discussion.
15 There is no textual citation for Bentham at all for the chapter of [1] concerned, viz. Ch. 4,
'Conservation'.
16 As Passmore himself at first concedes ([1], p. 84):
If, as Bentham tells us, in deciding how to act men ought to take account of the
effects of their actions on every sentient being, they obviously ought to take account
of the pleasure and pains of the as yet unborn.
17 Neither rightness nor probable lightness in the hedonistic senses correspond to these
notions in the ordinary sense; so at least [13] argues, following much anti-utilitarian
literature.
18 On this irrationality different theories agree: the rational procedure, for example according to the minimax rule for decision-making under uncertainty, is to minimize that
outcome which maximizes harm.
19 Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to follow the market (cf.
P. A. Samuelson, Economics, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York 1967, p. 351). Thus the
rates have little moral relevance.
20 Cf. Rawls [5], p. 287: 'From a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting
future well-being on the basis of pure time preference.'
21 What the probabilities would be depends on the theory of probability adopted: a Carnapian theory, e.g., would lead back to the unconstrained position.
Obligations to the Future 177
22 A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate. A real
possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. The contrast is with mere
logical possibility.
23 Thus, to take a simple special case, economists dismiss distant future people from their
assessments of utility, welfare, etc., on the basis of their non-existence; cf. Ng ('the utility
of a non-existent person is zero') and Harsanyi ('only existing people [not even "nonexisting potential individuals"] can have real utility levels since they are the only ones
able to enjoy objects with a positive utility, suffer from objects with a negative utility, and
feel indifferent to objects with zero utility') (see Appendix B of Y. K. Ng, 'Preference,
Welfare, and Social Welfare', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preference, Choice
and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National University, August 1977, pp. 24, 26-27).
Non-existent people have no experiences, no preferences; distant future people do not
exist; therefore distant future people have no utility assignments - so the sorites goes. But
future people at least will have wants, preferences, and so on, and these have to be taken
into account in adequate utility assessments (which should be assessed over afuture time
horizon), no matter how much it may complicate or defeat calculations.
24 There are problems about formulating universalizability satisfactorily, but they hardly
affect the point. The requisite universalizability can in fact be satisfactorily brought out
from the semantical analysis of deontic notions such as obligation, and indeed argued for
on the basis of such an analysis which is universal in form. The lawlikeness requirement,
which can be similarly defended, is essentially that imposed on genuine scientific laws by
logical empiricists (e.g. Carnap and Hempel), that such laws should contain no proper
names or the like, no reference to specific locations or times.
25 Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick [11], p. 414), and
in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and Rousseau toRawls ([5], p. 293).
How the principle is argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlying theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
26 See esp. R. Lanoue, NuclearPlants:The MoreTheyBuild, The More You Pay, Centerfor
Study of Responsive Law, Washington DC 1976; also [14], pp. 212 ff.
27 On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and Energy,
Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC 1977, pp. 1-7, and also the
details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner [7]. On the absorption
of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as well [18], p. 23. On the employment
issues, see too H. E. Daly in [9], p. 149. A more fundamental challenge to the poverty
argument appears in I. Illich, Energy and Equality, Calder & Boyars, London 1974,
where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the
opposite of what the poor need.
28 For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful,
Blond & Briggs, London 1973. As to the capital and other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and
also [7] and [9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy technology will tend to
promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries, see the paper of Waiko and other
papers in the Melanesian Environment (ed. by J. H. Winslow), Australian National
University Press, Canberra 1977.
29 This fact is implicitly recognized in [2], p. 56.
30 A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Friends of
the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 1976); see also [17],
[6], [7], [14], pp. 233 ff., and Schumacher, op. cit.
31 This is also explained in [2], p. 56.
32 An argument like this is suggested in Passmore [1], Chs. 4 and 7, with respect to the
question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance
of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned by what appears to be a future-
178 R. and V. Routley
directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be fortunate, the best way to take care of the future
(and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to
go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has
all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
33 See [14], p. 66, p. 191, and also [7].
34 For such arguments see esp. M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A
Comment on the Individual, the State and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council
for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London
1976.
35 For a recent sketch of one such alternative which is outside the framework of the
conventional option of centralized bureaucratic socialism, see E. Callenbach's novel,
Ecotopia, Banyan Tree Books, Berkeley, California 1975. For the outline of a liberation
socialist alternative see Radical Technology (ed. by G. Boyle and P. Harper), Undercurrents Limited, London 1976, and references therein.
36 Some earlier contract theories also did. Burke's contract (in E. Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France, Dent, London 1910, pp. 93-94) 'becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and
those who are not yet born'. Thus Burke's contract certainly appears to lead to obligations to distant future generations. Needless to say, there are metaphysical difficulties,
which however Burke never considers, about contracts between parties at widely separated temporal locations.
37 Several of the preceding points we owe to M. W. Jackson.
38 Resources such as soil fertility and petroleum could even be a primary social goods on
Rawls's very hazy general account of these goods ([5], pp. 62, 97): are these 'something a
rational man wants whatever else he wants'? The primary social goods should presumably be those which are necessary for the good and just life -which will however vary with
culture.
39 We have benefited from discussion with Ian Hughes and Frank Muller and useful
comments on the paper from Brian Martin and Derek Browne.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London 1974.
[2] Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra 1977.
[3] A. M. Weinberg, 'Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy", Science, Vol. 177 (July 1972),
pp. 27-34.
•
[4] R. Routley, 'Exploring Meinong's Jungle II. Existence is Existence Now', Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic (to appear).
[5] J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1971.
[6] Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of the British Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution, London 1976.
[7] B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York 1976.
[8] G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1903.
[9] B. Commoner, H. Boksenbaum and M. Corr (Eds.), Energy and Human Welfare - A
Critical Analysis, Vol. III, Macmillan, New York 1975.
Obligations to the Future 179
[10] J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 1, published under the superintendence of J. Bowring, with an intro. by J. H. Burton; William Tait, Edinburgh 1843.
[11] H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London 1962 (reissue).
[12] M. P. Golding, 'Obligations to Future Generations', Monist, Vol. 56 (1972), pp. 85-99.
[13] R. and V. Routley, 'An Expensive Repair Kit for Utilitarianism', presented at the
Colloquium on Preference, Choice and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National
University, August 1977.
[14] R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne
1977.
[15] B. L. Cohen, 'The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Fission Reactors', Scientific
American, Vol. 236 (June 1977), pp. 22-31.
[16] S. McCracken, 'The Waragainst the Atom' .Commentary (September 1977), pp. 33-47.
[17] A. B. Lovins and J. H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy
Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco 1975.
[18] A. Roberts, "The Politics of Nuclear Power', Arena, No. 41 (1976), pp. 22-47.
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Inquiry, 21, 133-79
Nuclear Energy and Obligations
to the Future
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain, Braidwood, Australia
The paper considers the morality of nuclear energy development as it concerns
future people, especially the creation of highly toxic nuclear wastes requiring longterm storage. On the basis of an example with many parallel moral features it is
argued that the imposition of such costs and risks on the future is morally unacceptable. The paper goes on to examine in detail possible ways of escaping this
conclusion, especially the escape route of denying that moral obligations of the
appropriate type apply to future people. The bulk of the paper comprises discussion
of this philosophical issue, including many arguments against assigning obligations
to the future drawn both from analyses of obligation and from features of the future
such as uncertainty and indeterminacy. A further escape through appeal to moral
conflict is also considered, and in particular two conflict arguments, the Poverty
and Lights-going-out arguments are briefly discussed. Both these escape routes are
rejected and it is concluded that if the same standards of behaviour are applied to
the future as to the present, nuclear energy development is morally unacceptable.
I. The Bus Example
Suppose we consider a bus, a bus which we hope is to make a very long
journey. This bus, a third world bus, carries both passengers and freight.
The bus sets down and picks up many different passengers in the course of
its long journey and the drivers change many times, but because of the way
the bus line is managed and the poor service on the route it is nearly always
full to overcrowded, with passengers hanging off the back, and as in
Afghanistan, passengers riding on the roof, and chickens and goats in the
freight compartment.
Early in the bus's journey someone consigns on it, to a far distant
destination, a package containing a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is
packaged in a very thin container, which as the consigner well knows is
unlikely to contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned,
and certainly will not do so if the bus should encounter any trouble, for
example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very
hot, if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort
commonly found on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some
1
�134 R. and V. Routley
passenger should interfere deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or
perhaps try to steal some of the freight, as also frequently happens. All of
these things, let us suppose, have happened on some of the bus's previous
journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people and animals on the bus, while others
could be maimed or contract serious diseases.
There does not seem much doubt about what most of us would say about
the morality of the consigner's action, and there is certainly no doubt
about what the passengers would say. The consigner's action in putting
the safety of the occupants of the bus at risk is appalling. What could
excuse such an action, what sort of circumstances might justify it, and
what sort of case could the consigner reasonably put up? The consigner
might say that it is by no means certain that the gas will escape; he himself
is an optimist and therefore feels that such unfavourable possible outcomes should be ignored. In any case the bus might have an accident and
the passengers be killed long before the container gets a chance to leak; or
the passengers might change to another bus and leave the lethal parcel
behind.
He might say that it is the responsibility of the passengers and the driver
to ensure that the journey is a smooth one, and that if they fail to do so, the
results are not his fault. He might say that the journey is such a long one
that many of the passengers may have become mere mindless vegetables
or degenerate wretches about whose fate no decent person need concern
himself, or that they might not care about losing their lives or health or
possessions anyway by that time.
Most of these excuses will seem little more than a bad joke, and certainly would not usually be reckoned any sort of justification. The main
argument the consigner of the lethal parcel employs, however, is that his
own pressing needs justify his actions. He has no option but to consign his
potentially lethal parcel, he says, since the firm he owns, and which has
produced the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits and
cannot afford to produce a better container or to stop the production of the
gas. If the firm goes out of business, the consigner says, his wife will leave
him, and he will lose his family happiness, the comfortable way of life to
which he has become accustomed and sees now as a necessity; his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others; not only will the
firm's customers be inconvenienced but he, the consigner, will have to
break some business contracts; the inhabitants of the local village through
loss of spending and cancellation of the Multiplier Effect will suffer finan-
�Obligations to the Future 135
cial hardship, and, worst of all, the tiny flow of droplets that the poor of the
village might receive (theoretically at any rate) as a result of the trickling
down of these good things would dry up entirely. In short, some basic and
some perhaps uncomfortable changes will be needed in the village.
Even if the consigner's story were accepted at face value - and it would
be wise to look critically at his story - only someone whose moral sensibilities had been paralysed by the disease of galloping economism could see
such a set of considerations, based on 'needs', comfort, and the goal of
local prosperity, as justifying the consigner's action.
One is not generally entitled to thus simply transfer the risks and costs
arising from one's own life onto other uninvolved parties, to get oneself
out of a hole of one's own making by creating harm or risk of harm to
someone else who has had no share in creating the situation. To create
serious risks and costs, especially risks to life or health for such others,
simply to avoid having to make some changes to a comfortable life style, or
even for a somewhat better reason, is usually thought deserving of moral
condemnation, and sometimes considered a crime; for example, the action
of a company in creating risks to the lives or health of its workers or
customers to prevent itself from going bankrupt. What the consigner says
may be an explanation of his behaviour, but it is not a justification.
The problem raised by nuclear waste disposal is by no means a perfect
analogy to the bus case, since, for example, the passengers on the nuclear
bus cannot get off the bus or easily throw out the lethal package. In many
crucial moral respects, however, the nuclear waste storage problem as it
affects future people, the passengers in the bus we are considering, resembles the consignment of the faultily packaged lethal gas. Not only are
rather similar moral principles involved, but a rather similar set of arguments to the lamentable excuses the consigner presents have been seriously put up to justify nuclear development, the difference being that in the
nuclear case these arguments have been widely accepted. There is also
some parallel in the risks involved; there is no known safe way to package
the highly toxic wastes generated by nuclear plants that will be spread
around the world if large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.1 The
wastes problem will not be a slight one, with each one of the more than
2,000 reactors envisaged by the end of the century, producing on average
annual wastes containing one thousand times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.2 The wastes include not merely the spent fuels and their
radioactive by-products, but also everything they contaminate, from fuel
containers to the thousands of widely distributed decommissioned nuclear
�136 R. and V. Routley
reactors which will have to be abandoned, still in a highly radioactive
condition, after the expiry of their expected lifetimes of about thirty years,
and which have been estimated to require perhaps one and a half million
years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.3 The wastes must be kept
suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime; for
fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or
so, and for the actinides (transuranic elements) which include plutonium,
there is a half-million to a million-year storage problem.4
Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed longterm methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of
waste that have been produced over the last twenty years.5 With present
known short-term surface methods of storage there is a continued need for
human intervention to keep the material isolated from the environment,
while with proposed longer-term methods such as storage in salt mines or
granite to the risk of human interference there are added the risks of
leakage, e.g. through water seepage, and of disturbance, for example
through climatic change, earth movements, etc. The risks are significant:
no reasonable person with even a limited acquaintance with the history of
human affairs over the last 3,000 years could be confident of safe storage
by methods involving human intervention over the enormous time periods
involved. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and
climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period which has
seen a number of ice ages and great fluctuations in climate for example,
could be confident that the waste material could be safely stored for the
vast periods of time required. Much of this waste is highly toxic; for
example, even a beachball sized quantity of plutonium appropriately
distributed is enough to give every person on the planet lung cancer - so
that a leak of even a small part of this waste material could involve huge
loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of
immense areas of land.6
Given the enormous costs which could be involved for the future, it is
plainly grossly inadequ'ate'to merely speculate concerning untested, but
possibly or even probably, safe methods for disposal of wastes. Yet none
of the proposed methods has been properly tested, and they may prove to
involve all sorts of unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
�Obligations to the Future 137
geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long-term storage method could be devised, there is the
problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it would be, especially if, as seems likely, such a
method proved expensive economically and politically, seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future not
previously encountered in human affairs, and certainly not conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.7 Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless
guarding of long-term storage sites through perhaps a million years of
possible future human activity, weapons-grade radioactive material will
be accessible, over much of the million-year storage period, to any party
who is in a position to retrieve it.
Our behaviour in creating this nightmare situation for the future is
certainly no better than that of the consigner in the bus example. Industrialized countries, in order to get out of a mess of their own making essentially the creation of economies dependent on an abundance" of
non-renewable energy in a situation where it is in fact in limited supply opt for a 'solution' which may enable them to avoid the making of uncomfortable changes during the lifetime of those now living, at the expense of
passing heavy burdens on to the inhabitants of the earth at a future time burdens in the shape of costs and risks which, just as in the bus case, may
adversely affect the life and health of future people and their opportunity
to lead a decent life.8
It is sometimes suggested that analogies like the bus example are defective; that morally they are crucially different from the nuclear case, since
future people, unlike the passengers in the bus, will benefit directly from
nuclear development, which will provide an abundance of energy for the
indefinite future. But this is incorrect. Nuclear fission creates wastes
which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the breeder
reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only 150 years. It will do
nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose
lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 30,000
generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks,
without any corresponding benefits, in order to provide for the extravagant energy use of only five generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop-gap, it
seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a
�138 R. and V. Routley
transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a
future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be
very much worse placed to cope with it.9 For they may well have to face
the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world not only
burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in
which, if the nuclear proponents' dream of global industrialization is
realized, more and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use, and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and
soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of
the basis of life, are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the
idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission
energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The 'solution' then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at
a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but
which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Just as in the bus
case, contemporary industrial society proposes to get itself out of a hole of
its own making by creating risk of harm, and by transferring costs and
risks, to someone else who has had no part in producing the situation and
who will obtain no clear benefit. It has clear alternatives to this action.
That it does not take them is due essentially to its unwillingness to avoid
changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to its desire to protect the
interests of those who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the same standards of behaviour and
moral principles that we acknowledge (in principle if perhaps often not in
fact) in the contemporary world, it will not be easy to avoid the conclusion
that the situation involves injustice with respect to future people on a
grand scale. It seems to us that there are only two plausible moves that
might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued
that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the
contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the
recipients of our nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly,
an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course
to say that there are no circumstances in which such an action might
possibly be justifiable, or at least where the case is less clearcut. It is the
same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the
�Obligations to the Future 139
package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances
might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We turn now to the
first of these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development, to the philosophical question of our obligations to the future.
II. Obligations to the Distant Future
The area in which these philosophical problems arise is that of the distant
(i.e. non-immediate) future, that is, the future with which people alive
today will make no direct contact; the immediate future provides comparatively few problems for moral theories. The issues involved, although of
far more than academic interest, have not received any great attention in
recent philosophical literature, despite the fact that the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail
to pass, and also raises a number of questions in political philosophy
concerning the adequacy of accepted institutions which leave out of
account the interests of future people.
Moral philosophers have predictably differed on the issue. But contrary
to the picture painted in a recent, widely read, and influential work
discussing it, Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature, a good many
philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come
down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and
interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately
future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories
- those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take
them seriously or who assign them less weight, those who deny, or who
are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are
moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those like Passmore
and Golding who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on
both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the
view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there
are no moral obligations to the future beyond those to the next generation.
• According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally
unconstrained; there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act
deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply, that we don't have obligations to
the (non-immediate) future, i.e. those who have opted for the uncon-
�140 R. and V. Routley
strained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as
presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation
is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration
and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral
obligation, or requirements for moral obligation, which would rule out
obligations to the non-immediate future are these: First, there are those
accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held
be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will
not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course
they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have for their rights
against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would
require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariantly
over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not
be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institution would do it for them.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out
the distant future as a field of moral obligation, as they not only require a
commonality, or some sort of common basis, which cannot be guaranteed
in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or
reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of
moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange, the interests of future people
must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be
parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the
distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground
moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as
sympathy and love. There are some difficulties also about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has no sympathy. On
the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for
future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary
�Obligations to the Future 141
people have no obligations to future people and can harm them as it suits
them.
What all these views have in common is a naturalistic picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something
(e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some
characteristic one can fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).10
Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually
thought to characterize it, such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features), are lost, especially where there is a choice
of whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so
of whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as
to exclude people in the distant future.
However, the view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act as one likes with respect to them, is a
very difficult one to sustain. Consider the example of a scientific group
which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb which is to be set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of
its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate
descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the
distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the
action. The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in
the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being unduly expensive or badly
designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to
future people. The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of examples: A firm discovers it can make a
handsome profit from mining, processing, and manufacturing a new type
of material which, although it causes no problems for present people or
their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years
decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any
consideration for the harm it does to future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view might seem childishly
obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which
they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have a number of
philosophers writing on the issue endorsed this position, but it is the clear
�142 R. and V. Routley
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of economic theory. It does not appear, on the other hand,
that those who opt for the unconstrained position have considered such
examples and endorsed them as morally acceptable, despite their being
clearly implied by their position. We suspect that when it is brought out
that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being
free to act implies, among other things being free to inflict pointless harm,
most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to
assert that it was not what they intended. What those who have put
forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in mind in denying
moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives. The view that the future can take
care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present. But it is not. It is not as if, in cases such as those discussed above
and the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of
itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so must acquire many
of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting
the present and immediate future. The thesis seems thus to assume an
incorrect model of an independent and unrelated future.
