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194,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/194,"Box 97, Item 1: Draft of Nuclear power - ethical, social and political dimensions","Typescript of draft, corrections with whiteout and handwritten emendations, undated. First page includes correct typescript cut-out pasted on page. 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.","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.","Richard Sylvan^^Val Plumwood","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 97, Item 1","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",1982-01-01,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[64] leaves. 51.84 MB. ",,Manuscript,"https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:5f472ad","n/a not listed in manuscript finding aid ","I
NUCLEAR POWER - ETHICAL,
I.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS
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 view, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm
(the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists
m ways summarised in the following table
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.
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:
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
pronomic 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
O
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 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,
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
11a
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.
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 waste storage 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
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 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,
15a
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.
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.^3 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 teject 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
16
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 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, 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
Assiiipp.fl.
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 conditiohs 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.
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 : ECONOMISTIC 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.
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
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
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
v
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
£1
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
morons or forever plugged into enjoyment or other machines.
prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed -
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.
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,
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.
universalizab ili ty, 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
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
24.
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 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 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"" 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
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
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
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 ’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).~
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 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
£1
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
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;
(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
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
36
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
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 independeritly 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
n 38
,
,
fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry .
Furthermore, the
various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors 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.
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 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.
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 (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.39
In West Germany the ’politics of nuclear repression is even more evident and
more advanced:
Behind what must be one of the most impregnable fortifications
this side of the East-West German border, work has just begun
on building West Germany’s latest nuclear power station. Much
31.1
of the perimeter of the 75-acre site, at Brokdorf in the
marshlands of the lower Elbe, is screened by a concrete
wall 10 feet high, surmounted by coils of barbed wire.
The rest, regarded as ’strategically observable’, is girdled
by a ditch 10 feet wide and filled with water. Approach
roads to the site are patrolled by dozens of policemen
and the compound itself is guarded by 600 men from a
private security organization and by 30 dogs.
Such developments 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
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 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.
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.
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
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 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 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 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 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.
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
unrest, etc.).
Therefore nuclear power is desirable.
part of US energy policy,
economics textbooks.
The first premiss is
and the second premiss is supplied by standard
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’,
benefit-cost ratio’, etc.
’having most favourable
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.
the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can
decisively, unless
Much data, beginning with
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.
Komanoff
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.50
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
Act5'1'), 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, under
Price-Anderson Act
the
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) leads
version of the Old Paradigm, called the Modified Old Paradigm.
to the modern
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,
as well as 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.
use, avoidance of shortages, rationing,
Since
alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve the same 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
53
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
42.
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
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, 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).
conditions complex decision rules
(such as the Arrow-Horowicz rule) which take
account of both best possible and worst possible outcomes under
reduce to the maximin
rule.
Under these
each option
Whichever energy option is selected under the
maximin 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
proposed,
maximin
enjoys a privileged
for decision under uncertainty have been
of which has associated rejection rules.
each
rules, such as the risk- added
Some of these
reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8),
the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of
which ’assesses
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
dubious,
rational
decision procedure appears to
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 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
alternatives rule
*
simply abandon
a coal-fired plant’”
(p.506).
a nuclear reactor
The compare-the-
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,
vulnerable, also yield
harm-avoidance and protecting-the-
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.
It is then, contemporary corporate capitalism, 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.
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
small
and is largely confined to the Soviet Union
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
These companies were
great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US.
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
picture changed : ’high costs of construction combined with low capacity
factors and poor reliability have wiped out the
cost advantage that nuclear power’
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 J 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
with relevant governments) substantial interests in European
held (usually along
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
activities’.
and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear
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 n°w^ 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 its social Modification, but that the practices (of
corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much
that is ethically unacceptable, whether
percepts;for principles such as
by older, modified, or alternative
those
assembled under fairness
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
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
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 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 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
61
needs
) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can
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 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 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
61
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"" 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 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, Economics, 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 ov'
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.
r
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
on 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 the1 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:
(ii3) 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
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly
p. 288.
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
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
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. 15, where references are also cited.
39.
Goodin, p. 433.
40.
On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jots and
Energy3 Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7,
and also the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner,
fx------ On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as
well
p. 23.