Also, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people
does not amount to the same as saying that we are free to do as we like with
respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving
them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have, or has not
acquired, an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been
involved - that one has no responsibility for his life - does not imply that
one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him
or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could
seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
failure to make an important distinction between, on the one hand, acquired or assumed obligations towards somebody, for which some act of
acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and on the
other hand moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should
not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of
acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and
kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or
be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be
contracted. In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a
causal agent aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his
�Obligations to the Future 143
action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or assumed. Thus
there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can
apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied. They apply as a
result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a
reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to
what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet)
exist. While it may be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people
must make special sacrifices of an heroic kind for future people, or even to
help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to
be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the bus example, the
consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never
assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not
know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them, and that they
are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special
obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue in respect of both the
bus and the nuclear case is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility
for the lives of the people involved.
The confusion of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off
non-acquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral
obligation' in philosophy to indicate any type of deontic constraint, while
in natural language it is used to indicate something which has to be
assumed or acquired. Hence the equation and at least one root of the
unconstrained position, that is of the belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to a more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent position. Passmore's position in [1] is a striking example of the second ambivalent
position. On the one hand Passmore regularly gives the impression of one
championing future people; for example, in the final sentence of [1] he
says, concerning men a century hence:
My sole concern is that we should do nothing which will reduce their
freedom of thought and action, whether by destroying.the natural
world which makes that freedom possible or the social traditions
which permit and encourage it.
�144 R. and V. Routley
Earlier (esp. pp. 84-85) Passmore appears to endorse the principle 'that we
ought not to act so as certainly to harm posterity' and claims (p. 98) that,
even where there are uncertainties, 'these uncertainties do not justify
negligence'. Nevertheless, though obligations concerning non-immediate
posterity are thus admitted, the main thrust of Passmore's argument is
entirely different, being in favour of the unconstrained position according
to which we have no obligations to non-immediate posterity. Thus his
conclusion (p. 91):
So whether we approach the problem of obligations to posterity by
way of Bentham and Sidgwick, Rawls or Golding, we are led to
something like the same conclusion: our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able
to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and
that is all.11
Passmore's position is, to all appearances, simply inconsistent. There are
two ways one might try to render it consistent, but neither is readily
available to Passmore. The first is by taking advantage of the distinction
between moral constraints and acquired obligations, but a basis for this
distinction is not evident in Passmore's work and indeed the distinction is
antithetical to the analyses of obligation that Passmore tries to synthesize
with his own analysis in terms of loves. The second, sceptical, route to
consistency is by way of the argument that we shall consider shortly, that
there is always gross uncertainty with respect to the distant future, uncertainty which relieves us in practice of any moral constraints regarding the
distant future. But though Passmore's writing strongly suggests this uncertainty argument (especially his sympathetic discussion of the Premier
of Queensland's argument against conservationists [p. 77]), he also rules it
out with the claim that uncertainties do not justify negligence.12
Many of the accounts of moral obligation that give rise to the unconstrained position are fused in Passmore's work, again not entirely consistently, since the different accounts exploited do not give uniform results.
Thus the primary account of obligation is said to be in terms of loves though the account is never satisfactorily formulated or developed - and it
is suggested that because our loves do not extend into the distant future,
neither do our obligations. This sentimental account of obligation will
obviously lead to different results from utilitarian accounts of obligation,
which however Passmore appeals to in his discussion of wilderness. In yet
other places in [1], furthermore, social contract and moral community
�Obligations to the Future 145
views are appealed to - see, e.g., the treatment of animals, of preservation, and of duties to nature. In the case of obligations to future people,
however, Passmore does try to sketch an argument - what we call the
convergence argument - that all the accounts lead in the end to the
unconstrained position.
As well as the convergence argument, and various uncertainty arguments to be considered later, Passmore appears to endorse several other
arguments in favour of his theme that there are in practice no obligations to
the distant future. In particular, he suggests that such obligations would in
practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be
encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive
generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves,
only to the succeeding generation. We outline three objections to this
chain account. First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the
future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no
question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations,
since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a
way which may create individual responsibility, and which can't necessarily be sheeted home to an entire generation. Secondly, such chains, since
they are non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant
future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as
examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the
cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which
show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence
matters.13 Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be
achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant
future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible
with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by,
ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written
off as 'never-never land' examples, since many cases of environmental
exploitation might be seen as of just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case
but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term
depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overcropping. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations
in the way the chain picture suggests.
�146 R. and V. Routley
Passmore tries to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms
of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally
required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired
obligation and between obligation and supererogation, this is just to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an
unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm, than
one is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from beating and
robbing some stranger and leaving him to starve.
Passmore's most sustained argument for the unconstrained position is a
convergence argument, that different analyses of obligations, including
his own, lead to the one conclusion. This style of argument is hardly
convincing when there are well-known accounts of obligation which do
not lead to the intended conclusion, e.g. deontological accounts such as
those of Kant and of modern European schools, and teleological accounts
such as those of Moore (in [8]). But such unfavourable positions are either
rapidly passed over or ignored in Passmore's historical treatment and
narrow selection of historical figures. The style of argument becomes even
less persuasive when it is discovered that the accounts of the main authorities appealed to, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Rawls,14 do not lead, without
serious distortion, to the intended conclusion. Indeed Passmore has twisted the historical and textual evidence to suit his case, as we now try to
indicate.
Consider Bentham first. Passmore's assumption, for which no textual
evidence is cited, ls is that no Benthamite calculation can take account of a
future more extensive than the immediate future (cf. pp. 87-88). The
assumption seems to be based simply on the fact that Bentham remarked
that 'the value of the pleasure or pain to each person to be considered in
any estimate will be greater or less in virtue of the following circumstances'. '3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness'
([10], p. 16). But this does nothing to show that future persons are discounted: the certainty and propinquity do not concern persons, but the
utilities of the persons concerned. As regards which persons are concerned in any calculation Bentham is quite explicit, detailing how
to take an exact account. . . of the general tendency of any act.. . .5 .
Take an account of the number of persons whose interests appear to
be concerned; and repeat the above process [summation of values of
pleasure and of pain] with respect to each. ([10], p. 16)
�Obligations to the Future 147
It follows that Bentham's calculation takes account of everyone (and, in
his larger scheme, every sentient creature) whose interests appear to be
concerned: if the interests of people in the distant future appear to be
concerned - as they are in conservation issues - they are to be included in
the calculation. And there is independent evidence16 that in Bentham's
view the principle of utility was not temporally restricted: 'that is useful
which, taking all times and all persons into consideration, leaves a balance
of happiness' ([10], pp. 17-18, our italics). Thus the future cut-off that
Passmore has attributed to Bentham is contradicted by Bentham's own
account.
The case of Sidgwick is more complex, because there is isolated oscillation in his application of utilitarianism between use of utility and of
(something like) expected utility (see [11], pp. 381,414): Sidgwick's utilitarianism is, in its general characterization, essentially that of Bentham:
the conduct which . . . is objectively right is that which will produce
the greatest amount of happiness on the whole; that is, taking into
account all those whose happiness is affected by the conduct. ([11], p.
411)
All includes all sentient beings, both existing and to exist, as Sidgwick goes
on to explain (p. 414). In particular, in answer to the question 'How far are
we to consider the interests of posterity when they seem to conflict with
those of existing human beings?' Sidgwick writes ([11], p. 414, our italics):
It seems, however, clear that the time at which a man exists cannot
affect the value of his happiness from a universal point of view; and
that the interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as
those of his contemporaries, except in so far as the effect of his
actions on posterity - and even the existence of human beings to be
affected - must necessarily be more uncertain.
But Passmore manages, first of all, to give a different sense to what
Sidgwick is saying by adjusting the quotation, by omitting the clause we
have italicized, which equalizes the degree of concern for present and
future persons, and by italicizing the whole except-clause, thereby placing
much greater emphasis than Sidgwick does on uncertainty. For according
to Sidgwick's impartiality principle, 'the mere difference in time is not a
�148 R. and V. Routley
reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of one
-amount than to that of another' ([11], p. 381; see also p. 124). The apparent
tension in Sidgwick's theory as to whether uncertainty should be taken
into account is readily removed by resort to a modern distinction between
values and expected values (i.e. probability weighted values); utilitarian
rightness is defined as before in terms of the net happiness of all concerned
over all time without mention of uncertainty or probabilities, but it is
distinguished from probable rightness (given present information), in the
utilitarian sense,17 which is defined in terms of the expected net happiness
of those concerned, using present probabilities. It is the latter notion, of
probable rightness, that practical reasoning is commonly concerned with
and that decision theory studies; and it is this that Passmore supposes
Sidgwick is using ([1], p. 84). But it is evident that the utilitarian determination of probable rightness, like that of rightness, will sometimes take
into account the distant future - as Sidgwick's discussion of utilitarian
determination of optimum population (immediately following his remark
on uncertainty) does. So how does Passmore contrive to reverse matters,
to have Sidgwick's position lead to his own unconstrained conclusion?
The answer is: By inserting an additional assumption of his own - which
Sidgwick would certainly have rejected - that the uncertainties entitle us
to ignore the distant future. What Passmore has implicitly assumed in his
claim ([1], p. 85) that 'utilitarian principles [such as Sidgwick's] are not
strong enough' 'to justify the kinds of sacrifice some conservationists now
call upon us to make' is his own thesis that 'The uncertainty of harms we
are hoping to prevent would in general entitle us to ignore them.. .'. From
a decision-theory viewpoint this is simply irrational18 unless the probabilities of damage are approaching zero. We will deal with the essentially
sceptical uncertainty arguments on which Passmore's position depends
shortly: here it is enough to observe that Sidgwick's position does not lead
to anything like that which Passmore attributes to him - without uncertainty assumptions which Sidgwick would have rejected (for he thought
that future people'will certainly have pleasure and suffer pain).
We can also begin to gauge from Passmore's treatment of nineteenthcentury utilitarians, such as Bentham and Sidgwick, the extent of the
distortion which underlies his more general historical case for the unconstrained position which, so he claims,
represents accurately enough what, over the last two centuries, men
have seen as their duty to posterity as a whole. . . . ([1], p. 91)
�Obligations to the Future 149
The treatment accorded Rawls in only marginally more satisfactory.
Passmore supposes that Rawls's theory of justice leads directly to the
unconstrained position ([1], p. 87 and p. 91), whereas Rawls claims ([5], p.
293) that we have obligations to future people just as to present ones. But
the situation is more complicated than Rawls's claim would indicate, as we
now try to explain in a summary way (more detail is given in the Appendix). For, in order to justify this claim on his theory (with its present
time-of-entry interpretation), Rawls has to invoke additional and dubious
motivational assumptions; even so the theory which thus results does not
yield the intended conclusion, but a conclusion inconsistent with Rawls's
claim. However, by changing the time-of-entry interpretation to an omnitemporal one, Rawls's claim does result from the theory so amended.
Moreover, the amended theory also yields, by exactly Rawls's argument
for a just saving rate, a resource conservation policy, and also a case
against nuclear development. Accordingly Passmore's other claims regarding Rawls are mistaken, e.g. that the theory cannot justify a policy of
resource conservation. Rawls does not emerge unscathed either. As on
the issue of whether his contract is a necessary condition for obligations,
so on obligations which the contract yields to the distant future, Rawls is
far from consistent. Furthermore, institutions such as qualified market
and voting systems are recommended as just though from a future perspective their results are far from that. Rawls, then, does not take obligations to the future with full seriousness.
In sum, it is not true that the theory of Rawls, any more than the theories
of the historical figures actually discussed by Passmore, unequivocally
supports the unconstrained position.
III. Uncertainty and Indeterminacy Arguments
Although there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the qualified
position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant
future: there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the
present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much
in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much
less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present
�150 R. and V. Routley
people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in most
modern economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of an (opportunity cost) discount rate. The attempt to
apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds
of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal
constraints, and cannot determine what those constraints are. There are,
moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt one which
discounts the future is to beg all the questions at issue. The discounting
move often has the same result as the unconstrained position; if, for
instance, we consider the cancer example and consider costs as payable
compensation, it is evident that, over a sufficiently long period of time,
discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no
recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short,
even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to
achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about fifteen years,19 and application of such rates would
simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type the
whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would
violate moral constraints.20
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis
concerning the distant future.21 But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and
benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases
where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very
much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much)
higher probabilities obtain. So in the case of conflict between the present
and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the
people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower
�Obligations to the Future 151
probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the
present, assuming that anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it can't be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it
is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so
years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of
future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful or trivial benefits for some
present people, in the shape of the opportunity to continue unnecessarily
high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted, such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action is acceptable
provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit
approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability
frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned, or for
dealing with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a
firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm
stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits
involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party
to another. Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different
parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself
by imposing costs ony ? - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted by some proponents of nuclear energy,
who attempt to dismiss the costs to future people with the soothing remark
that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The transfer point
is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on by McCracken
[16] in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between
nuclear risks and those from cigarette smoking. In the latter case those
who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming
extent* those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In
contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be
risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also
those of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related
to a person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
�152 R. and V. Routley
happiness sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different
parties, and the introduction of probability considerations does not change
the principles involved but merely complicates analyses. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some
moral problems such as the bus example do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the bus example
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and
important ones used by philosophers and others to argue for the position
that we cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our
actions on the distant future. There are two strands to the uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently entangled. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalized uncertainty argument
which runs as follows: In contrast to the exact information we can obtain
about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our
actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly, and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the
present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More
formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information; there is no reliable information at present as regards the distant future; therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
The first argument is essentially a variation on a sceptical argument in
epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace
'obligations' by 'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument
above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the
degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate
future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral
consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the
future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and
�Obligations to the Future 153
the adjacent future and present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and
constantly do act on the basis of such 'unreliable' information as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels 'uncertainty'; for scepticproof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. A
good example is again the bus case. We do not need to know for certain
that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not,
in order for us to condemn the consigner's action. It is enough that there is
a significant risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the
decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and the prospects of the
passengers quite uncertain; the resolution of the problem is still clearly in
favour of the so-called 'speculative' and 'unreliable'. But if we do not
require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the
future? Why should we require epistemic standards for the future which
the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and
adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a
necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant
future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard. But such an
epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests,
in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it
already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each
class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in
practice take the interests of future people into account, because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what
the likely consequences of actions upon it will be and therefore, however
good our intentions to the people of the distant future, in practice we have
no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain
incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no
rational ground for choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can also be put in this way: If moral principles are, like other
principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as 'if* has character
h then x is wrong, for every (action) x', then what the argument claims is
�154 R. and V. Routley
that we can never obtain the information about future actions which would
enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral
principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be
applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary
action of the 'It is wrong to do x' type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument have to be conceded.
If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the
effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or
hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply
theoretically to the future, will not be applicable in practice for obtaining
any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant future will
impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future is always so grossly
uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of
uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent)
fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude
constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is
commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be
needed in some cases is the creation of"a significant risk. Again there is
considerable uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at
all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of
much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have
any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in girls' names or
men's footwear, or what brands of ice cream people will be eating if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3,000
years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to
have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will
need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or
the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of
non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. While it is true that there are many areas in which the morally relevant
information needed is uncertain or unavailable, and in which we cannot
therefore determine satisfactorily how to act, there are certainly others in
�Obligations to the Future 155
which uncertainty in morally relevant areas is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient
for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases,
especially where spatially remote people are involved. The case of nuclear
waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people,
seems to be of the latter sort. Here there is no gross indeterminacy or
uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what
may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage
does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as we can see
from the bus example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the corresponding defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty
arguments used to write off probable harm to future people as outside the
scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both
of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the
other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example,
we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because
we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not
be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would
affect us (cf. Passmore [1]). But this is to insist upon complete certainty of
a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where
there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part,
because they may be morons or forever plugged into enjoyment- or other
machines (Golding [12]). Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist
approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain
properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating
consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says
that the solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn't
looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. Neither the contemporary
nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a
lapse into universal moronity or universal pleasure-machine escapism is a
serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast
�156 R. and V. Routley
with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable
risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilization through destruction of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to
future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the
argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent
storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped
waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real
possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still
does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and
that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this
type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may
discover a cure for cancer, and the fact that this appears to be a real and not
merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm in the
example discussed above, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer
in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was
certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases, before such
actions could be considered admissible, what would be required is far
more than a possibility, real or not22 - it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique
for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of most of these uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the bus example, where the
consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of
his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to
deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the
bus may break down and they may all change to a different bus leaving the
parcel behind, or the bus may crash, killing all the passengers before the
container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities, of course, but
there is no positive reason to believe that they are any more than that, that
is they are not real possibilities. The strategy is to stress such outside
possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross
uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will
�Obligations to the Future 157
break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities,
that uncertainty about the future is so great as to preclude the consigners'
taking account of the passengers' welfare and of the real possibility of
harm from his parcel, and thereby excuse his action. A related strategy is
to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby
imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints .This move
implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty, or at
least a very high probability, of harm is required before an action can be
judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree
of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat
the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not
so.
An argument closely related to the uncertainty arguments is based on
the non-existence and indeterminacy of the future.23 An item is indeterminate in a given respect if its properties in that respect are, as a matter of
logic, not settled (nor are they settlable in a non-arbitrary fashion). The
respects in which future items are indeterminate are well enough known
for a few examples to serve as reminders: all the following are indeterminate: the population of Australia at 2001, its distribution, its age structure,
the preferences of its members for folk music, wilderness, etc., the size
and shape of Wollongong, the average number of rooms in its houses and
in its office blocks, and so on. Philosophical discussion of such indeterminacy is as old as Aristotle's sea battle and as modern as truth-value gaps
and fuzzy logics, and many positions have been adopted on the existence
and determinacy of future items. Nevertheless theories that there are
obligations to the future are not sensitive to the metaphysical position
adopted concerning the existence or non-existence of the future. Any
theory which denied obligations to the future on the metaphysical grounds
that the future did not exist, and did not have properties, so that the
present could not be related to it, would be committed to denying such
obvious facts as that the present could causally influence the future, that
present people could be great-grandparents of purely future people, and so
on, and hence would have to be rejected on independent grounds. This is
not to say that there are not important problems about the existence or
non-existence of future items, problems which are perhaps most straightforwardly handled by a Meinongian position which allows that items
which do not exist may have properties. The non-existence of the future
�158 R. and V. Routley
does raise problems for standard theories which buy the Ontological
Assumption (the thesis that what does not exist does not have properties),
especially given the natural (and correct) inclination to say that the future
does not (now) exist; but such theories can adopt various strategies for
coping with these problems (e.g. the adoption of a platonistic position
according to which the future does now exist, or the allowance for certain
sorts of relations between existents at different times), although the satisfactoriness of these strategies is open to question (cf. [4]). Thus whether or
not the Ontological Assumption is assumed and however it is applied, it
will be allowed that future items will have properties even if they do not
have them now, and that is enough to provide the basis for moral concern
about the future. Thus the thesis of obligations to the future does not
presuppose any special metaphysical position on the existence of the
future.