A. Roberts,
’The politics of nuclear power’, Arena No. 41 (1976) 22-47,
On the employment issues, see too Daly, in Commoner and others, p. 149.
7
A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich,
Energy and Equality3 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 Beautiful3 Blond and Briggs, London, 1973.
As to the capital and
other requirements, see Fox Report, p.48, and also Commoner, and Commoner and others.
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 TTze 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
Taken3 Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs3
October 1976); see a|so Nader & Abbotts, p.233 ff., Lovins and Price, Commoner,
and Schumacher, op.czt.
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 individual3 the State
and Nuclear Power3 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).
47.
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.
See Kalmanoff, p.
50.
See Comey.
51.
Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act.
52.
Full ref to SF onargument
from ignorance etc.
On decision theory see also,
53.
These e.g. Elster, p. 377.
54.
A recent theme in much economic literature is that Bayesian decision
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
For elaboration of some of the important
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
can
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.
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) (where
further references are cited).
S ta te s o c ia lis m , a s p r a c tis e d in m ost o f th e ’’E a s te rn b lo c ” , d if f e r s
a s to econom ic o r g a n is a tio n , th e m a rk e t in p a r t i c u l a r b e in g re p la c e d
sy stem by a command s y s te m ) B ut s in c e th e r e i s v i r t u a l l y no d e b a te
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REFERENCES USED
Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues
raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (*
).
t
I
/S. Congrove and A. Duff,
’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and
politics’, Sociological Review
28(2) (1980), 333-51.
A.
R. Cotton, Jr. , and R. E. Dunlj/p, ’A new ecological paradigm for post
f /
exuberant sociology’ American Behavioural Scientist 24 (1980).
15-47.
v/r
Report :
Vr
Ranger Uranium En/ynmental Inquiry First Report,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.
E. Goodin, ’No moral ni^k^S
’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49.
Gyorgy and friends, No /Juk^
:
everyone’s guide to nuclear power,
South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979
/ R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy,
Melbourne, 1977.
/
/
D.
*
Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy,
RSSS, Australian National University, 1980.
!
N. Myers, The Sinking Ark,
x.
&
Outback Press,
/
K.
*
Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979.
S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reid^l, Dordrecht,
1980 (referred to as SF).
R. and V. Routley,
’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry
21 (1978), 133-79.
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/403a5bad32513aec7b1fe527b51f07f8.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0
193,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/193,"Box 97, Item 2: Draft of Nuclear power - ethical, social and political dimensions","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.","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.","Richard Routley^^Val Routley","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 97, Item 2","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",1982-01-01,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[64] leaves.48.16 MB. ",,Manuscript,"https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:78dac39",,"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
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.
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/d6dee996e4a826a5364ced17efb8e381.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0
192,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/192,"Box 97, Item 3: Draft of Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions","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.","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.","Richard Routley^^Val Routley","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 97, Item 3","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",1982-01-01,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[36] leaves. 31.39 MB. ",,"Manuscript ","https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a81ed37",,"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.
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/3d6f700c4d63dddd9b3a3db43b54391a.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0
191,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/191,"Box 97, Item 4: Draft of Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions
","Typescript (photocopy) 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.","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.","Richard Routley^^Val Routley","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 97, Item 4","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",1982-01-01,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[36] leaves. 27.13 MB. ",,"Manuscript ","https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:623c64a",,"' 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.
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/f22b23a78d228312ce7b43ed0d6346d7.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0
190,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/190,"Box 97, Item 5: Draft of Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions","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.","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.","Richard Routley^^Val Routley","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 97, Item 5","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",1982-01-01,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[35] leaves. 27.24 MB. ",,Manuscript,"https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:1f45be4",,"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
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/b08be37f733215f4391cf73d1099d47f.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0
114,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/114,"Box 97, Item 6: Working draft of On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and war-deterrence and the political fall-out","Typescript working draft. Paper published, Routley R (1984) 'War and peace. 1: on the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear deterrence and the political fall-out', Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, 5. Dept. of Philosophy, Australian National University.","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.","Richard Sylvan","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 97, Item 6","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[57] leaves. 32.96 MB. ",,Manuscript,"https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:f4d8642","n/a - not listed in manuscript finding aid ","WORKING DRAFT
ON THE ETHICS OF LARGE-SCALE NUCLEAR WAR AND WAR-DETERRENCE
AND THE POLITICAL FALL-OUT
Because of their projected effects - which are said to differ from those of
the
even
largest
difference in kind -
generated,
encounters.
exchanges
either
at
all
wars
nuclear
large-scale
World
(the
wars
conventional
Wars)
raise
to
as
and
not
or nearly so forcefully, by previous human military
Certainly exchanges such as nuclear wars involve,
such
constitute a
questions
ethical
deterrence
nuclear
investigation
is
and
threatened
presupposes, are neither envisaged nor
fully accommodated by traditional theories of just wars.
reflection
as
even
required,
if
Much new
philosohical
well-tested and
rather
old-fashioned moral principles will serve as ethical base.
Nuclear wars - though a fine class of nonexistent object,
is
existence
whose
however best confined to other (already uncomfortably neighbouring) possible
worlds - have several distinctive properties and come in several varieties.
particular,
limited
nuclear
wars
which
(of
tactical
or
strategic
subvarieties) contrast with large-scale nuclear wars, LN-type-wars,
large quantities of nuclear devices over a sizeable region;
two
main
parameters:
are
need
A large-scale nuclear war involves the explosion of
however be unlimited
not
which
In
quantity
it is a function of
of explosive) and distribution.
(megatonnage
Such a war differs markedly from a limited (or tactical
or
strategic)
nuclear
war which is limited - by assumption, the chances of escalation are however very
real
3
- to much smaller quantities of explosives
characteristically
circumscribed,
installations in a given region.
wars
and
their
prevention,
and
where
the
targets
are
confined
to
military
Though the focus in what follows
is
upon
e.g.
limited
in
nuclear
principle
LN
wars are by no means a separate
Page 2
issue, since a nuclear arsenal is
escalation
of
such
are
wars
a
and
prerequisite,
high
probabilities
of
assumptions of
reasonable
usual
(given
the
follow-up or second strike, etc.)
§1.
is
What
different
old
of
appropriateness
and
models
wars:____ the
nuclear
about
theories
resulting
war.
of
limited
model of war that
A
dominates much thinking, including [even] strategic thinking, is the
two
party
4
(or even two person) game or, a complication of that, the clan or tribe battle .
A picture of war built up, especially as a result of medieval discussion of
just
war,
which
inapplicable.
for
such
technological
have
advances
The traditional theory, hardly surprisingly,
phenomena
Dresden and Tokyo.
mass
as
bombing
inappropriate
rendered
no
made
the
and
allowance
large cities, such as occurred with
of
And nuclear bombing, with its many further
crucial
effects
beyond mass bombing, adds further new dimensions.
Yet it is Important, for the argument to
anchors,
historical
linkages
and
to be aware of what counted as war (the semantics of the matter^), and
of when, and why, wars and military actions
Firstly,
retain
were
accounted
unjust
war is essentially a matter of states and their control:
or
wrong.
to elaborate
the OED account, war is ’hostile contention by means of armed forces, carried on
between
nations,
states,
or
rulers, or between parties in the same nation or
state’ for control of the state :
literal,
but
transferred,
antagonists or players;
other
metaphoric,
forces comprising
senses
of
etc.?
States
armed
the
’war’
noun
not
the protagonists,
are
soldiers
are
are
the
means
of
contention or combat, and combat or forceful (typically violent) exchange is the
actual experience.
function
of
remove states:
Thus wars are external or internal (civil),
states or their rule.
but
always,
a
An obvious way then to eliminate wars is to
in short, wars are an outcome of political
structure,
and
are
Page 3
altering the structure .
by
removed
This is an initial reason why the radical
argument against nuclear wars and deterrence devolves into an
argument
the (self-legitimised) war-declarers and war-makers, against states.
the traditional theory, wars
were
restricted
to
external
against
In fact on
which
wars,
were
construed as the right of states or their rulers (princes) for certain political
purposes, the argument being that private persons with grievences had access
the
while
courts,
did not
states
legitimate
(wars were, so to speak, the international
But this is itself a very
analogue of the law courts).
the
9
to
statist
conception
of
the semantics is not so restrictive and permits
place of wars;
internal wars, for example, to end wars.