If the non-existence of future items creates no special problems for
obligations to the future, the same is not true of their indeterminacy.
Whether the indeterminacy of future items is seen as a logical feature of
the future which results from the non-existence of purely future items or
whether one adopts a (mistaken) platonistic view of the future as existing
and sees the indeterminacy as an epistemological one resulting from our
inability to know the character of these entities - that is, we cannot
completely know the future .though it exists and has a definite characterwhichever view we take indeterminacy still creates major difficulties for
certain ethical theories and their treatment of the future.
The difficulties arise for theories which appear to require a high level of
determinacy with respect to the number and character of future items, in
particular calculus-type theories such as utilitarianism in its usual forms,
where the calculations are critically dependent on such information as
numbers, totals, and averages, information which so far as the future is
concerned is generally indeterminate. The fact that this numerical information is typically indeterminate means that insofar as head-count utilitarianism requires determinate information on numbers, it is in a similar
position to theories discussed earlier; it may apply theoretically to future
people, but since the calculations cannot be applied to them their interests
will be left out of account. And, in fact, utilitarianism for the most part
does not, and perhaps cannot, take future creatures and their interests
seriously; there is little discussion as to how the difficulties or impossibility of calculations regarding the open future are to be obtained. Non-platonistic utilitarianism is in logical difficulty on this matter, while platonis-
�Obligations to the Future 159
tic utilitarianism - which faces a range of other objections - is inapplicable
because of epistemic indeterminacy. We have yet another case of a theory
of the sort that applies theoretically but in practice doesn't take the future
seriously. But far from this showing that future people's interests should
be left out of account, what these considerations show are deficiencies in
these sorts of theories, which require excessive determinacy of information. This kind of information is commonly equally unavailable for the
accepted areas of moral constraint, the present and immediate future; and
the resolution of moral issues is often not heavily dependent on knowledge
of such specific determinate features as numbers or other determinate
features. For example, we do not need to know how many people there
will be on the bus, how intelligent they are, what their preferences are or
how badly they will be injured, in order to reach the conclusion that the
consigner's action in despatching his parcel is a bad one. Furthermore, it is
only the ability of moral considerations to continue to apply in the absence
of determinate information about such things as numbers that makes it
possible to take account of the possible effects of action, as the risks
associated with action - something which is quite essential even for the
present if moral considerations are to apply in the normal and accepted
way. For it is essential in order to apply moral considerations in the
accepted way that we consider alternative worlds, in order to take account
of options, risks, and alternative outcomes; but these alternative or counterfactual worlds are not in so different a position from the future with
respect to determinacy; for example, there is indeterminacy with respect
to the number of people who may be harmed in the bus case or in apossible
nuclear reactor melt-down. These alternative worlds, like the distant
future, are indeterminate in some respects, but not totally indeterminate.
It might still be thought that the indeterminacy of the future, for example
with respect to number and exact character, would at least prevent the
interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict
with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown, how can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future where this information is available in a more
or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of
sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people,
when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are
indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the
future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by ignoring
�160 R. and V. Routley
such factors. Nor are such distributional problems as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to
focus on them would suggest. It should be conceded then that there will be
cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts
very difficult or indeed impossible to resolve - a realistic ethical theory
will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other
conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution
of the issue, e.g. the bus example which is a conflict case of a type. In
particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing
numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to
know only the most general probable characteristics of future people.
Moreover, even where numbers are relevant often only bounds will be
required, exact numerical counts only being required where, for instance,
margins are narrow; e.g. issues may be resolved as in parliament where a
detailed vote (or division) is only required when the issue is close. It is
certainly not necessary then to have complete determinacy to resolve all
cases of conflict.
The question we must ask then is what features of future people could
disqualify them from moral consideration or reduce their claims to it to
below those of present people? The answer is: in principle None. Prima
facie moral principles are universalizable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.24 But universalizability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are
capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present; in other words, a theory
that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as
regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup such as
(white-skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that
would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been
looking at, uncertainty and indeterminacy; what we have argued is that it
would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral
claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect
certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or practical
course of action given only present information). In particular they do not
affect cases of the sort being considered, the nuclear one, where highly
determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics
of the class likely to be harmed or certainty of damage are not required.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is
not needed: it is enough to require that the temporal position of a person
�Obligations to the Future 161
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration;25 inversely that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this
universalizability, there is the same obligation to future people as to the
present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and
their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of
the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions' causing harm or
damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob
future people of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not free us of these obligations. If, in a closely
comparable case concerning the present, the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent
grounds for requiring greater certainty of harm in the future case under
consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for
proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion
tentatively reached in our first section, that proposals for nuclear development in the present state of technology for future waste disposal are
immoral.
IV. Overriding Consideration Arguments
In the first part we noticed that the consigner's action could not be justified
by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the
firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact
that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
We also observed that the principle on which this assessment was based,
that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these
sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the
nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are thus
most commonly advanced to promote nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment,
investment, and consumption-do not even begin to show that the nuclear
alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct (and there is reason to doubt
that most of them are),26 the arguments would fail because economics
must operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice
versa.
�162 R. and V. Routley
What one does have to consider, however, are moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is
the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the bus case,
the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is
taken the village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a
justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the
passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs
and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so
clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in
such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on
competing duties to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such
moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives),
and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument-for example, if in the bus
case it turns out that the villagers have another option to starving or to the
sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way - then
the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. We want to argue
that suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument,
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse
than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these
arguments as well. In short, the arguments depend essentially on the
presentation of false dichotomies.
The first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialized countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often
claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the
standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment
and poverty in the industrialized nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third
world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to
increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the
�Obligations to the Future 163
diversion of great amounts of available capital into an industry which is not
only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps
to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for
labour use. 27 The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third
world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and
economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive
amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
and creates negligible employment, while politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralized entrenched power and reduces the
chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large
part of the problem.28 The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of
people of the third world does not, of course, mean that it is not in the
interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernized and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually
organized; but it is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands
these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor.
The poverty argument then is a fraud. Nuclear energy will not be used to
help the poor.29 Both for the third world and for the industrialized countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources,30 alternatives which are
morally acceptable and socially preferable to nuclear development, and
which have far better prospects for helping the poor.31
The second major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to
a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and
institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technological, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable
institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The
argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.32 .
The lights-going-out argument raises rather sharply questions as to
what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary
for a good society. These are questions which deserve much fuller treatment than we can allot them here, but a few brief points should be made.
The argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to
existing high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are
uniformly and uniquely valuable; it also assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it can't be changed in the direction of energy
�164 R. and V. Routley
conservation or alternative energy sources without collapse. Such a society has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept. The assumption that technological society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all, it
has survived events such as world wars which have required major social
and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western
society's demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse,
not only would it be committed to a programme of increasing destruction,
but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would
very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base
which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary
society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but
if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions? but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the
political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue
that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable,
presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, e.g. from history, is that no very high level of material
affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower
energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable
than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we believe it is, it is not necessary to presuppose such
a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of
the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of wellbeing is required to consume less energy than at present, and certainly far
less than the large increase over present levels of consumption which is
assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.33 What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going
out in western civilization, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the
time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy
Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
�Obligations to the Future 165
is obtained by nuclear-fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralized,
controlled, and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy
source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power,
and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether
capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political
system and over people's lives, even more than they do at present. Very
persuasive arguments have been advanced by civil liberties groups and
others in a number of countries to suggest that such a society would tend to
become authoritarian, if only as an outcome of its response to the threat
posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation.34
There are reasons to believe then that with nuclear development what
we would be passing on to future generations would be some of the worst
aspects of our society (e.g. the consumerism, growing concentration of
power, destruction of the natural environment, and latent authoritarianism), while certain valuable aspects would be lost or threatened. Political
freedom is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives which
do not involve such unacceptable consequences are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the
loss of all that is valuable, but the development of alternative technologies
and life-styles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and
further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly
centralized nuclear option.35 The lights-going-out argument, as a moral
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false
dichotomy. Thus both the escape routes, the appeal to moral conflict and
to the appeal to futurity, are closed.
If then we apply the same standards of morality to the future as we
acknowledge for the present - as we have argued we should - the conclusion that the proposal to develop nuclear energy on a large scale is a crime
against the future is inevitable, since both the escape routes are closed.
There are, of course, also many other grounds for ruling it out as morally
unacceptable, for saying that it-is not only a crime against the distant future
but also a crime against the present and immediate future. These other
grounds for moral concern about nuclear energy, as it affects the present
and immediate future, include problems arising from the possibility of
catastrophic releases of radioactive fuel into the environment or of waste
material following an accident such as reactor melt-down, of unscheduled
discharges of radiation into the environment from a plant fault, of proli-
�166 R. and V. Routley
feration of nuclear weapons, and of deliberate release or threat of release
of radioactive materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion. All these
are important issues, of much moral interest. What we want to claim,
however, is that on the basis of its effects on the future alone, the nuclear
option is morally unacceptable.
Appendix
Passmore's Treatment ofRawls,
and What Really Happens on Rawls's Theory
Passmore takes it that Rawls's theory yields an unconstrained position
but, according to Rawls, the theory leads to quite the opposite result;
namely,
persons in different generations [and not merely neighbouring generations] have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound
by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to
define justice between persons at different moments of time.. . . The
derivation of these duties and obligations may seem at first a somewhat far-fetched application of the central doctrine. Nevertheless
these requirements would be acknowledged in the original position
[where the parties do not know to which generation they belong], and
so the conception of justice as fairness covers these matters without
any change in its basic idea. ([5], p. 293; the second insert is drawn
from p. 287)
Through judicious use of the veil of ignorance and the time of entry of
parties to the original contract position, Rawls's contract theory, unlike
simpler explicit contract theories, can yield definite obligations to distant
future people,36 for example, we ought to save at a just rate for future
people.
But, as Rawls remarks (p. 284), 'the question of justice between generations . . . subjects any ethical theory to severe if not impossible tests'. It is
doubtful that Rawls's theory as formulated passes the tests; for the theory
as formulated does not yield the stated conclusion, but a conclusion
inconsistent with the thesis that there are the same obligations to future
people as to contemporaries. Exactly how these obligations arise from the
initial agreement depends critically on the interpretation of the time of
�Obligations to the Future 167
entry of the parties into the agreement. Insofar as Rawls insists upon the
present-time-of-entry interpretation (p. 139), he has to introduce supplementary motivational assumptions in order to (try to) secure the desired
bondings between generations, in particular to ensure that the generation
of the original position saves for any later generation, even their immediate successors ([5], p. 140 and p. 292). Rawls falls back on-what is as we
have seen inadequate to the task, since it does not exclude one generation
damaging another remote generation in a way that bypasses mutually
successive generations - 'ties of sentiment between successive generations' (p. 292): to this limited extent Passmore has a point, for such a social
contract on its own (without additional assumptions about the motives of
the parties to the agreement) does not furnish obligations even to our
immediate successors. This is indicative also of the unsatisfactory instability of Rawls's theory under changes, its sensitivity to the way the original
agreement is set up, to the motivation of parties, their time of entry, what
they can know, etc.
To arrive at a more adequate account of obligations to the distant future
under Rawls's theory, let us adopt, to avoid the additional, dubious and
unsatisfactory, motivational assumptions Rawls invokes, one of the alternative - and non -equivalent - time-of-entry interpretations that Rawls lists
(p. 146), that of persons alive at some time in simultaneous agreement. Let
us call this, following Rawls's notation (on p. 140), interpretation 4b (it is
perhaps unnecessary to assume for 4b any more than 4a that all people
need be involved: it may be enough given the equivalencizing effect of the
veil of ignorance that some are, and as with the particular quantifier it is
quite unnecessary to be specific about numbers). Then of course the
parties, since they are, for all they know, of different generations, will
presumably agree on a just savings rate, and also to other just distribution
principles, simply on the basis of Rawlsian rationality, i.e. advancing their
own interests, without additional motivation assumptions. This more
appealing omnitemporal interpretation of time of entry into the agreement,
which gives a superior account of obligation to the future consistent with
Rawls's claim, Rawls in some places puts down as less than best (p. 292)
but in his most detailed account of the original position simply dismisses
(p. 139):
To conceive of the original position [as a gathering of people living at
different times] would be to stretch fantasy too far; the conception
would cease to be a natural guide to intuition.
�168 R. and V. Rout ley
This we question: it would be a better guide to intuition than a position
(like 4a) which brings out intuitively wrong results; it is a more satisfactory
guide, for example, to justice between generations than the present-timeof-entry interpretation, which fails conspicuously to allow for the range of
potential persons (all of whom are supposed to qualify on Rawls's account
for just treatment, cf. § 77). Moreover, it stretches fantasy no further than
science fiction or than some earlier contract accounts.36 But it does
require changes in the way the original position is conceived, and it does
generate metaphysical difficulties for orthodox ontological views (though
not to the same extent for the Meinongian view we prefer); for, to consider
the latter, either time travel is possible or the original hypothetical position
is an impossible situation, with people who live at different times assembled at the same time. The difficulties - of such an impossible meeting help to reveal that what Rawls's theory offers is but a colourful representation of obligations in terms of a contract agreed upon at a meeting.
The metaphysical difficulties do not concern merely possible people,
because all those involved are sometime-actual people; nor are there
really serious difficulties generated by the fact that very many of these
people do not exist, i.e. exist now. The more serious difficulties are either
those of time travel, e.g. that future parties relocated into the present may
be able to interfere with their own history, or, if time travel is ruled out
logically or otherwise, that future parties may be advantaged (or disadvantaged) by their knowledge of history and technology, and that accordingly fairness is lost. As there is considerable freedom in how we choose to
(re)arrange the original position, we shall suppose that time travel is
rejected as a means of entering the original position. For much less than
travel is required; some sort of limited communicational network which
filters out, for example, all historical data (and all cultural or species
dependent material) would suffice; and in any case if time travel were not
excluded essentially the present-time-of-entry interpretation would serve,
though fairness would again be put in doubt. The filtered communicational
hook-up by which the omnitemporal position is engineered still has - if
fairness is to be seen to be built into the decision making - to be combined
with a reinterpreted veil of ignorance, so that parties do not know where
they are located temporally any more than they know who they are
characterwise. This implies, among other things, limitations on the parties' knowledge of factual matters, such as available technology and world
and local history; for otherwise parties could work out their location,
temporal or spatial. For example, if some party knew, as Rawls supposes,
�Obligations to the Future 169
the general social facts, then he would presumably be aware of the history
of his time and so of where history ends, that is of the date of his
generation, his time (his present), and so be aware of his temporal location. These are already problems for Rawls's so-called 'present-time-ofentry interpretation' - it is, rather, a variable-time-of-entry interpretation
- given that the parties may be, as Rawls occasionally admits (e.g. p. 287),
of any one generation, not necessarily the present: either they really do
have to be ofthepresent time or they cannot be assumed to know as much
as Rawls supposes.37 There is, however, no reason why the veil of ignorance should not be extended so as to avoid this problem; and virtually any
extension that solves the problem for the variable-time-of-entry interpretation should serve, so it seems, for the omnitemporal one. We shall
assume then that the parties know nothing which discloses their respective
locations (i.e. in effect we write in conditions for universalizability of
principles decided upon). There are still gaps between the assumptions of
the omnitemporal position as roughly sketched and the desired conclusion
concerning obligations to the future, but (the matter is beginning to look
non-trivially provable given not widely implausible assumptions and) the
intuitive arguments are as clear as those in [5], indeed they simply restate
arguments to obligations given by Rawls.
Rawls's theory, under interpretation 4b, admits of nice application to
the problems of just distribution of material resources and of nuclear
power. The just distribution, or rate of usage, of material resources38 over
time is an important conservation issue to which Rawls's theory seems to
apply, just as readily, and in a similar fashion, to that in which it applies to
the issue of a just rate of savings. In fact the argument from the original
position for a just rate of saving - whatever its adequacy - can by simply
mimicked to yield an argument for just distribution of resources over
generations. Thus, for example:
persons in the original position are to ask themselves how much they
would be willing to save [i.e. conserve] at each stage of advance on
the assumption that all other generations are to save at the same rate
[conserve resources to the same extent]. . . . In effect, then, they
must choose a just savings principle [resources distribution principle]
that assigns an appropriate rate of accumulation to [degree of resource conservation at] each level of advance. ([5], p. 287; our
bracketed options give the alternative argument)
�170 R. and V. Routley
Just as 'they try to piece together a just savings schedule' (p. 289), so they
can try to piece together a just resource distribution policy. Just as a case
for resource conservation can be made out by appeal to the original
position, since it is going to be against the interests of, to the disadvantage
of, later parties to find themselves in a resource depleted situation (thus,
on Rawlsian assumptions, they will bargain hard for a share of resources),
so, interestingly, a case against a rapid programme of nuclear power
development can be devised. The basis of a case against large-scale
nuclear development is implicit in Rawls's contract theory under interpretation 4b, though naturally the theory is not applied in this sort of way
by Rawls. To state the case in its crude but powerful form: people from
later generations in the original position are bound to take it as against their
interests to simply carry the waste can for energy consumed by an earlier
generation. (We have already argued that they will find no convincing
overriding considerations that make it worth their while to carry the waste
can.) Thus not only has Passmore misrepresented the obligations to the
future that Rawls's theory admits; he is also wrong in suggesting (p. 87 and
p. 91) that Rawls's theory cannot justify a policy of resource conservation
which includes reductions in present consumption.
There is, in this connection, an accumulation of errors in Passmore,
some of which spill over to Rawls, which it is worth trying to set out. First,
Passmore claims ([1], p. 86; cf. also p. 90) that 'Rawls does not so much
mention the saving of natural resources'. In fact the 'husbanding of natural
resources' is very briefly considered ([5], p. 271). It is true, however, that
Rawls does not reveal any of the considerable power that his theory,
properly interpreted, has for natural resource conservation, as implying a
just distribution of natural resources over time. Secondly, Passmore attempts ([1], pp. 87 ff.) to represent the calls of conservationists for a
reduction in present resource usage and for a more just distribution as a
call for heroic self-sacrifices; this is part of his more general attempt to
represent every moral constraint with respect to the non-immediate future
as a matter of self-sacrifice. 'Rawls's theory', Passmore says (on p. 87),
'leaves no room for heroic sacrifice', and so, he infers, leaves no room for
conservation. Not only is the conclusion false, but the premiss also:
Rawls's theory allows for supererogation, as Rawls explains ([5], p. 117).