Let us however - to bring out what is different now - confine attention
a
basic
and most familiar case, external wars between two states or set (axes)
of states, two-player external wars.
games
competitive
could
be
won.
It was assumed
be
well
no
winning strategy.
waste
of
the
Northern
huge surrounding areas of countryside.
hemisphere
and
not
like
a
draw,
or
like
the
strange
out
for
the
simultaneously knock each
other
element,
emphasis
the
inevitable
is
disputes,
removed:
be
pointfully
fought.
Certainly,
elements of gamesmenship had a role
count.)
in
for,
deterrence,
earlier
wars,
(So
where two boxers
situation
on pure deterrence;
that are most elaborately prepared for (exercised
never
the
settled with main protagonists substantially obliterated^, and all
is
is
there
Thus too the point of
main players very substantially worse off than at the outset of the ""play"".
it
like
An LN war could involve destruction of all
war as traditionally seen, to settle serious interstate
nothing
wars,
that
With LN wars it no longer holds;
main Western metropolitan agglomerations in
laying
firstly
That assumption still held good for massive
armed exchanges such as the World Wars.
may
to
Hence
another
newer
the phenomenon of wars
etc.),
but
which
can
bluff,
and
the other
it
was
not
but
pure
Page 4
deterrence.
to
principle
important,
Most
military
next,
traditional
and
targets
military
gross ways to uninvolved parties sacrifice
effects
nuclear
of
large nuclear wars cannot
(presented
horrifying
in
be
confined in
be
could
This
exchanges.
feature
is
for, as we shall see, wars that spill over in
fundamental as regards just wars;
special
wars
any
The
morality.
to
pretension
explosives, especially in mass, mean however that
legitimately
detail
in
confined.
popular
These
effects
special
sources such as Schell) include
radioactivity, ozone destruction, shockwaves, fireball or firestorm devastation,
etc., etc .
. ..
The moral situation, and the tendency of moral
§2.
entirely
in the context of war.
submerged
case of war to maintain a firm grasp on the
expediency.
What
is
to
considerations
become
It is particularly important in the
distinction
between
morality
done in war, especially for local or national advantage,
may be very different from what ought morally to be done, whether the latter
ought not to be
done
codes and conventions of war, or otherwise
in
war
is
done,
despite
modern
.
military
conventions and the like, for one (alleged) advantage or another.
live in a rather barbarous age:
go
unremarked,
if
so
numbing,
codes
the history gets written (accurately) that is.
tends
13
to
induce
a
and
Militarily we
will
the horrors of the twentieth century
military thinking and strategic planning
is
A
,
Much that
12
the
using
determined
and
not
Furthermore
certain
moral
that a range of morally excluded actions, such as wiping our rural
populations, become real (""moral’') possibilities, to be reckoned,
for
example,
into consequentialist calculations of maximising expediency.
The reason is that
strategic planning is characteristically based on expediency
(and
extent
displaces
morality).
so
to
that
For each side in a military encounter determines
its ""strategy"" by considering only its own advantages and disadvantages, its own
gains
and
losses
as a result of alternative possible moves, not, as it ought,
Page 5
those of the other side(s) as well.
Indeed it has been contended that war should be planned and conducted
way,
no-holds-barred-combat fought to the maximal (local) advantage, without
a
limits, moral or other (except insofar as technology limits the means of
etc.,
themselves).
Such
is
the
And Clausowicz tries to
repeated.
argue,
through
14
an
be
broken
by
player
each
in
from
And the argument is inconclusive;
c
Thus too an
It would follow
for the
players
from
the
can
choose
15
A state engaged in war - this will no doubt include nuclear
nowadays
war
sees itself as entirely bound by constraints of morality:
to be mere prudence on the part
no-immoral-holds-barred
of
approach
those
they
attacked
to
take
-
seldom
it is taken
account
of
the
may well encounter, especially from the
So each group potentially engaged in war forces
other side.
the
question
not
as to what it ought to do in morally permissible situations, but also both
what it ought really do and what it can do in the morally flawed
finds
enforced)
escalate, and, for example, agree to abide by arranged practices, types
to
of weapons, etc.
only
The
that the idea of a limited war is some sort of contradiction in terms.