But resource conservation is, like refraining from nuclear development,
not a question of heroic self-sacrifice; it is in part a question of obligations
or duties to the distant future. And Rawls's theory allows not only for
obligations as well as supererogation, but also for natural duties. Rawls's
�Obligations to the Future 171
contract, unlike the contracts of what is usually meant by a 'contract
theory', is by no means exhaustive of the moral sphere:
But even this wider [contract] theory fails to embrace all moral
relationships, since it would seem to include only our relations with
other persons and to leave out of account how we are to conduct
ourselves towards,animals and the rest of nature. I do not contend
that the contract notion offers a way to approach these questions
which are certainly of the first importance; and I shall have to put
them aside, (p. 17)
The important class of obligations beyond the scope of the contract theory
surely generates obligations between persons which even the wider contract theory likewise cannot explain. The upshot is that such a contract
account, even if sufficient for the determination of obligations, is not
necessary. To this extent Rawls' s theory is not a full social contract theory
at all. However, Rawls appears to lose sight of the fact that his contract
theory delivers only a sufficient condition when he claims, for example (p.
298), that 'one feature of the contract doctrine is that it places an upper
bound on how much a generation can be asked to save for the welfare of
later generations'. For greater savings may sometimes be required to meet
obligations beyond those that the contract doctrine delivers. In short,
Rawls appears to have slipped into assuming, inconsistently, that his
contract theory is a necessary condition.
Although Rawls's theory caters for justice between generations and
allows the derivation of important obligations to people in the distant
future, the full theory is far from consistent on these matters and there are
significant respects in which Rawls does not take justice to the future
seriously. The most conspicuous symptoms of this are that justice to the
future is reduced to a special case, justice between generations, and that
the only aspect of justice between generations that Rawls actually considers is a just savings rate; there is, for example, no proper examination of
the just distribution of resources among generations, though these resources, Rawls believes, provide the material base of the just institutions that
he wants to see maintained. In fact Rawls strongly recommends a system
of markets as a just means for the allocation of most goods and services,
recognizing their well-known limitations only in the usual perfunctory
fashion ([5], pp. 270 ff.). Yet market systems are limited by a narrow time
horizon, and are quite ill-equipped to allocate resources in a just fashion
�172 R. and V. Rout ley
over a time span of several generations. Similarly Rawls's endorsement of
democratic voting procedures as in many cases a just method of determining procedures depends upon the assumptions that everyone with ah
interest is represented. But given his own assumptions about obligations
to the future and in respect of potential persons this is evidently not the
case. Catering in a just fashion for the interests of future people poses
serious problems for any method of decision that depends upon people
being present to represent their own interests.
Some of the more conservative, indeed reactionary, economic assumptions in Rawls emerge with the assumption that all that is required for
justice between generations is a just savings rate, that all we need to pass
on to the future are the things that guarantee appropriate savings such as
capital, factories, and machines. But the transmission of these things is
quite insufficient for justice to the future, and neither necessary nor
sufficient as a foundation for a good life for future generations. What is
required for justice is the transmission in due measure of what is valuable.
Rawls has, however, taken value accumulation as capital accumulation,
thereby importing one of the grossest economic assumptions, that capital
reflects value. But of course the accumulation of capital may conflict with
the preservation of what is valuable. It is for this sort of reason (and thus,
in essence, because of the introduction of supplementary economistic
theses which are not part of the pure contract theory) that Rawls's theory
is a reactionary one from an environmental point of view; on the theory as
presented (i.e. the contract theory plus all the supplementary assumptions) there is no need to preserve such things as wilderness or natural
beauty. The savings doctrine supposes that everything of value for transmission to the future is negotiable in the market or tradeable; but then
transmission of savings can by no means guarantee that some valuable
things, not properly represented in market systems, are not eliminated or
not passed on, thereby making future people worse off. It becomes evident
in this way, too, how culturally-bound Rawls's idea of ensuring justice to
future generations through savings is. It is not just that the idea does not
apply, without a complete overhaul, to non-industrial societies such as
those of hunter-gatherers; it does not apply to genuinely post-industrial
societies either. Consideration of such alternative societies suggests that
whafis required, in place of capital accumulation, is that we pass on what
is necessary for a good life, that we ensure that the basics are fairly
distributed over time and not eroded, e.g. that in the case of the forest
people that the forest is maintained. The narrowness of Rawls's picture,
�Obligations to the Future 173
which makes no due allowance for social or cultural diversity (from the
original contractual position on) or for individual diversity arises in part
from his underlying and especially narrow socio-economic assumption as
to what people want:
What men want is meaningful work in free association with others,
these associations regulating their relations to one another within a
framework of just basic institutions. ([5], p. 290)
This may be what many Harvard men want; but as a statement of what
men want it supplies neither sufficient nor even necessary conditions.39
NOTES
1 Thus according to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110; our italics).
There is at present no generally accepted means by which high level waste can be
permanently isolated from the environment and remain safe for very long periods.
. . . Permanent disposal of high-level solid wastes in stable geological formations is
regarded as the most likely solution, but has yet to be demonstrated as feasible. It is
not certain that such methods and disposal sites will entirely prevent radioactive
releases following disturbances caused by natural processes or human activity.
The Fox Report also quoted approvingly ([2], p. 187; our italics) the conclusion of the
British (Flowers) Report [6]:
There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until
it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exist s to ensure the
safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.
Although the absence of a satisfactory storage method has been conceded by some
leading proponents of nuclear development, e.g. Weinberg ([3], pp. 32-33), it is now
disputed by others. In particular, the headline for Cohen [15], which reads 'A substantial
body of evidence indicates that the high level radioactive wastes generated by U.S.
nuclear power plants can be stored satisfactorily in deep geological formations', has
suggested to many readers - what it was no doubt intended to suggest- that there is really
no problem about the disposal of radioactive wastes after all. Cohen presents, however,
no new hard evidence, no evidence not already available to the British and Australian
Commissions ([2] and [6]). Moreover the evidence Cohen does outline fails conspicuously
to measure up to the standards rightly required by the Flowers and Fox Reports. Does
Cohen offer a commercial-scale procedure for waste disposal which can be demonstrated
as safe? Far from it:
�174 R. and V. Routley
The detailed procedures for handling the high-level wastes are not yet definite, but
present indications are that. . . . (Cohen [1], p. 24; our italics)
Does Cohen 'demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt' the long-term safety of burial of
wastes, deep underground? Again, far from it:
On the face of it such an approach appears to be reasonably safe. . . . (p. 24; our
italics)
Cohen has apparently not realized what is required.
At issue here are not so much scientific or empirical issues as questions of methodology, of standards of evidence required for claims of safety, and above all, of values, since
claims of safety, for example, involve implicit evaluations concerning what counts as an
acceptable risk, an admissible cost, etc. In the headline 'a substantial body of evidence
. . . indicates that. . . wastes . . . can be stored satisfactorily' the key words (italicized)
are evaluative or elastic, and the strategy of Cohen's case is to adopt very low standards
for their application. But in view of what is at stake it is hardly acceptable to do this, to
dress up in this way what are essentially optimistic assurances and untested speculations
about storage, which in any case do little to meet the difficulties and uncertainties that
have been widely pointed out as regards precisely the storage proposals Cohen outlines,
namely human or natural interference or disturbance.
2 See [18], pp. 24-25.
3 On all these points, see [14], esp. p. 141. According to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110):
Parts of the reactor structure will be highly radioactive and their disposal could be
very difficult. There is at present no experience of dismantling a full size reactor.
4 See, in particular, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Friends
of the Earth Energy Paper, San Francisco 1973, p. 47; also [3], p. 32 and [14], p. 149.
5 As the discussion in [14], pp. 153-7, explains.
6 Cf. [17], pp. 35-36, [18] and, for much detail, J. R. Goffman and A. R. Tamplin, Poisoned
Power, Rodale Press, Emmau Pa. 1971.
7 On the pollution and waste disposal record of the infant nuclear industry, see [14] and
[17].
The record of many countries on pollution control, where in many cases available
technologies for reducing or removing pollution are not applied because they are considered too expensive or because they adversely affect the interests of some powerful group,
provides clear historical evidence that the problem of nuclear waste disposal would not
end simply with the devising of a 'safe' technology for disposal, even if one could be
devised which provided a sufficient guarantee of safety and was commercially feasible.
The fact that present economic and political arrangements are overwhelmingly weighted
in favour of the interests and concerns of (some) contemporary humans makes it not
unrealistic to expect the long-term nuclear waste disposal, if it involved any significant
cost at all, when public concern about the issue died down, would be seen to conflict with
the interests of contemporary groups, and that these latter interests would in many cases
be favoured. Nor, as the history of movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament shows, could generalized public concern in the absence of direct personal
interest, be relied upon to be sustained for long enough to ensure implementation of costly
or troublesome long-term disposal methods - even in those places where public concern
exists and is a politically significant force.
It must be stressed then that the problem is not merely one of disposal technique.
Historical and other evidence points to the conclusion that many of the most important
risks associated with nuclear waste disposal are not of the kind which might be amenable
�Obligations to the Future
175
to technical solutions in the laboratory. A realistic assessment of potential costs to the
future from nuclear development cannot overlook these important non-technical risk
factors.
8 Of course the effect on people is not the only factor which has to be taken into consideration in arriving at a moral judgment. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does
not confine its scope to human life. But since the harm nuclear development is likely to
cause to non-human life can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be
made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way.
9 Proponents of nuclear power often try to give the impression that future people will not
just bear costs from nuclear development but will also be beneficiaries, because nuclear
powerprovides an 'abundant' or even 'unlimited' source of energy; thus Weinberg ([3], p.
34): 'an all but infinite source of relatively cheap and clean energy'. A good example of an
attempt to create the impression that 'abundant' and 'cheap' energy from nuclear fission
will be available to 'our descendants', i.e. all future people, is found in the last paragraph
of Cohen [15]. Such claims are most misleading, since fission power even with the breeder
reactor has only about the same prospective lifetime as coal-produced electricity (a point
that can be derived using data in A. Parker, 'World Energy Resources: A Survey', Energy
Policy, Vol. 3 [1975], pp. 58-66), and it is quite illegitimate to assume that nuclear fusion,
for which there are still major unsolved problems, will have a viable, clean technology by
the time fission runs out, or, for that matter, that it ever will. Thus while some few
generations of the immediate future may obtain some benefits as well as costs, there is a
very substantial chance that tho se of the more distant future will obtain nothing but costs.
10 These feelings, of which Smith's and Hume's sympathy is representative, are but the
feeling echoes of obligation. At most, sympathy explains the feeling of obligation or lack
of it, and this provides little guide as to whether there is an obligation or not - unless one
interprets moral sympathy, the feeling of having a obligation, or being obligated, itself as
a sufficient indication of obligation, in which case moral sympathy is a non-explanatory
correlate in the feelings department of obligation itself and cannot be truly explanatory of
the ground of it; unless, in short, moral sympathy reduces to an emotive rewrite of moral
obligation.
11 Elsewhere in [1] Passmore is especially exercised that our institutions and intellectual
traditions - presumably only the better ones - should be passed on to posterity, and that
we should strive to make the world a better place, if not eventually an ideal one.
12 This is not the only philosophically important issue in environmental ethics on which
Passmore is inconsistent. Consider his: 'over-arching intention: to consider whether the
solution of ecological problems demands a moral or metaphysical revolution' (p. x),
whether the West needs a new ethic and a new metaphysics. Passmore's answer in [1] is
an emphatic No.
Only insofar as Western moralists have [made various erroneous suggestions] can
the West plausibly be said to need a 'new ethic'. What it needs, for the most part, is
not so much a 'new ethic' as adherence to a perfectly familiar ethic.
For the major sources of our ecological disasters - apart from ignorance - are
greed and shortsightedness, which amount to much the same thing. . . There is no
novelty in the view that greed is evil; no need of a new ethic to tell us as much. (p. 187)
'The view that the West now needs. . . a new concept of nature' is similarly dismissed (p.
186, cf. p. 72). But in his paper [1*] (i.e. 'Attitudes to Nature', Royal Institute of
Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 8, Macmillan, London 1975), which is said to be an attempt to
bring together and to reformulate some of the basic philosophical themes of [1], Passmore's answer is Yes, and quite different themes, inconsistent with those of [1], are
advanced:
�176 R. and V. Routley
[T]he general conditions I have laid down . . . have not been satisfied in most of the
traditional philosophies of nature. To that degree it is true, I think, that we do need a
'new metaphysics' which is genuinely not anthropocentric. . . . A 'new metaphysics', if it is not to falsify the facts, will have to be naturalistic, but not reductionist.
The working out of such a metaphysics is, in my judgement, the most important task
which lies ahead of philosophy. ([1*], pp. 260-1)
A new ethic accompanies this new metaphysics.
The emergence of new moral attitudes to nature is bound up, then, with the emergence of a more realistic philosophy of nature. That is the only adequate foundation
for effective ecological concern. ([1*], p. 264)
This is a far cry from the theme of [1] that ecological problems can be solved within the
traditions of the West.
13 Put differently, the causal linkage can bypass intermediate generations, especially given
action at a temporal distance: the chain account implies that there are no moral constraints in initiating such causal linkages. The chain picture accordingly seems to presuppose an unsatisfactory Humean model of causation, demanding contiguity and excluding
action at a distance.
14 Golding we shall concede to Passmore, though even here the case is not clearcut. For
Golding writes towards the end of his article ([12], p. 96):
My discussion, until this point, has proceeded on the view that we have obligations
to future generations. But do we? I am not sure that the question can be answered in
the affirmative with any certainty. I shall conclude this note with a very brief
discussion of some of the difficulties.
All of Passmore's material on Golding is drawn from this latter and, as Golding says,
'speculative' discussion.
15 There is no textual citation for Bentham at all for the chapter of [1] concerned, viz. Ch. 4,
'Conservation'.
16 As Passmore himself at first concedes ([1], p. 84):
If, as Bentham tells us, in deciding how to act men ought to take account of the
effects of their actions on every sentient being, they obviously ought to take account
of the pleasure and pains of the as yet unborn.
17 Neither rightness nor probable lightness in the hedonistic senses correspond to these
notions in the ordinary sense; so at least [13] argues, following much anti-utilitarian
literature.
18 On this irrationality different theories agree: the rational procedure, for example according to the minimax rule for decision-making under uncertainty, is to minimize that
outcome which maximizes harm.
19 Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to follow the market (cf.
P. A. Samuelson, Economics, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York 1967, p. 351). Thus the
rates have little moral relevance.
20 Cf. Rawls [5], p. 287: 'From a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting
future well-being on the basis of pure time preference.'
21 What the probabilities would be depends on the theory of probability adopted: a Carnapian theory, e.g., would lead back to the unconstrained position.
�Obligations to the Future 177
22 A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate. A real
possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. The contrast is with mere
logical possibility.
23 Thus, to take a simple special case, economists dismiss distant future people from their
assessments of utility, welfare, etc., on the basis of their non-existence; cf. Ng ('the utility
of a non-existent person is zero') and Harsanyi ('only existing people [not even "nonexisting potential individuals"] can have real utility levels since they are the only ones
able to enjoy objects with a positive utility, suffer from objects with a negative utility, and
feel indifferent to objects with zero utility') (see Appendix B of Y. K. Ng, 'Preference,
Welfare, and Social Welfare', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preference, Choice
and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National University, August 1977, pp. 24, 26-27).
Non-existent people have no experiences, no preferences; distant future people do not
exist; therefore distant future people have no utility assignments - so the sorites goes. But
future people at least will have wants, preferences, and so on, and these have to be taken
into account in adequate utility assessments (which should be assessed over afuture time
horizon), no matter how much it may complicate or defeat calculations.
24 There are problems about formulating universalizability satisfactorily, but they hardly
affect the point. The requisite universalizability can in fact be satisfactorily brought out
from the semantical analysis of deontic notions such as obligation, and indeed argued for
on the basis of such an analysis which is universal in form. The lawlikeness requirement,
which can be similarly defended, is essentially that imposed on genuine scientific laws by
logical empiricists (e.g. Carnap and Hempel), that such laws should contain no proper
names or the like, no reference to specific locations or times.
25 Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick [11], p. 414), and
in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and Rousseau toRawls ([5], p. 293).
How the principle is argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlying theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
26 See esp. R. Lanoue, NuclearPlants:The MoreTheyBuild, The More You Pay, Centerfor
Study of Responsive Law, Washington DC 1976; also [14], pp. 212 ff.
27 On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and Energy,
Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC 1977, pp. 1-7, and also the
details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner [7]. On the absorption
of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as well [18], p. 23. On the employment
issues, see too H. E. Daly in [9], p. 149. A more fundamental challenge to the poverty
argument appears in I. Illich, Energy and Equality, Calder & Boyars, London 1974,
where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the
opposite of what the poor need.
28 For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful,
Blond & Briggs, London 1973. As to the capital and other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and
also [7] and [9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy technology will tend to
promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries, see the paper of Waiko and other
papers in the Melanesian Environment (ed. by J. H. Winslow), Australian National
University Press, Canberra 1977.
29 This fact is implicitly recognized in [2], p. 56.
30 A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Friends of
the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 1976); see also [17],
[6], [7], [14], pp. 233 ff., and Schumacher, op. cit.
31 This is also explained in [2], p. 56.
32 An argument like this is suggested in Passmore [1], Chs. 4 and 7, with respect to the
question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance
of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned by what appears to be a future-
�178 R. and V. Routley
directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be fortunate, the best way to take care of the future
(and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to
go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has
all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
33 See [14], p. 66, p. 191, and also [7].
34 For such arguments see esp. M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A
Comment on the Individual, the State and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council
for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London
1976.
35 For a recent sketch of one such alternative which is outside the framework of the
conventional option of centralized bureaucratic socialism, see E. Callenbach's novel,
Ecotopia, Banyan Tree Books, Berkeley, California 1975. For the outline of a liberation
socialist alternative see Radical Technology (ed. by G. Boyle and P. Harper), Undercurrents Limited, London 1976, and references therein.
36 Some earlier contract theories also did. Burke's contract (in E. Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France, Dent, London 1910, pp. 93-94) 'becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and
those who are not yet born'. Thus Burke's contract certainly appears to lead to obligations to distant future generations. Needless to say, there are metaphysical difficulties,
which however Burke never considers, about contracts between parties at widely separated temporal locations.
37 Several of the preceding points we owe to M. W. Jackson.
38 Resources such as soil fertility and petroleum could even be a primary social goods on
Rawls's very hazy general account of these goods ([5], pp. 62, 97): are these 'something a
rational man wants whatever else he wants'? The primary social goods should presumably be those which are necessary for the good and just life -which will however vary with
culture.