But it is not.
not
escalation
externally
for advantage.
turn
extraordinarily narrow motivational base is assumed.
argument
incremental
), that there can be no limit.
assumption is that any merely selected (as distinct
will
force,
so-called ""classic"" view of Clausowicz, oft
argument (but really ""the bald man"" fallacy
limit
this
itself
in.
But
last
the
question
does
not
then
situations
it
reduce to one of
expediency.
There is
expediency,
involves.
no
question
of
morality
giving
or
having
to
give
way
to
for instance under extreme circumstances such as prospect of LN war
For it is not as if shaky considerations of morality are bound to
to
Page 6
give
not only
firm ground of expediency when the chips are down:
the
to
way
does this in fact often enough not happen in crises situations, but the fact
that
is
both morality and expediency fall within the same, equally shaky or solid,
Expediency does not (meticulously) deliver us from
domain of value theory.
fact, but simply takes narrowly-construed local advantage or power as
to
value
what is valuable, as what matters;
family,
that
urges
values
local
-
of
self,
region or nation - are what really count and override or
class,
clan,
it
are to be maximized at the expense of
remote
or
considerations.
foreign
By
morality requires, as a matter of its proper characterisation, a much
contrast,
more universal distribution of value
thereby
the
through
imposes,
requirements
general
of
universalizable
intersubstitutivity
resultant
equillbity
fairness,
of the same results not holding when x and y are interchanged, under
Not
evaluations 16.
certain
principles,
justice.
and
and
principles,
The
deep
expediency derives from the failure of interreplacement,
of
unsatisfactoriness
so
and
only
can
expediency
be given a deontic presentation, as
expediency
through such slogans as ""might is right"", but theories or utility do not have to
be
positions
of
expediency
utilitarianism proper —
morality,
which
if
can
utility
meet
not
is
locally
intersubstltutivity
Thus
confined.
requirements
of
unlike the war game theory, does not assign different weights
which,
to (say) the individual utility of Americans as opposed to Russians — is not
to
be dismissed as considering only expediency.
There are however significant moral differences, between
and
utilitarians
17
deontologists especially, which serve to further complicate the moral picture
Thus utilitarian approaches have seemed to
justify
ugly
strategies
and
practices
render
as
morally
regards
deontological principles would not permit (even with the
convenient
law
of
double
effects).
But
this
is
permissible
enemy
best
already
or
civilians,
bending
to
of
to
that
the
effect some
Page 8
Characteristically, national interest is taken
to
differently,
to
override
morality
impose Irresistible ethical claims that dominate more ordinary
ethical considerations (such as even the immorality of killing millions).
as
or,
Schell puts it,
Thus,
’What is being claimed is that one or two countries have the
right to jeopardise all countries and their descendents in the name
certain
of
beliefs’ (II, p.70).
But morally national interest can do neither of those things.
simply
the
The first is
substitution of expediency for morality, which entirely lacks moral
justification, while
second,
the
the
alleged
moral
dominance
of
national
fails in important classes of cases, including, so the argument will
Interests,
go, the case of LN war.
States may insist upon operating on a selfish national interest basis,
let
it
not
pretended
be
expediency (’’group
governments.
Morality
it
is
a moral basis as distinct from one of
There
is
no
that
egoism’’).
works
in
the
special
dispensation
moral
For
example,
what
ought
be
to
as
regards
x
semantically, what would happen as regards x in all ideal worlds;
no
difference
x
is
an
individual
or
States such as Israel (in its recent
organisation.
behaving
whether
just
as
immorally
as
brigands
individual
invasion
or mass killers:
difference.
Certainly there are grounds on which states or
claimed
been conceded special moral dispensations;
or
for
same way for groups as for individuals:
there is no logical difference in the pattern of justification, or
obligation.
but
are no more than that and do not stand up to criticism.
of
analysis
is,
analysed
and it
makes
system, group or
of
are
Lebanon)
there is no moral
their
agents
have
but the excuses offered
A
satisfactory
moral
theory cannot furnish two (Incompatible) moralities, a state or public one and a
private or individual citizen one - state expediency and individual
morality
-
Page 7
partisanship - since utilitarians would
the
reject
description
practices
of
permitted under their principles as ’ugly’ - and an objective in what follows is
to avoid metaethlcal partisanship, to achieve metaethical, though of course
moral,
neutrality.
argument can begin.
several
And morally there is a large area of consensus
Virtually all positions
cities
major
in
agree
that
the
18
not
from which
obliteration
of
a LN war would be wrong - indeed morally outrageous.