39 We have benefited from discussion with Ian Hughes and Frank Muller and useful
comments on the paper from Brian Martin and Derek Browne.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London 1974.
[2] Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra 1977.
[3] A. M. Weinberg, 'Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy", Science, Vol. 177 (July 1972),
pp. 27-34.
•
[4] R. Routley, 'Exploring Meinong's Jungle II. Existence is Existence Now', Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic (to appear).
[5] J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1971.
[6] Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of the British Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution, London 1976.
[7] B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York 1976.
[8] G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1903.
[9] B. Commoner, H. Boksenbaum and M. Corr (Eds.), Energy and Human Welfare - A
Critical Analysis, Vol. III, Macmillan, New York 1975.
�Obligations to the Future 179
[10] J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 1, published under the superintendence of J. Bowring, with an intro. by J. H. Burton; William Tait, Edinburgh 1843.
[11] H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London 1962 (reissue).
[12] M. P. Golding, 'Obligations to Future Generations', Monist, Vol. 56 (1972), pp. 85-99.
[13] R. and V. Routley, 'An Expensive Repair Kit for Utilitarianism', presented at the
Colloquium on Preference, Choice and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National
University, August 1977.
[14] R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne
1977.
[15] B. L. Cohen, 'The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Fission Reactors', Scientific
American, Vol. 236 (June 1977), pp. 22-31.
[16] S. McCracken, 'The Waragainst the Atom' .Commentary (September 1977), pp. 33-47.
[17] A. B. Lovins and J. H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy
Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco 1975.
[18] A. Roberts, "The Politics of Nuclear Power', Arena, No. 41 (1976), pp. 22-47.
�
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Inquiry, 21, 133-79
Nuclear Energy and Obligations
to the Future
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain, Braidwood, Australia
The paper considers the morality of nuclear energy development as it concerns
future people, especially the creation of highly toxic nuclear wastes requiring longterm storage. On the basis of an example with many parallel moral features it is
argued that the imposition of such costs and risks on the future is morally unacceptable. The paper goes on to examine in detail possible ways of escaping this
conclusion, especially the escape route of denying that moral obligations of the
appropriate type apply to future people. The bulk of the paper comprises discussion
of this philosophical issue, including many arguments against assigning obligations
to the future drawn both from analyses of obligation and from features of the future
such as uncertainty and indeterminacy. A further escape through appeal to moral
conflict is also considered, and in particular two conflict arguments, the Poverty
and Lights-going-out arguments are briefly discussed. Both these escape routes are
rejected and it is concluded that if the same standards of behaviour are applied to
the future as to the present, nuclear energy development is morally unacceptable.
I. The Bus Example
Suppose we consider a bus, a bus which we hope is to make a very long
journey. This bus, a third world bus, carries both passengers and freight.
The bus sets down and picks up many different passengers in the course of
its long journey and the drivers change many times, but because of the way
the bus line is managed and the poor service on the route it is nearly always
full to overcrowded, with passengers hanging off the back, and as in
Afghanistan, passengers riding on the roof, and chickens and goats in the
freight compartment.
Early in the bus's journey someone consigns on it, to a far distant
destination, a package containing a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is
packaged in a very thin container, which as the consigner well knows is
unlikely to contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned,
and certainly will not do so if the bus should encounter any trouble, for
example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the bus becomes very
hot, if the bus should strike a very large bump or pothole of the sort
commonly found on some of the bad roads it has to traverse, or if some
1
134 R. and V. Routley
passenger should interfere deliberately or inadvertently with the cargo or
perhaps try to steal some of the freight, as also frequently happens. All of
these things, let us suppose, have happened on some of the bus's previous
journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people and animals on the bus, while others
could be maimed or contract serious diseases.
There does not seem much doubt about what most of us would say about
the morality of the consigner's action, and there is certainly no doubt
about what the passengers would say. The consigner's action in putting
the safety of the occupants of the bus at risk is appalling. What could
excuse such an action, what sort of circumstances might justify it, and
what sort of case could the consigner reasonably put up? The consigner
might say that it is by no means certain that the gas will escape; he himself
is an optimist and therefore feels that such unfavourable possible outcomes should be ignored. In any case the bus might have an accident and
the passengers be killed long before the container gets a chance to leak; or
the passengers might change to another bus and leave the lethal parcel
behind.
He might say that it is the responsibility of the passengers and the driver
to ensure that the journey is a smooth one, and that if they fail to do so, the
results are not his fault. He might say that the journey is such a long one
that many of the passengers may have become mere mindless vegetables
or degenerate wretches about whose fate no decent person need concern
himself, or that they might not care about losing their lives or health or
possessions anyway by that time.
Most of these excuses will seem little more than a bad joke, and certainly would not usually be reckoned any sort of justification. The main
argument the consigner of the lethal parcel employs, however, is that his
own pressing needs justify his actions. He has no option but to consign his
potentially lethal parcel, he says, since the firm he owns, and which has
produced the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits and
cannot afford to produce a better container or to stop the production of the
gas. If the firm goes out of business, the consigner says, his wife will leave
him, and he will lose his family happiness, the comfortable way of life to
which he has become accustomed and sees now as a necessity; his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others; not only will the
firm's customers be inconvenienced but he, the consigner, will have to
break some business contracts; the inhabitants of the local village through
loss of spending and cancellation of the Multiplier Effect will suffer finan-
Obligations to the Future 135
cial hardship, and, worst of all, the tiny flow of droplets that the poor of the
village might receive (theoretically at any rate) as a result of the trickling
down of these good things would dry up entirely. In short, some basic and
some perhaps uncomfortable changes will be needed in the village.
Even if the consigner's story were accepted at face value - and it would
be wise to look critically at his story - only someone whose moral sensibilities had been paralysed by the disease of galloping economism could see
such a set of considerations, based on 'needs', comfort, and the goal of
local prosperity, as justifying the consigner's action.
One is not generally entitled to thus simply transfer the risks and costs
arising from one's own life onto other uninvolved parties, to get oneself
out of a hole of one's own making by creating harm or risk of harm to
someone else who has had no share in creating the situation. To create
serious risks and costs, especially risks to life or health for such others,
simply to avoid having to make some changes to a comfortable life style, or
even for a somewhat better reason, is usually thought deserving of moral
condemnation, and sometimes considered a crime; for example, the action
of a company in creating risks to the lives or health of its workers or
customers to prevent itself from going bankrupt. What the consigner says
may be an explanation of his behaviour, but it is not a justification.
The problem raised by nuclear waste disposal is by no means a perfect
analogy to the bus case, since, for example, the passengers on the nuclear
bus cannot get off the bus or easily throw out the lethal package. In many
crucial moral respects, however, the nuclear waste storage problem as it
affects future people, the passengers in the bus we are considering, resembles the consignment of the faultily packaged lethal gas. Not only are
rather similar moral principles involved, but a rather similar set of arguments to the lamentable excuses the consigner presents have been seriously put up to justify nuclear development, the difference being that in the
nuclear case these arguments have been widely accepted. There is also
some parallel in the risks involved; there is no known safe way to package
the highly toxic wastes generated by nuclear plants that will be spread
around the world if large-scale nuclear development goes ahead.1 The
wastes problem will not be a slight one, with each one of the more than
2,000 reactors envisaged by the end of the century, producing on average
annual wastes containing one thousand times the radioactivity of the
Hiroshima bomb.2 The wastes include not merely the spent fuels and their
radioactive by-products, but also everything they contaminate, from fuel
containers to the thousands of widely distributed decommissioned nuclear
136 R. and V. Routley
reactors which will have to be abandoned, still in a highly radioactive
condition, after the expiry of their expected lifetimes of about thirty years,
and which have been estimated to require perhaps one and a half million
years to reach safe levels of radioactivity.3 The wastes must be kept
suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime; for
fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or
so, and for the actinides (transuranic elements) which include plutonium,
there is a half-million to a million-year storage problem.4
Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed longterm methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of
waste that have been produced over the last twenty years.5 With present
known short-term surface methods of storage there is a continued need for
human intervention to keep the material isolated from the environment,
while with proposed longer-term methods such as storage in salt mines or
granite to the risk of human interference there are added the risks of
leakage, e.g. through water seepage, and of disturbance, for example
through climatic change, earth movements, etc. The risks are significant:
no reasonable person with even a limited acquaintance with the history of
human affairs over the last 3,000 years could be confident of safe storage
by methods involving human intervention over the enormous time periods
involved. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and
climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period which has
seen a number of ice ages and great fluctuations in climate for example,
could be confident that the waste material could be safely stored for the
vast periods of time required. Much of this waste is highly toxic; for
example, even a beachball sized quantity of plutonium appropriately
distributed is enough to give every person on the planet lung cancer - so
that a leak of even a small part of this waste material could involve huge
loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of
immense areas of land.6
Given the enormous costs which could be involved for the future, it is
plainly grossly inadequ'ate'to merely speculate concerning untested, but
possibly or even probably, safe methods for disposal of wastes. Yet none
of the proposed methods has been properly tested, and they may prove to
involve all sorts of unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is
made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that
could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that
placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult
to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the
Obligations to the Future 137
geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable,
rigorously safe long-term storage method could be devised, there is the
problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used.
The assumption that it would be, especially if, as seems likely, such a
method proved expensive economically and politically, seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future not
previously encountered in human affairs, and certainly not conspicuous in
the nuclear industry.7 Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless
guarding of long-term storage sites through perhaps a million years of
possible future human activity, weapons-grade radioactive material will
be accessible, over much of the million-year storage period, to any party
who is in a position to retrieve it.
Our behaviour in creating this nightmare situation for the future is
certainly no better than that of the consigner in the bus example. Industrialized countries, in order to get out of a mess of their own making essentially the creation of economies dependent on an abundance" of
non-renewable energy in a situation where it is in fact in limited supply opt for a 'solution' which may enable them to avoid the making of uncomfortable changes during the lifetime of those now living, at the expense of
passing heavy burdens on to the inhabitants of the earth at a future time burdens in the shape of costs and risks which, just as in the bus case, may
adversely affect the life and health of future people and their opportunity
to lead a decent life.8
It is sometimes suggested that analogies like the bus example are defective; that morally they are crucially different from the nuclear case, since
future people, unlike the passengers in the bus, will benefit directly from
nuclear development, which will provide an abundance of energy for the
indefinite future. But this is incorrect. Nuclear fission creates wastes
which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the breeder
reactor it could be an energy source for perhaps only 150 years. It will do
nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose
lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 30,000
generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks,
without any corresponding benefits, in order to provide for the extravagant energy use of only five generations.
Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive
materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future.
Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop-gap, it
seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a
138 R. and V. Routley
transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a
future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be
very much worse placed to cope with it.9 For they may well have to face
the change to renewable resources in an over-populated world not only
burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in
which, if the nuclear proponents' dream of global industrialization is
realized, more and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy
resource use, and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it.
It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and
soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of
the basis of life, are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the
idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission
energy, at least indirect beneficiaries.
The 'solution' then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at
a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but
which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Just as in the bus
case, contemporary industrial society proposes to get itself out of a hole of
its own making by creating risk of harm, and by transferring costs and
risks, to someone else who has had no part in producing the situation and
who will obtain no clear benefit. It has clear alternatives to this action.
That it does not take them is due essentially to its unwillingness to avoid
changing wasteful patterns of consumption and to its desire to protect the
interests of those who benefit from them.
If we apply to the nuclear situation the same standards of behaviour and
moral principles that we acknowledge (in principle if perhaps often not in
fact) in the contemporary world, it will not be easy to avoid the conclusion
that the situation involves injustice with respect to future people on a
grand scale. It seems to us that there are only two plausible moves that
might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued
that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the
contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the
recipients of our nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly,
an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to
reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not of course
to say that there are no circumstances in which such an action might
possibly be justifiable, or at least where the case is less clearcut. It is the
same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the
Obligations to the Future 139
package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances
might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We turn now to the
first of these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development, to the philosophical question of our obligations to the future.
II. Obligations to the Distant Future
The area in which these philosophical problems arise is that of the distant
(i.e. non-immediate) future, that is, the future with which people alive
today will make no direct contact; the immediate future provides comparatively few problems for moral theories. The issues involved, although of
far more than academic interest, have not received any great attention in
recent philosophical literature, despite the fact that the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail
to pass, and also raises a number of questions in political philosophy
concerning the adequacy of accepted institutions which leave out of
account the interests of future people.
Moral philosophers have predictably differed on the issue. But contrary
to the picture painted in a recent, widely read, and influential work
discussing it, Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature, a good many
philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come
down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and
interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately
future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories
- those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take
them seriously or who assign them less weight, those who deny, or who
are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are
moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those like Passmore
and Golding who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on
both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the
view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there
are no moral obligations to the future beyond those to the next generation.
• According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally
unconstrained; there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act
deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply, that we don't have obligations to
the (non-immediate) future, i.e. those who have opted for the uncon-
140 R. and V. Routley
strained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as
presupposing various relations which could not hold between people
widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation
is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration
and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral
obligation, or requirements for moral obligation, which would rule out
obligations to the non-immediate future are these: First, there are those
accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held
be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will
not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course
they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have for their rights
against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would
require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariantly
over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not
be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their
interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any
contemporary institution would do it for them.
Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral
community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out
the distant future as a field of moral obligation, as they not only require a
commonality, or some sort of common basis, which cannot be guaranteed
in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or
reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of
moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange, the interests of future people
must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be
parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the
distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground
moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as
sympathy and love. There are some difficulties also about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose
personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who
may well be committed to a life-style for which one has no sympathy. On
the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to
conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for
future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary
Obligations to the Future 141
people have no obligations to future people and can harm them as it suits
them.
What all these views have in common is a naturalistic picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something
(e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some
characteristic one can fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).10
Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually
thought to characterize it, such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features), are lost, especially where there is a choice
of whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so
of whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as
to exclude people in the distant future.
However, the view that there are no moral constraints with respect to
future people, that one is free to act as one likes with respect to them, is a
very difficult one to sustain. Consider the example of a scientific group
which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of
technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb which is to be set off by a
triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of
its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate
descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the
distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the
action. The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in
the scientists' experiment, perhaps its being unduly expensive or badly
designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to
future people. The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of examples: A firm discovers it can make a
handsome profit from mining, processing, and manufacturing a new type
of material which, although it causes no problems for present people or
their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years
decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer
among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any
consideration for the harm it does to future people.
Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view might seem childishly
obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which
they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have a number of
philosophers writing on the issue endorsed this position, but it is the clear
142 R. and V. Routley
implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of economic theory. It does not appear, on the other hand,
that those who opt for the unconstrained position have considered such
examples and endorsed them as morally acceptable, despite their being
clearly implied by their position. We suspect that when it is brought out
that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being
free to act implies, among other things being free to inflict pointless harm,
most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to
assert that it was not what they intended. What those who have put
forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in mind in denying
moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that
we are not responsible for their lives. The view that the future can take
care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the
present. But it is not. It is not as if, in cases such as those discussed above
and the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of
itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so must acquire many
of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting
the present and immediate future. The thesis seems thus to assume an
incorrect model of an independent and unrelated future.
Also, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people
does not amount to the same as saying that we are free to do as we like with
respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving
them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have, or has not
acquired, an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been
involved - that one has no responsibility for his life - does not imply that
one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him
or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could
seriously harm him.
These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the
failure to make an important distinction between, on the one hand, acquired or assumed obligations towards somebody, for which some act of
acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and on the
other hand moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should
not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of
acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and
kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or
be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be
contracted. In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a
causal agent aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his
Obligations to the Future 143
action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or assumed. Thus
there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can
apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible
for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied. They apply as a
result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a
reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to
what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet)
exist. While it may be the case that there would need to be an acquired or
assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people
must make special sacrifices of an heroic kind for future people, or even to
help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to
be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the bus example, the
consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never
assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not
know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them, and that they
are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special
obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue in respect of both the
bus and the nuclear case is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility
for the lives of the people involved.
The confusion of moral constraints with acquired obligation, and the
attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off
non-acquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term 'moral
obligation' in philosophy to indicate any type of deontic constraint, while
in natural language it is used to indicate something which has to be
assumed or acquired. Hence the equation and at least one root of the
unconstrained position, that is of the belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future.
The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counterexamples, to a more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent position. Passmore's position in [1] is a striking example of the second ambivalent
position. On the one hand Passmore regularly gives the impression of one
championing future people; for example, in the final sentence of [1] he
says, concerning men a century hence:
My sole concern is that we should do nothing which will reduce their
freedom of thought and action, whether by destroying.the natural
world which makes that freedom possible or the social traditions
which permit and encourage it.
144 R. and V. Routley
Earlier (esp. pp. 84-85) Passmore appears to endorse the principle 'that we
ought not to act so as certainly to harm posterity' and claims (p. 98) that,
even where there are uncertainties, 'these uncertainties do not justify
negligence'. Nevertheless, though obligations concerning non-immediate
posterity are thus admitted, the main thrust of Passmore's argument is
entirely different, being in favour of the unconstrained position according
to which we have no obligations to non-immediate posterity. Thus his
conclusion (p. 91):
So whether we approach the problem of obligations to posterity by
way of Bentham and Sidgwick, Rawls or Golding, we are led to
something like the same conclusion: our obligations are to immediate
posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able
to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and
that is all.11
Passmore's position is, to all appearances, simply inconsistent. There are
two ways one might try to render it consistent, but neither is readily
available to Passmore. The first is by taking advantage of the distinction
between moral constraints and acquired obligations, but a basis for this
distinction is not evident in Passmore's work and indeed the distinction is
antithetical to the analyses of obligation that Passmore tries to synthesize
with his own analysis in terms of loves. The second, sceptical, route to
consistency is by way of the argument that we shall consider shortly, that
there is always gross uncertainty with respect to the distant future, uncertainty which relieves us in practice of any moral constraints regarding the
distant future. But though Passmore's writing strongly suggests this uncertainty argument (especially his sympathetic discussion of the Premier
of Queensland's argument against conservationists [p. 77]), he also rules it
out with the claim that uncertainties do not justify negligence.12
Many of the accounts of moral obligation that give rise to the unconstrained position are fused in Passmore's work, again not entirely consistently, since the different accounts exploited do not give uniform results.
Thus the primary account of obligation is said to be in terms of loves though the account is never satisfactorily formulated or developed - and it
is suggested that because our loves do not extend into the distant future,
neither do our obligations. This sentimental account of obligation will
obviously lead to different results from utilitarian accounts of obligation,
which however Passmore appeals to in his discussion of wilderness. In yet
other places in [1], furthermore, social contract and moral community
Obligations to the Future 145
views are appealed to - see, e.g., the treatment of animals, of preservation, and of duties to nature. In the case of obligations to future people,
however, Passmore does try to sketch an argument - what we call the
convergence argument - that all the accounts lead in the end to the
unconstrained position.
As well as the convergence argument, and various uncertainty arguments to be considered later, Passmore appears to endorse several other
arguments in favour of his theme that there are in practice no obligations to
the distant future. In particular, he suggests that such obligations would in
practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be
encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive
generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves,
only to the succeeding generation. We outline three objections to this
chain account. First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the
future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no
question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations,
since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a
way which may create individual responsibility, and which can't necessarily be sheeted home to an entire generation. Secondly, such chains, since
they are non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant
future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as
examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the
cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which
show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without
affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence
matters.13 Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be
achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant
future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible
with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by,
ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written
off as 'never-never land' examples, since many cases of environmental
exploitation might be seen as of just this type, e.g. not just the nuclear case
but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term
depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overcropping. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the
favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly
distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations
in the way the chain picture suggests.
146 R. and V. Routley
Passmore tries to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms
of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally
required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired
obligation and between obligation and supererogation, this is just to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more
engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an
unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm, than
one is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from beating and
robbing some stranger and leaving him to starve.
Passmore's most sustained argument for the unconstrained position is a
convergence argument, that different analyses of obligations, including
his own, lead to the one conclusion. This style of argument is hardly
convincing when there are well-known accounts of obligation which do
not lead to the intended conclusion, e.g. deontological accounts such as
those of Kant and of modern European schools, and teleological accounts
such as those of Moore (in [8]). But such unfavourable positions are either
rapidly passed over or ignored in Passmore's historical treatment and
narrow selection of historical figures. The style of argument becomes even
less persuasive when it is discovered that the accounts of the main authorities appealed to, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Rawls,14 do not lead, without
serious distortion, to the intended conclusion. Indeed Passmore has twisted the historical and textual evidence to suit his case, as we now try to
indicate.
Consider Bentham first. Passmore's assumption, for which no textual
evidence is cited, ls is that no Benthamite calculation can take account of a
future more extensive than the immediate future (cf. pp. 87-88). The
assumption seems to be based simply on the fact that Bentham remarked
that 'the value of the pleasure or pain to each person to be considered in
any estimate will be greater or less in virtue of the following circumstances'. '3. Its certainty or uncertainty. 4. Its propinquity or remoteness'
([10], p. 16). But this does nothing to show that future persons are discounted: the certainty and propinquity do not concern persons, but the
utilities of the persons concerned. As regards which persons are concerned in any calculation Bentham is quite explicit, detailing how
to take an exact account. . . of the general tendency of any act.. . .5 .
Take an account of the number of persons whose interests appear to
be concerned; and repeat the above process [summation of values of
pleasure and of pain] with respect to each. ([10], p. 16)
Obligations to the Future 147
It follows that Bentham's calculation takes account of everyone (and, in
his larger scheme, every sentient creature) whose interests appear to be
concerned: if the interests of people in the distant future appear to be
concerned - as they are in conservation issues - they are to be included in
the calculation. And there is independent evidence16 that in Bentham's
view the principle of utility was not temporally restricted: 'that is useful
which, taking all times and all persons into consideration, leaves a balance
of happiness' ([10], pp. 17-18, our italics). Thus the future cut-off that
Passmore has attributed to Bentham is contradicted by Bentham's own
account.
The case of Sidgwick is more complex, because there is isolated oscillation in his application of utilitarianism between use of utility and of
(something like) expected utility (see [11], pp. 381,414): Sidgwick's utilitarianism is, in its general characterization, essentially that of Bentham:
the conduct which . . . is objectively right is that which will produce
the greatest amount of happiness on the whole; that is, taking into
account all those whose happiness is affected by the conduct. ([11], p.
411)
All includes all sentient beings, both existing and to exist, as Sidgwick goes
on to explain (p. 414). In particular, in answer to the question 'How far are
we to consider the interests of posterity when they seem to conflict with
those of existing human beings?' Sidgwick writes ([11], p. 414, our italics):
It seems, however, clear that the time at which a man exists cannot
affect the value of his happiness from a universal point of view; and
that the interests of posterity must concern a Utilitarian as much as
those of his contemporaries, except in so far as the effect of his
actions on posterity - and even the existence of human beings to be
affected - must necessarily be more uncertain.
But Passmore manages, first of all, to give a different sense to what
Sidgwick is saying by adjusting the quotation, by omitting the clause we
have italicized, which equalizes the degree of concern for present and
future persons, and by italicizing the whole except-clause, thereby placing
much greater emphasis than Sidgwick does on uncertainty. For according
to Sidgwick's impartiality principle, 'the mere difference in time is not a
148 R. and V. Routley
reasonable ground for having more regard to the consciousness of one
-amount than to that of another' ([11], p. 381; see also p. 124). The apparent
tension in Sidgwick's theory as to whether uncertainty should be taken
into account is readily removed by resort to a modern distinction between
values and expected values (i.e. probability weighted values); utilitarian
rightness is defined as before in terms of the net happiness of all concerned
over all time without mention of uncertainty or probabilities, but it is
distinguished from probable rightness (given present information), in the
utilitarian sense,17 which is defined in terms of the expected net happiness
of those concerned, using present probabilities. It is the latter notion, of
probable rightness, that practical reasoning is commonly concerned with
and that decision theory studies; and it is this that Passmore supposes
Sidgwick is using ([1], p. 84). But it is evident that the utilitarian determination of probable rightness, like that of rightness, will sometimes take
into account the distant future - as Sidgwick's discussion of utilitarian
determination of optimum population (immediately following his remark
on uncertainty) does. So how does Passmore contrive to reverse matters,
to have Sidgwick's position lead to his own unconstrained conclusion?
The answer is: By inserting an additional assumption of his own - which
Sidgwick would certainly have rejected - that the uncertainties entitle us
to ignore the distant future. What Passmore has implicitly assumed in his
claim ([1], p. 85) that 'utilitarian principles [such as Sidgwick's] are not
strong enough' 'to justify the kinds of sacrifice some conservationists now
call upon us to make' is his own thesis that 'The uncertainty of harms we
are hoping to prevent would in general entitle us to ignore them.. .'. From
a decision-theory viewpoint this is simply irrational18 unless the probabilities of damage are approaching zero. We will deal with the essentially
sceptical uncertainty arguments on which Passmore's position depends
shortly: here it is enough to observe that Sidgwick's position does not lead
to anything like that which Passmore attributes to him - without uncertainty assumptions which Sidgwick would have rejected (for he thought
that future people'will certainly have pleasure and suffer pain).
We can also begin to gauge from Passmore's treatment of nineteenthcentury utilitarians, such as Bentham and Sidgwick, the extent of the
distortion which underlies his more general historical case for the unconstrained position which, so he claims,
represents accurately enough what, over the last two centuries, men
have seen as their duty to posterity as a whole. . . . ([1], p. 91)
Obligations to the Future 149
The treatment accorded Rawls in only marginally more satisfactory.
Passmore supposes that Rawls's theory of justice leads directly to the
unconstrained position ([1], p. 87 and p. 91), whereas Rawls claims ([5], p.
293) that we have obligations to future people just as to present ones. But
the situation is more complicated than Rawls's claim would indicate, as we
now try to explain in a summary way (more detail is given in the Appendix). For, in order to justify this claim on his theory (with its present
time-of-entry interpretation), Rawls has to invoke additional and dubious
motivational assumptions; even so the theory which thus results does not
yield the intended conclusion, but a conclusion inconsistent with Rawls's
claim. However, by changing the time-of-entry interpretation to an omnitemporal one, Rawls's claim does result from the theory so amended.
Moreover, the amended theory also yields, by exactly Rawls's argument
for a just saving rate, a resource conservation policy, and also a case
against nuclear development. Accordingly Passmore's other claims regarding Rawls are mistaken, e.g. that the theory cannot justify a policy of
resource conservation. Rawls does not emerge unscathed either. As on
the issue of whether his contract is a necessary condition for obligations,
so on obligations which the contract yields to the distant future, Rawls is
far from consistent. Furthermore, institutions such as qualified market
and voting systems are recommended as just though from a future perspective their results are far from that. Rawls, then, does not take obligations to the future with full seriousness.
In sum, it is not true that the theory of Rawls, any more than the theories
of the historical figures actually discussed by Passmore, unequivocally
supports the unconstrained position.
III. Uncertainty and Indeterminacy Arguments
Although there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the qualified
position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant
future: there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the
present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much
in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much
less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear
development and various exploitative activities which benefit present
150 R. and V. Routley
people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are disadvantaged by them.
The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in most
modern economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of
future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of an (opportunity cost) discount rate. The attempt to
apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds
of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal
constraints, and cannot determine what those constraints are. There are,
moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt one which
discounts the future is to beg all the questions at issue. The discounting
move often has the same result as the unconstrained position; if, for
instance, we consider the cancer example and consider costs as payable
compensation, it is evident that, over a sufficiently long period of time,
discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no
recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short,
even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to
achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount
rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no
more than about fifteen years,19 and application of such rates would
simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people.
Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type the
whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would
violate moral constraints.20
Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations.The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the
present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis
concerning the distant future.21 But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and
benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases
where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very
much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much)
higher probabilities obtain. So in the case of conflict between the present
and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the
people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower
Obligations to the Future 151
probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant
future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the
present, assuming that anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it can't be assumed that anything like similarly
weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it
is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so
years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of
future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful or trivial benefits for some
present people, in the shape of the opportunity to continue unnecessarily
high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or
evenly weighted, such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action is acceptable
provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit
approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability
frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned, or for
dealing with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic
constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results.
For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a
firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm
stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits
involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party
to another. Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different
parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself
by imposing costs ony ? - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted by some proponents of nuclear energy,
who attempt to dismiss the costs to future people with the soothing remark
that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The transfer point
is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on by McCracken
[16] in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between
nuclear risks and those from cigarette smoking. In the latter case those
who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming
extent* those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In
contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be
risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also
those of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or
temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related
to a person's extent of use.
The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian's
152 R. and V. Routley
happiness sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different
parties, and the introduction of probability considerations does not change
the principles involved but merely complicates analyses. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant
future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate
future in the way the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some
moral problems such as the bus example do not depend on a high level of
probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the bus example
reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments.
Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and
important ones used by philosophers and others to argue for the position
that we cannot be expected to take serious account of the effects of our
actions on the distant future. There are two strands to the uncertainty
argument, capable of separation, but frequently entangled. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalized uncertainty argument
which runs as follows: In contrast to the exact information we can obtain
about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our
actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly, and highly speculative.
But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of
this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the
present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More
formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these
obligations are based on reliable information; there is no reliable information at present as regards the distant future; therefore one has no obligations to the distant future.
The first argument is essentially a variation on a sceptical argument in
epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace
'obligations' by 'knowledge' in the crude statement of the argument
above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the
degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate
future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral
consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the
future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as
regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one
hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that
there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and
Obligations to the Future 153
the adjacent future and present, at least with respect to those things in the
present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and
constantly do act on the basis of such 'unreliable' information as the
sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels 'uncertainty'; for scepticproof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the
present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action
often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. A
good example is again the bus case. We do not need to know for certain
that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not
even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not,
in order for us to condemn the consigner's action. It is enough that there is
a significant risk of harm in this sort of case. It does not matter if the
decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and the prospects of the
passengers quite uncertain; the resolution of the problem is still clearly in
favour of the so-called 'speculative' and 'unreliable'. But if we do not
require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary
affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the
future? Why should we require epistemic standards for the future which
the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and
adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a
necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant
future, then, amounts to an epistemic double standard. But such an
epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between
the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests,
in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it
already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each
class, which difference is in turn in need of justification.
The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument,
that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in
practice take the interests of future people into account, because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what
the likely consequences of actions upon it will be and therefore, however
good our intentions to the people of the distant future, in practice we have
no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain
incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no
rational ground for choosing between them. The second uncertainty argument can also be put in this way: If moral principles are, like other
principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as 'if* has character
h then x is wrong, for every (action) x', then what the argument claims is
154 R. and V. Routley
that we can never obtain the information about future actions which would
enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral
principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be
applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary
action of the 'It is wrong to do x' type.
Many of the assumptions of the second argument have to be conceded.
If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is
impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the
effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or
hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply
theoretically to the future, will not be applicable in practice for obtaining
any clear conclusions about how to act. Hence the distant future will
impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument
is factually incorrect in assuming that the future is always so grossly
uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of
uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent)
fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume.
There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude
constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point,
noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is
commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be
needed in some cases is the creation of"a significant risk. Again there is
considerable uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at
all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of
much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have
any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in girls' names or
men's footwear, or what brands of ice cream people will be eating if any,
but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3,000
years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to
have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will
need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be
immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high
incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or
the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of
non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place.
For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. While it is true that there are many areas in which the morally relevant
information needed is uncertain or unavailable, and in which we cannot
therefore determine satisfactorily how to act, there are certainly others in
Obligations to the Future 155
which uncertainty in morally relevant areas is not so great as to preclude
moral constraints on action, where we ascertain if not absolute certainties
at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient
for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases,
especially where spatially remote people are involved. The case of nuclear
waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people,
seems to be of the latter sort. Here there is no gross indeterminacy or
uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what
may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage
does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as we can see
from the bus example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this
type to make moral constraints applicable.
In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can
see the corresponding defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty
arguments used to write off probable harm to future people as outside the
scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both
of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the
other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example,
we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because
we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not
be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not
suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would
affect us (cf. Passmore [1]). But this is to insist upon complete certainty of
a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where
there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake
those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no
guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part,
because they may be morons or forever plugged into enjoyment- or other
machines (Golding [12]). Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist
approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain
properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating
consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says
that the solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not
because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn't
looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. Neither the contemporary
nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a
lapse into universal moronity or universal pleasure-machine escapism is a
serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast
156 R. and V. Routley
with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable
risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilization through destruction of its resource base.
The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of
sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may
consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is
acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to
future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the
argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent
storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped
waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real
possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still
does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and
that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this
type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may
discover a cure for cancer, and the fact that this appears to be a real and not
merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm in the
example discussed above, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer
in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these
sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was
certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases, before such
actions could be considered admissible, what would be required is far
more than a possibility, real or not22 - it is at least the availability of an
applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique
for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves.
The strategy of most of these uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then,
and may be brought out by looking yet again at the bus example, where the
consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of
his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to
deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the
bus may break down and they may all change to a different bus leaving the
parcel behind, or the bus may crash, killing all the passengers before the
container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities, of course, but
there is no positive reason to believe that they are any more than that, that
is they are not real possibilities. The strategy is to stress such outside
possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross
uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will
Obligations to the Future 157
break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities,
that uncertainty about the future is so great as to preclude the consigners'
taking account of the passengers' welfare and of the real possibility of
harm from his parcel, and thereby excuse his action. A related strategy is
to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby
imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints .This move
implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty, or at
least a very high probability, of harm is required before an action can be
judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility
of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree
of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws
attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat
the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not
so.
An argument closely related to the uncertainty arguments is based on
the non-existence and indeterminacy of the future.23 An item is indeterminate in a given respect if its properties in that respect are, as a matter of
logic, not settled (nor are they settlable in a non-arbitrary fashion). The
respects in which future items are indeterminate are well enough known
for a few examples to serve as reminders: all the following are indeterminate: the population of Australia at 2001, its distribution, its age structure,
the preferences of its members for folk music, wilderness, etc., the size
and shape of Wollongong, the average number of rooms in its houses and
in its office blocks, and so on. Philosophical discussion of such indeterminacy is as old as Aristotle's sea battle and as modern as truth-value gaps
and fuzzy logics, and many positions have been adopted on the existence
and determinacy of future items. Nevertheless theories that there are
obligations to the future are not sensitive to the metaphysical position
adopted concerning the existence or non-existence of the future. Any
theory which denied obligations to the future on the metaphysical grounds
that the future did not exist, and did not have properties, so that the
present could not be related to it, would be committed to denying such
obvious facts as that the present could causally influence the future, that
present people could be great-grandparents of purely future people, and so
on, and hence would have to be rejected on independent grounds. This is
not to say that there are not important problems about the existence or
non-existence of future items, problems which are perhaps most straightforwardly handled by a Meinongian position which allows that items
which do not exist may have properties. The non-existence of the future
158 R. and V. Routley
does raise problems for standard theories which buy the Ontological
Assumption (the thesis that what does not exist does not have properties),
especially given the natural (and correct) inclination to say that the future
does not (now) exist; but such theories can adopt various strategies for
coping with these problems (e.g. the adoption of a platonistic position
according to which the future does now exist, or the allowance for certain
sorts of relations between existents at different times), although the satisfactoriness of these strategies is open to question (cf. [4]). Thus whether or
not the Ontological Assumption is assumed and however it is applied, it
will be allowed that future items will have properties even if they do not
have them now, and that is enough to provide the basis for moral concern
about the future. Thus the thesis of obligations to the future does not
presuppose any special metaphysical position on the existence of the
future.
If the non-existence of future items creates no special problems for
obligations to the future, the same is not true of their indeterminacy.
Whether the indeterminacy of future items is seen as a logical feature of
the future which results from the non-existence of purely future items or
whether one adopts a (mistaken) platonistic view of the future as existing
and sees the indeterminacy as an epistemological one resulting from our
inability to know the character of these entities - that is, we cannot
completely know the future .though it exists and has a definite characterwhichever view we take indeterminacy still creates major difficulties for
certain ethical theories and their treatment of the future.
The difficulties arise for theories which appear to require a high level of
determinacy with respect to the number and character of future items, in
particular calculus-type theories such as utilitarianism in its usual forms,
where the calculations are critically dependent on such information as
numbers, totals, and averages, information which so far as the future is
concerned is generally indeterminate. The fact that this numerical information is typically indeterminate means that insofar as head-count utilitarianism requires determinate information on numbers, it is in a similar
position to theories discussed earlier; it may apply theoretically to future
people, but since the calculations cannot be applied to them their interests
will be left out of account. And, in fact, utilitarianism for the most part
does not, and perhaps cannot, take future creatures and their interests
seriously; there is little discussion as to how the difficulties or impossibility of calculations regarding the open future are to be obtained. Non-platonistic utilitarianism is in logical difficulty on this matter, while platonis-
Obligations to the Future 159
tic utilitarianism - which faces a range of other objections - is inapplicable
because of epistemic indeterminacy. We have yet another case of a theory
of the sort that applies theoretically but in practice doesn't take the future
seriously. But far from this showing that future people's interests should
be left out of account, what these considerations show are deficiencies in
these sorts of theories, which require excessive determinacy of information. This kind of information is commonly equally unavailable for the
accepted areas of moral constraint, the present and immediate future; and
the resolution of moral issues is often not heavily dependent on knowledge
of such specific determinate features as numbers or other determinate
features. For example, we do not need to know how many people there
will be on the bus, how intelligent they are, what their preferences are or
how badly they will be injured, in order to reach the conclusion that the
consigner's action in despatching his parcel is a bad one. Furthermore, it is
only the ability of moral considerations to continue to apply in the absence
of determinate information about such things as numbers that makes it
possible to take account of the possible effects of action, as the risks
associated with action - something which is quite essential even for the
present if moral considerations are to apply in the normal and accepted
way. For it is essential in order to apply moral considerations in the
accepted way that we consider alternative worlds, in order to take account
of options, risks, and alternative outcomes; but these alternative or counterfactual worlds are not in so different a position from the future with
respect to determinacy; for example, there is indeterminacy with respect
to the number of people who may be harmed in the bus case or in apossible
nuclear reactor melt-down. These alternative worlds, like the distant
future, are indeterminate in some respects, but not totally indeterminate.
It might still be thought that the indeterminacy of the future, for example
with respect to number and exact character, would at least prevent the
interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict
with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests
unknown, how can we weigh their competing claims against those of the
present and immediate future where this information is available in a more
or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of
sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people,
when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are
indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the
future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in
decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by ignoring
160 R. and V. Routley
such factors. Nor are such distributional problems as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to
focus on them would suggest. It should be conceded then that there will be
cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts
very difficult or indeed impossible to resolve - a realistic ethical theory
will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other
conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution
of the issue, e.g. the bus example which is a conflict case of a type. In
particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing
numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to
know only the most general probable characteristics of future people.
Moreover, even where numbers are relevant often only bounds will be
required, exact numerical counts only being required where, for instance,
margins are narrow; e.g. issues may be resolved as in parliament where a
detailed vote (or division) is only required when the issue is close. It is
certainly not necessary then to have complete determinacy to resolve all
cases of conflict.
The question we must ask then is what features of future people could
disqualify them from moral consideration or reduce their claims to it to
below those of present people? The answer is: in principle None. Prima
facie moral principles are universalizable, and lawlike, in that they apply
independently of position in space or in time, for example.24 But universalizability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are
capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present; in other words, a theory
that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as
regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people,
e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup such as
(white-skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that
would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been
looking at, uncertainty and indeterminacy; what we have argued is that it
would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral
claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect
certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or practical
course of action given only present information). In particular they do not
affect cases of the sort being considered, the nuclear one, where highly
determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics
of the class likely to be harmed or certainty of damage are not required.
To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is
not needed: it is enough to require that the temporal position of a person
Obligations to the Future 161
cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral
consideration;25 inversely that it is without basis to discriminate morally
against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this
universalizability, there is the same obligation to future people as to the
present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and
their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of
the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions' causing harm or
damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob
future people of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not free us of these obligations. If, in a closely
comparable case concerning the present, the creation of a significant risk
is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent
grounds for requiring greater certainty of harm in the future case under
consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for
proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people.
Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion
tentatively reached in our first section, that proposals for nuclear development in the present state of technology for future waste disposal are
immoral.
IV. Overriding Consideration Arguments
In the first part we noticed that the consigner's action could not be justified
by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the
firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact
that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed.
We also observed that the principle on which this assessment was based,
that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these
sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the
nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are thus
most commonly advanced to promote nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment,
investment, and consumption-do not even begin to show that the nuclear
alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions
about benefits to present people were correct (and there is reason to doubt
that most of them are),26 the arguments would fail because economics
must operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice
versa.
162 R. and V. Routley
What one does have to consider, however, are moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is
the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the bus case,
the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is
taken the village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a
justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the
passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs
and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so
clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in
such circumstances.
Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on
competing duties to present people, and others on competing obligations
to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to
impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such
moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives),
and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument-for example, if in the bus
case it turns out that the villagers have another option to starving or to the
sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way - then
the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. We want to argue
that suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument,
designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse
than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these
arguments as well. In short, the arguments depend essentially on the
presentation of false dichotomies.
The first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding
obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of
industrialized countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often
claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the
standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment
and poverty in the industrialized nations.
The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third
world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to
increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the
Obligations to the Future 163
diversion of great amounts of available capital into an industry which is not
only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps
to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for
labour use. 27 The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third
world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and
economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive
amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers,
and creates negligible employment, while politically it increases foreign
dependence, adds to centralized entrenched power and reduces the
chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large
part of the problem.28 The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of
people of the third world does not, of course, mean that it is not in the
interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernized and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually
organized; but it is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands
these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor.
The poverty argument then is a fraud. Nuclear energy will not be used to
help the poor.29 Both for the third world and for the industrialized countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources,30 alternatives which are
morally acceptable and socially preferable to nuclear development, and
which have far better prospects for helping the poor.31
The second major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to
a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people.
We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and
institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technological, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable
institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The
argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued
level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of
our civilization will go out.32 .
The lights-going-out argument raises rather sharply questions as to
what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary
for a good society. These are questions which deserve much fuller treatment than we can allot them here, but a few brief points should be made.
The argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to
existing high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are
uniformly and uniquely valuable; it also assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it can't be changed in the direction of energy
164 R. and V. Routley
conservation or alternative energy sources without collapse. Such a society has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited
supplies of energy are essential to maintain this whole.
These assumptions are hard to accept. The assumption that technological society's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all, it
has survived events such as world wars which have required major social
and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western
society's demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse,
not only would it be committed to a programme of increasing destruction,
but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would
very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base
which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary
society.
There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but
if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain
existing high-technological society and its political institutions? but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the
political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things?
While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption is necessary to
maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue
that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable,
presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to the future.
The evidence, e.g. from history, is that no very high level of material
affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable.
There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower
energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable
than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we believe it is, it is not necessary to presuppose such
a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of
the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of wellbeing is required to consume less energy than at present, and certainly far
less than the large increase over present levels of consumption which is
assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy.33 What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going
out in western civilization, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the
time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy
Extravaganza.
In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy
consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy
Obligations to the Future 165
is obtained by nuclear-fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society
which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralized,
controlled, and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy
source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power,
and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether
capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political
system and over people's lives, even more than they do at present. Very
persuasive arguments have been advanced by civil liberties groups and
others in a number of countries to suggest that such a society would tend to
become authoritarian, if only as an outcome of its response to the threat
posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation.34
There are reasons to believe then that with nuclear development what
we would be passing on to future generations would be some of the worst
aspects of our society (e.g. the consumerism, growing concentration of
power, destruction of the natural environment, and latent authoritarianism), while certain valuable aspects would be lost or threatened. Political
freedom is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance.
Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives which
do not involve such unacceptable consequences are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the
loss of all that is valuable, but the development of alternative technologies
and life-styles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and
further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly
centralized nuclear option.35 The lights-going-out argument, as a moral
conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false
dichotomy. Thus both the escape routes, the appeal to moral conflict and
to the appeal to futurity, are closed.
If then we apply the same standards of morality to the future as we
acknowledge for the present - as we have argued we should - the conclusion that the proposal to develop nuclear energy on a large scale is a crime
against the future is inevitable, since both the escape routes are closed.
There are, of course, also many other grounds for ruling it out as morally
unacceptable, for saying that it-is not only a crime against the distant future
but also a crime against the present and immediate future. These other
grounds for moral concern about nuclear energy, as it affects the present
and immediate future, include problems arising from the possibility of
catastrophic releases of radioactive fuel into the environment or of waste
material following an accident such as reactor melt-down, of unscheduled
discharges of radiation into the environment from a plant fault, of proli-
166 R. and V. Routley
feration of nuclear weapons, and of deliberate release or threat of release
of radioactive materials as a measure of terrorism or of extortion. All these
are important issues, of much moral interest. What we want to claim,
however, is that on the basis of its effects on the future alone, the nuclear
option is morally unacceptable.
Appendix
Passmore's Treatment ofRawls,
and What Really Happens on Rawls's Theory
Passmore takes it that Rawls's theory yields an unconstrained position
but, according to Rawls, the theory leads to quite the opposite result;
namely,
persons in different generations [and not merely neighbouring generations] have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound
by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to
define justice between persons at different moments of time.. . . The
derivation of these duties and obligations may seem at first a somewhat far-fetched application of the central doctrine. Nevertheless
these requirements would be acknowledged in the original position
[where the parties do not know to which generation they belong], and
so the conception of justice as fairness covers these matters without
any change in its basic idea. ([5], p. 293; the second insert is drawn
from p. 287)
Through judicious use of the veil of ignorance and the time of entry of
parties to the original contract position, Rawls's contract theory, unlike
simpler explicit contract theories, can yield definite obligations to distant
future people,36 for example, we ought to save at a just rate for future
people.
But, as Rawls remarks (p. 284), 'the question of justice between generations . . . subjects any ethical theory to severe if not impossible tests'. It is
doubtful that Rawls's theory as formulated passes the tests; for the theory
as formulated does not yield the stated conclusion, but a conclusion
inconsistent with the thesis that there are the same obligations to future
people as to contemporaries. Exactly how these obligations arise from the
initial agreement depends critically on the interpretation of the time of
Obligations to the Future 167
entry of the parties into the agreement. Insofar as Rawls insists upon the
present-time-of-entry interpretation (p. 139), he has to introduce supplementary motivational assumptions in order to (try to) secure the desired
bondings between generations, in particular to ensure that the generation
of the original position saves for any later generation, even their immediate successors ([5], p. 140 and p. 292). Rawls falls back on-what is as we
have seen inadequate to the task, since it does not exclude one generation
damaging another remote generation in a way that bypasses mutually
successive generations - 'ties of sentiment between successive generations' (p. 292): to this limited extent Passmore has a point, for such a social
contract on its own (without additional assumptions about the motives of
the parties to the agreement) does not furnish obligations even to our
immediate successors. This is indicative also of the unsatisfactory instability of Rawls's theory under changes, its sensitivity to the way the original
agreement is set up, to the motivation of parties, their time of entry, what
they can know, etc.
To arrive at a more adequate account of obligations to the distant future
under Rawls's theory, let us adopt, to avoid the additional, dubious and
unsatisfactory, motivational assumptions Rawls invokes, one of the alternative - and non -equivalent - time-of-entry interpretations that Rawls lists
(p. 146), that of persons alive at some time in simultaneous agreement. Let
us call this, following Rawls's notation (on p. 140), interpretation 4b (it is
perhaps unnecessary to assume for 4b any more than 4a that all people
need be involved: it may be enough given the equivalencizing effect of the
veil of ignorance that some are, and as with the particular quantifier it is
quite unnecessary to be specific about numbers). Then of course the
parties, since they are, for all they know, of different generations, will
presumably agree on a just savings rate, and also to other just distribution
principles, simply on the basis of Rawlsian rationality, i.e. advancing their
own interests, without additional motivation assumptions. This more
appealing omnitemporal interpretation of time of entry into the agreement,
which gives a superior account of obligation to the future consistent with
Rawls's claim, Rawls in some places puts down as less than best (p. 292)
but in his most detailed account of the original position simply dismisses
(p. 139):
To conceive of the original position [as a gathering of people living at
different times] would be to stretch fantasy too far; the conception
would cease to be a natural guide to intuition.
168 R. and V. Rout ley
This we question: it would be a better guide to intuition than a position
(like 4a) which brings out intuitively wrong results; it is a more satisfactory
guide, for example, to justice between generations than the present-timeof-entry interpretation, which fails conspicuously to allow for the range of
potential persons (all of whom are supposed to qualify on Rawls's account
for just treatment, cf. § 77). Moreover, it stretches fantasy no further than
science fiction or than some earlier contract accounts.36 But it does
require changes in the way the original position is conceived, and it does
generate metaphysical difficulties for orthodox ontological views (though
not to the same extent for the Meinongian view we prefer); for, to consider
the latter, either time travel is possible or the original hypothetical position
is an impossible situation, with people who live at different times assembled at the same time. The difficulties - of such an impossible meeting help to reveal that what Rawls's theory offers is but a colourful representation of obligations in terms of a contract agreed upon at a meeting.
The metaphysical difficulties do not concern merely possible people,
because all those involved are sometime-actual people; nor are there
really serious difficulties generated by the fact that very many of these
people do not exist, i.e. exist now. The more serious difficulties are either
those of time travel, e.g. that future parties relocated into the present may
be able to interfere with their own history, or, if time travel is ruled out
logically or otherwise, that future parties may be advantaged (or disadvantaged) by their knowledge of history and technology, and that accordingly fairness is lost. As there is considerable freedom in how we choose to
(re)arrange the original position, we shall suppose that time travel is
rejected as a means of entering the original position. For much less than
travel is required; some sort of limited communicational network which
filters out, for example, all historical data (and all cultural or species
dependent material) would suffice; and in any case if time travel were not
excluded essentially the present-time-of-entry interpretation would serve,
though fairness would again be put in doubt. The filtered communicational
hook-up by which the omnitemporal position is engineered still has - if
fairness is to be seen to be built into the decision making - to be combined
with a reinterpreted veil of ignorance, so that parties do not know where
they are located temporally any more than they know who they are
characterwise. This implies, among other things, limitations on the parties' knowledge of factual matters, such as available technology and world
and local history; for otherwise parties could work out their location,
temporal or spatial. For example, if some party knew, as Rawls supposes,
Obligations to the Future 169
the general social facts, then he would presumably be aware of the history
of his time and so of where history ends, that is of the date of his
generation, his time (his present), and so be aware of his temporal location. These are already problems for Rawls's so-called 'present-time-ofentry interpretation' - it is, rather, a variable-time-of-entry interpretation
- given that the parties may be, as Rawls occasionally admits (e.g. p. 287),
of any one generation, not necessarily the present: either they really do
have to be ofthepresent time or they cannot be assumed to know as much
as Rawls supposes.37 There is, however, no reason why the veil of ignorance should not be extended so as to avoid this problem; and virtually any
extension that solves the problem for the variable-time-of-entry interpretation should serve, so it seems, for the omnitemporal one. We shall
assume then that the parties know nothing which discloses their respective
locations (i.e. in effect we write in conditions for universalizability of
principles decided upon). There are still gaps between the assumptions of
the omnitemporal position as roughly sketched and the desired conclusion
concerning obligations to the future, but (the matter is beginning to look
non-trivially provable given not widely implausible assumptions and) the
intuitive arguments are as clear as those in [5], indeed they simply restate
arguments to obligations given by Rawls.
Rawls's theory, under interpretation 4b, admits of nice application to
the problems of just distribution of material resources and of nuclear
power. The just distribution, or rate of usage, of material resources38 over
time is an important conservation issue to which Rawls's theory seems to
apply, just as readily, and in a similar fashion, to that in which it applies to
the issue of a just rate of savings. In fact the argument from the original
position for a just rate of saving - whatever its adequacy - can by simply
mimicked to yield an argument for just distribution of resources over
generations. Thus, for example:
persons in the original position are to ask themselves how much they
would be willing to save [i.e. conserve] at each stage of advance on
the assumption that all other generations are to save at the same rate
[conserve resources to the same extent]. . . . In effect, then, they
must choose a just savings principle [resources distribution principle]
that assigns an appropriate rate of accumulation to [degree of resource conservation at] each level of advance. ([5], p. 287; our
bracketed options give the alternative argument)
170 R. and V. Routley
Just as 'they try to piece together a just savings schedule' (p. 289), so they
can try to piece together a just resource distribution policy. Just as a case
for resource conservation can be made out by appeal to the original
position, since it is going to be against the interests of, to the disadvantage
of, later parties to find themselves in a resource depleted situation (thus,
on Rawlsian assumptions, they will bargain hard for a share of resources),
so, interestingly, a case against a rapid programme of nuclear power
development can be devised. The basis of a case against large-scale
nuclear development is implicit in Rawls's contract theory under interpretation 4b, though naturally the theory is not applied in this sort of way
by Rawls. To state the case in its crude but powerful form: people from
later generations in the original position are bound to take it as against their
interests to simply carry the waste can for energy consumed by an earlier
generation. (We have already argued that they will find no convincing
overriding considerations that make it worth their while to carry the waste
can.) Thus not only has Passmore misrepresented the obligations to the
future that Rawls's theory admits; he is also wrong in suggesting (p. 87 and
p. 91) that Rawls's theory cannot justify a policy of resource conservation
which includes reductions in present consumption.
There is, in this connection, an accumulation of errors in Passmore,
some of which spill over to Rawls, which it is worth trying to set out. First,
Passmore claims ([1], p. 86; cf. also p. 90) that 'Rawls does not so much
mention the saving of natural resources'. In fact the 'husbanding of natural
resources' is very briefly considered ([5], p. 271). It is true, however, that
Rawls does not reveal any of the considerable power that his theory,
properly interpreted, has for natural resource conservation, as implying a
just distribution of natural resources over time. Secondly, Passmore attempts ([1], pp. 87 ff.) to represent the calls of conservationists for a
reduction in present resource usage and for a more just distribution as a
call for heroic self-sacrifices; this is part of his more general attempt to
represent every moral constraint with respect to the non-immediate future
as a matter of self-sacrifice. 'Rawls's theory', Passmore says (on p. 87),
'leaves no room for heroic sacrifice', and so, he infers, leaves no room for
conservation. Not only is the conclusion false, but the premiss also:
Rawls's theory allows for supererogation, as Rawls explains ([5], p. 117).
But resource conservation is, like refraining from nuclear development,
not a question of heroic self-sacrifice; it is in part a question of obligations
or duties to the distant future. And Rawls's theory allows not only for
obligations as well as supererogation, but also for natural duties. Rawls's
Obligations to the Future 171
contract, unlike the contracts of what is usually meant by a 'contract
theory', is by no means exhaustive of the moral sphere:
But even this wider [contract] theory fails to embrace all moral
relationships, since it would seem to include only our relations with
other persons and to leave out of account how we are to conduct
ourselves towards,animals and the rest of nature. I do not contend
that the contract notion offers a way to approach these questions
which are certainly of the first importance; and I shall have to put
them aside, (p. 17)
The important class of obligations beyond the scope of the contract theory
surely generates obligations between persons which even the wider contract theory likewise cannot explain. The upshot is that such a contract
account, even if sufficient for the determination of obligations, is not
necessary. To this extent Rawls' s theory is not a full social contract theory
at all. However, Rawls appears to lose sight of the fact that his contract
theory delivers only a sufficient condition when he claims, for example (p.
298), that 'one feature of the contract doctrine is that it places an upper
bound on how much a generation can be asked to save for the welfare of
later generations'. For greater savings may sometimes be required to meet
obligations beyond those that the contract doctrine delivers. In short,
Rawls appears to have slipped into assuming, inconsistently, that his
contract theory is a necessary condition.
Although Rawls's theory caters for justice between generations and
allows the derivation of important obligations to people in the distant
future, the full theory is far from consistent on these matters and there are
significant respects in which Rawls does not take justice to the future
seriously. The most conspicuous symptoms of this are that justice to the
future is reduced to a special case, justice between generations, and that
the only aspect of justice between generations that Rawls actually considers is a just savings rate; there is, for example, no proper examination of
the just distribution of resources among generations, though these resources, Rawls believes, provide the material base of the just institutions that
he wants to see maintained. In fact Rawls strongly recommends a system
of markets as a just means for the allocation of most goods and services,
recognizing their well-known limitations only in the usual perfunctory
fashion ([5], pp. 270 ff.). Yet market systems are limited by a narrow time
horizon, and are quite ill-equipped to allocate resources in a just fashion
172 R. and V. Rout ley
over a time span of several generations. Similarly Rawls's endorsement of
democratic voting procedures as in many cases a just method of determining procedures depends upon the assumptions that everyone with ah
interest is represented. But given his own assumptions about obligations
to the future and in respect of potential persons this is evidently not the
case. Catering in a just fashion for the interests of future people poses
serious problems for any method of decision that depends upon people
being present to represent their own interests.
Some of the more conservative, indeed reactionary, economic assumptions in Rawls emerge with the assumption that all that is required for
justice between generations is a just savings rate, that all we need to pass
on to the future are the things that guarantee appropriate savings such as
capital, factories, and machines. But the transmission of these things is
quite insufficient for justice to the future, and neither necessary nor
sufficient as a foundation for a good life for future generations. What is
required for justice is the transmission in due measure of what is valuable.
Rawls has, however, taken value accumulation as capital accumulation,
thereby importing one of the grossest economic assumptions, that capital
reflects value. But of course the accumulation of capital may conflict with
the preservation of what is valuable. It is for this sort of reason (and thus,
in essence, because of the introduction of supplementary economistic
theses which are not part of the pure contract theory) that Rawls's theory
is a reactionary one from an environmental point of view; on the theory as
presented (i.e. the contract theory plus all the supplementary assumptions) there is no need to preserve such things as wilderness or natural
beauty. The savings doctrine supposes that everything of value for transmission to the future is negotiable in the market or tradeable; but then
transmission of savings can by no means guarantee that some valuable
things, not properly represented in market systems, are not eliminated or
not passed on, thereby making future people worse off. It becomes evident
in this way, too, how culturally-bound Rawls's idea of ensuring justice to
future generations through savings is. It is not just that the idea does not
apply, without a complete overhaul, to non-industrial societies such as
those of hunter-gatherers; it does not apply to genuinely post-industrial
societies either. Consideration of such alternative societies suggests that
whafis required, in place of capital accumulation, is that we pass on what
is necessary for a good life, that we ensure that the basics are fairly
distributed over time and not eroded, e.g. that in the case of the forest
people that the forest is maintained. The narrowness of Rawls's picture,
Obligations to the Future 173
which makes no due allowance for social or cultural diversity (from the
original contractual position on) or for individual diversity arises in part
from his underlying and especially narrow socio-economic assumption as
to what people want:
What men want is meaningful work in free association with others,
these associations regulating their relations to one another within a
framework of just basic institutions. ([5], p. 290)
This may be what many Harvard men want; but as a statement of what
men want it supplies neither sufficient nor even necessary conditions.39
NOTES
1 Thus according to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110; our italics).
There is at present no generally accepted means by which high level waste can be
permanently isolated from the environment and remain safe for very long periods.
. . . Permanent disposal of high-level solid wastes in stable geological formations is
regarded as the most likely solution, but has yet to be demonstrated as feasible. It is
not certain that such methods and disposal sites will entirely prevent radioactive
releases following disturbances caused by natural processes or human activity.
The Fox Report also quoted approvingly ([2], p. 187; our italics) the conclusion of the
British (Flowers) Report [6]:
There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until
it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exist s to ensure the
safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.
Although the absence of a satisfactory storage method has been conceded by some
leading proponents of nuclear development, e.g. Weinberg ([3], pp. 32-33), it is now
disputed by others. In particular, the headline for Cohen [15], which reads 'A substantial
body of evidence indicates that the high level radioactive wastes generated by U.S.
nuclear power plants can be stored satisfactorily in deep geological formations', has
suggested to many readers - what it was no doubt intended to suggest- that there is really
no problem about the disposal of radioactive wastes after all. Cohen presents, however,
no new hard evidence, no evidence not already available to the British and Australian
Commissions ([2] and [6]). Moreover the evidence Cohen does outline fails conspicuously
to measure up to the standards rightly required by the Flowers and Fox Reports. Does
Cohen offer a commercial-scale procedure for waste disposal which can be demonstrated
as safe? Far from it:
174 R. and V. Routley
The detailed procedures for handling the high-level wastes are not yet definite, but
present indications are that. . . . (Cohen [1], p. 24; our italics)
Does Cohen 'demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt' the long-term safety of burial of
wastes, deep underground? Again, far from it:
On the face of it such an approach appears to be reasonably safe. . . . (p. 24; our
italics)
Cohen has apparently not realized what is required.
At issue here are not so much scientific or empirical issues as questions of methodology, of standards of evidence required for claims of safety, and above all, of values, since
claims of safety, for example, involve implicit evaluations concerning what counts as an
acceptable risk, an admissible cost, etc. In the headline 'a substantial body of evidence
. . . indicates that. . . wastes . . . can be stored satisfactorily' the key words (italicized)
are evaluative or elastic, and the strategy of Cohen's case is to adopt very low standards
for their application. But in view of what is at stake it is hardly acceptable to do this, to
dress up in this way what are essentially optimistic assurances and untested speculations
about storage, which in any case do little to meet the difficulties and uncertainties that
have been widely pointed out as regards precisely the storage proposals Cohen outlines,
namely human or natural interference or disturbance.
2 See [18], pp. 24-25.
3 On all these points, see [14], esp. p. 141. According to the Fox Report ([2], p. 110):
Parts of the reactor structure will be highly radioactive and their disposal could be
very difficult. There is at present no experience of dismantling a full size reactor.
4 See, in particular, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Friends
of the Earth Energy Paper, San Francisco 1973, p. 47; also [3], p. 32 and [14], p. 149.
5 As the discussion in [14], pp. 153-7, explains.
6 Cf. [17], pp. 35-36, [18] and, for much detail, J. R. Goffman and A. R. Tamplin, Poisoned
Power, Rodale Press, Emmau Pa. 1971.
7 On the pollution and waste disposal record of the infant nuclear industry, see [14] and
[17].
The record of many countries on pollution control, where in many cases available
technologies for reducing or removing pollution are not applied because they are considered too expensive or because they adversely affect the interests of some powerful group,
provides clear historical evidence that the problem of nuclear waste disposal would not
end simply with the devising of a 'safe' technology for disposal, even if one could be
devised which provided a sufficient guarantee of safety and was commercially feasible.
The fact that present economic and political arrangements are overwhelmingly weighted
in favour of the interests and concerns of (some) contemporary humans makes it not
unrealistic to expect the long-term nuclear waste disposal, if it involved any significant
cost at all, when public concern about the issue died down, would be seen to conflict with
the interests of contemporary groups, and that these latter interests would in many cases
be favoured. Nor, as the history of movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament shows, could generalized public concern in the absence of direct personal
interest, be relied upon to be sustained for long enough to ensure implementation of costly
or troublesome long-term disposal methods - even in those places where public concern
exists and is a politically significant force.
It must be stressed then that the problem is not merely one of disposal technique.
Historical and other evidence points to the conclusion that many of the most important
risks associated with nuclear waste disposal are not of the kind which might be amenable
Obligations to the Future
175
to technical solutions in the laboratory. A realistic assessment of potential costs to the
future from nuclear development cannot overlook these important non-technical risk
factors.
8 Of course the effect on people is not the only factor which has to be taken into consideration in arriving at a moral judgment. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does
not confine its scope to human life. But since the harm nuclear development is likely to
cause to non-human life can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be
made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way.
9 Proponents of nuclear power often try to give the impression that future people will not
just bear costs from nuclear development but will also be beneficiaries, because nuclear
powerprovides an 'abundant' or even 'unlimited' source of energy; thus Weinberg ([3], p.
34): 'an all but infinite source of relatively cheap and clean energy'. A good example of an
attempt to create the impression that 'abundant' and 'cheap' energy from nuclear fission
will be available to 'our descendants', i.e. all future people, is found in the last paragraph
of Cohen [15]. Such claims are most misleading, since fission power even with the breeder
reactor has only about the same prospective lifetime as coal-produced electricity (a point
that can be derived using data in A. Parker, 'World Energy Resources: A Survey', Energy
Policy, Vol. 3 [1975], pp. 58-66), and it is quite illegitimate to assume that nuclear fusion,
for which there are still major unsolved problems, will have a viable, clean technology by
the time fission runs out, or, for that matter, that it ever will. Thus while some few
generations of the immediate future may obtain some benefits as well as costs, there is a
very substantial chance that tho se of the more distant future will obtain nothing but costs.
10 These feelings, of which Smith's and Hume's sympathy is representative, are but the
feeling echoes of obligation. At most, sympathy explains the feeling of obligation or lack
of it, and this provides little guide as to whether there is an obligation or not - unless one
interprets moral sympathy, the feeling of having a obligation, or being obligated, itself as
a sufficient indication of obligation, in which case moral sympathy is a non-explanatory
correlate in the feelings department of obligation itself and cannot be truly explanatory of
the ground of it; unless, in short, moral sympathy reduces to an emotive rewrite of moral
obligation.
11 Elsewhere in [1] Passmore is especially exercised that our institutions and intellectual
traditions - presumably only the better ones - should be passed on to posterity, and that
we should strive to make the world a better place, if not eventually an ideal one.
12 This is not the only philosophically important issue in environmental ethics on which
Passmore is inconsistent. Consider his: 'over-arching intention: to consider whether the
solution of ecological problems demands a moral or metaphysical revolution' (p. x),
whether the West needs a new ethic and a new metaphysics. Passmore's answer in [1] is
an emphatic No.
Only insofar as Western moralists have [made various erroneous suggestions] can
the West plausibly be said to need a 'new ethic'. What it needs, for the most part, is
not so much a 'new ethic' as adherence to a perfectly familiar ethic.
For the major sources of our ecological disasters - apart from ignorance - are
greed and shortsightedness, which amount to much the same thing. . . There is no
novelty in the view that greed is evil; no need of a new ethic to tell us as much. (p. 187)
'The view that the West now needs. . . a new concept of nature' is similarly dismissed (p.
186, cf. p. 72). But in his paper [1*] (i.e. 'Attitudes to Nature', Royal Institute of
Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 8, Macmillan, London 1975), which is said to be an attempt to
bring together and to reformulate some of the basic philosophical themes of [1], Passmore's answer is Yes, and quite different themes, inconsistent with those of [1], are
advanced:
176 R. and V. Routley
[T]he general conditions I have laid down . . . have not been satisfied in most of the
traditional philosophies of nature. To that degree it is true, I think, that we do need a
'new metaphysics' which is genuinely not anthropocentric. . . . A 'new metaphysics', if it is not to falsify the facts, will have to be naturalistic, but not reductionist.
The working out of such a metaphysics is, in my judgement, the most important task
which lies ahead of philosophy. ([1*], pp. 260-1)
A new ethic accompanies this new metaphysics.
The emergence of new moral attitudes to nature is bound up, then, with the emergence of a more realistic philosophy of nature. That is the only adequate foundation
for effective ecological concern. ([1*], p. 264)
This is a far cry from the theme of [1] that ecological problems can be solved within the
traditions of the West.
13 Put differently, the causal linkage can bypass intermediate generations, especially given
action at a temporal distance: the chain account implies that there are no moral constraints in initiating such causal linkages. The chain picture accordingly seems to presuppose an unsatisfactory Humean model of causation, demanding contiguity and excluding
action at a distance.
14 Golding we shall concede to Passmore, though even here the case is not clearcut. For
Golding writes towards the end of his article ([12], p. 96):
My discussion, until this point, has proceeded on the view that we have obligations
to future generations. But do we? I am not sure that the question can be answered in
the affirmative with any certainty. I shall conclude this note with a very brief
discussion of some of the difficulties.
All of Passmore's material on Golding is drawn from this latter and, as Golding says,
'speculative' discussion.
15 There is no textual citation for Bentham at all for the chapter of [1] concerned, viz. Ch. 4,
'Conservation'.
16 As Passmore himself at first concedes ([1], p. 84):
If, as Bentham tells us, in deciding how to act men ought to take account of the
effects of their actions on every sentient being, they obviously ought to take account
of the pleasure and pains of the as yet unborn.
17 Neither rightness nor probable lightness in the hedonistic senses correspond to these
notions in the ordinary sense; so at least [13] argues, following much anti-utilitarian
literature.
18 On this irrationality different theories agree: the rational procedure, for example according to the minimax rule for decision-making under uncertainty, is to minimize that
outcome which maximizes harm.
19 Discount, or bank, rates in the economists' sense are usually set to follow the market (cf.
P. A. Samuelson, Economics, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York 1967, p. 351). Thus the
rates have little moral relevance.
20 Cf. Rawls [5], p. 287: 'From a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting
future well-being on the basis of pure time preference.'
21 What the probabilities would be depends on the theory of probability adopted: a Carnapian theory, e.g., would lead back to the unconstrained position.
Obligations to the Future 177
22 A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate. A real
possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. The contrast is with mere
logical possibility.
23 Thus, to take a simple special case, economists dismiss distant future people from their
assessments of utility, welfare, etc., on the basis of their non-existence; cf. Ng ('the utility
of a non-existent person is zero') and Harsanyi ('only existing people [not even "nonexisting potential individuals"] can have real utility levels since they are the only ones
able to enjoy objects with a positive utility, suffer from objects with a negative utility, and
feel indifferent to objects with zero utility') (see Appendix B of Y. K. Ng, 'Preference,
Welfare, and Social Welfare', paper presented at the Colloquium on Preference, Choice
and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National University, August 1977, pp. 24, 26-27).
Non-existent people have no experiences, no preferences; distant future people do not
exist; therefore distant future people have no utility assignments - so the sorites goes. But
future people at least will have wants, preferences, and so on, and these have to be taken
into account in adequate utility assessments (which should be assessed over afuture time
horizon), no matter how much it may complicate or defeat calculations.
24 There are problems about formulating universalizability satisfactorily, but they hardly
affect the point. The requisite universalizability can in fact be satisfactorily brought out
from the semantical analysis of deontic notions such as obligation, and indeed argued for
on the basis of such an analysis which is universal in form. The lawlikeness requirement,
which can be similarly defended, is essentially that imposed on genuine scientific laws by
logical empiricists (e.g. Carnap and Hempel), that such laws should contain no proper
names or the like, no reference to specific locations or times.
25 Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick [11], p. 414), and
in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and Rousseau toRawls ([5], p. 293).
How the principle is argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlying theory;
and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories.
26 See esp. R. Lanoue, NuclearPlants:The MoreTheyBuild, The More You Pay, Centerfor
Study of Responsive Law, Washington DC 1976; also [14], pp. 212 ff.
27 On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and Energy,
Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC 1977, pp. 1-7, and also the
details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner [7]. On the absorption
of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as well [18], p. 23. On the employment
issues, see too H. E. Daly in [9], p. 149. A more fundamental challenge to the poverty
argument appears in I. Illich, Energy and Equality, Calder & Boyars, London 1974,
where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the
opposite of what the poor need.
28 For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful,
Blond & Briggs, London 1973. As to the capital and other requirements, see [2], p. 48, and
also [7] and [9].
For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy technology will tend to
promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries, see the paper of Waiko and other
papers in the Melanesian Environment (ed. by J. H. Winslow), Australian National
University Press, Canberra 1977.
29 This fact is implicitly recognized in [2], p. 56.
30 A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Friends of
the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 1976); see also [17],
[6], [7], [14], pp. 233 ff., and Schumacher, op. cit.
31 This is also explained in [2], p. 56.
32 An argument like this is suggested in Passmore [1], Chs. 4 and 7, with respect to the
question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance
of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned by what appears to be a future-
178 R. and V. Routley
directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be fortunate, the best way to take care of the future
(and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to
go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has
all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others.
33 See [14], p. 66, p. 191, and also [7].
34 For such arguments see esp. M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A
Comment on the Individual, the State and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council
for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London
1976.
35 For a recent sketch of one such alternative which is outside the framework of the
conventional option of centralized bureaucratic socialism, see E. Callenbach's novel,
Ecotopia, Banyan Tree Books, Berkeley, California 1975. For the outline of a liberation
socialist alternative see Radical Technology (ed. by G. Boyle and P. Harper), Undercurrents Limited, London 1976, and references therein.
36 Some earlier contract theories also did. Burke's contract (in E. Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France, Dent, London 1910, pp. 93-94) 'becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and
those who are not yet born'. Thus Burke's contract certainly appears to lead to obligations to distant future generations. Needless to say, there are metaphysical difficulties,
which however Burke never considers, about contracts between parties at widely separated temporal locations.
37 Several of the preceding points we owe to M. W. Jackson.
38 Resources such as soil fertility and petroleum could even be a primary social goods on
Rawls's very hazy general account of these goods ([5], pp. 62, 97): are these 'something a
rational man wants whatever else he wants'? The primary social goods should presumably be those which are necessary for the good and just life -which will however vary with
culture.
39 We have benefited from discussion with Ian Hughes and Frank Muller and useful
comments on the paper from Brian Martin and Derek Browne.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, Duckworth, London 1974.
[2] Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra 1977.
[3] A. M. Weinberg, 'Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy", Science, Vol. 177 (July 1972),
pp. 27-34.
•
[4] R. Routley, 'Exploring Meinong's Jungle II. Existence is Existence Now', Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic (to appear).
[5] J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1971.
[6] Nuclear Power and the Environment. Sixth Report of the British Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution, London 1976.
[7] B. Commoner, The Poverty of Power, Knopf, New York 1976.
[8] G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1903.
[9] B. Commoner, H. Boksenbaum and M. Corr (Eds.), Energy and Human Welfare - A
Critical Analysis, Vol. III, Macmillan, New York 1975.
Obligations to the Future 179
[10] J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 1, published under the superintendence of J. Bowring, with an intro. by J. H. Burton; William Tait, Edinburgh 1843.
[11] H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Macmillan, London 1962 (reissue).
[12] M. P. Golding, 'Obligations to Future Generations', Monist, Vol. 56 (1972), pp. 85-99.
[13] R. and V. Routley, 'An Expensive Repair Kit for Utilitarianism', presented at the
Colloquium on Preference, Choice and Value Theory, RSSS, Australian National
University, August 1977.
[14] R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne
1977.
[15] B. L. Cohen, 'The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Fission Reactors', Scientific
American, Vol. 236 (June 1977), pp. 22-31.
[16] S. McCracken, 'The Waragainst the Atom' .Commentary (September 1977), pp. 33-47.
[17] A. B. Lovins and J. H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy
Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco 1975.
[18] A. Roberts, "The Politics of Nuclear Power', Arena, No. 41 (1976), pp. 22-47.
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