Where there is dissension, as there may be among nuclear strategists who seem to
feel
qualms
no
when it comes to trading loss of some American cities for some
Russian ones, simply increase the costs involved, up to loss of whole nations if
necessary,
then try to work down again.
until moral repugnance is encountered;
The fact remains however that things have got substantially out of
perspective,
Strategic thinking, in particular, has tended to abandon, or suppress
morally.
moral considerations (as indeed many theories of the state also pretend to do).
Naturally the fact of broad consensus as to the morality of the matter does
not
mean that there are none who would welcome such outrageous happenings, that
total nuclear destruction of the North even, would be
Consider
the
world empire.
be
realised.
rising
southern
(hemisphere)
no
one’s
While the superpowers of the north remain SS’s dream
Thus
his
best
strategy,
exchange
in
the
North.
There
advantage.
strongman, SS, who has visions of
will
can
be
to
a
encourage
point
an
all-out
then in securing
institutional arrangements so that potential SS’s do not accumulate much
especially
given
the
that is to anticipate:
has
its
limitations,
structural adjustments.
hardly
rid of southern waters of US
having
submarines and southern lands of US bases, is to try
nuclear
to
power,
apparent instability of crucial world arrangements.
the present point is that (the fact of) moral
and
is
an
inadequate
But
consensus
constraint without accompanying
Page 9
19
because this would lead to violations of substitutivity , neutrality, etc.
instance, a state operative x could use state
cover
morally impermissible ways, ways ruled out (e.g.
y are permuted.
derivative
A group or organisation or
in
consideration
can
but
role,
bound
be
by
moral principles.
special
these are derivative
principles, good for any such institution, which fit within and answer
general
in
y
by state interests) when x and
person
its
of
virtue
citizen
damage
to
For
back
to
So it is also with a state which is an institutional
arrangement justified (insofar as it is) by the way it answers back to some
least)
its
of
citizens:
its
(at
charter does not legitimate emergent allegedly
moral principles which conveniently coincide with those of state expediency.
particular,
In
state is not (morally) entitled to risk the lives of many of its
a
own citizens and of other peoples and creatures for its own ends, even
its
for
own survival.
§3.
Arguments to the Immorality of LN wars.
can
which
set
be
since
aside,
the
concede that war per se is not a crime.
but
pacifist
positions
immorality of LN wars follows at once -
Not all wars are immoral,
though
states.
aristocratic
Among
young
men
admissible
wars
are
the
external
tournaments
or
of
or warriors who volunteer as soldiers where the action
does not spill over onto noncombatants, and some early and medieval wars,
few
even
wars may be pointless or inferior ways of settling political issues
inoffensive
between
All
no combatants even were killed in war.
where
Since the establishment of such
induction practices as conscription and recruitment of the near-destitute,
have
largely
ceased
to take these inoffensive forms:
far removed from the ideal
ecotopian
literature
war-tournament
(where
type,
that
its position is dubious).
immoral, but few to such an extent as LN wars.
wars
modern massive wars are
features
now
only
in
Most sorts of wars are
Page 10
argument
The first key
to
(1KA)
the
of
(and
wars
LN
of
immorality
sufficiently large-scale wars generally) takes the following form:
Pi.
The deliberate killing in mass of noncombatants is wrong.
Pli.
LN wars involve the killing in mass of noncombatants.
(KA)
What involves what is wrong is wrong.
Piii .
LN wars are wrong.
J
Supplementary remarks are called for:- Firstly, the
(1KA)
is
one
just
representative
of
a
Characteristically, in Western culture, it
is
arguments
of
that
thought
argument
given
of
type.
mass
this
taken
But the focus can be
off
the
killing:
destruction
of
a first variation on (KA) replaces ’killing
the
is
basis
of
may
each
be
attacked
of its premisses.
wrong
is
as
There
slack
by
a
has
in
effect
been
Let us consider these in
that
what
involves
are,
in
particular,
such
those generated by Good Samaritan arguments, which purport to show
that some proper obligations involve wrongdoing.
too
noncombatants’
wrong, often expanded to a ""distribution of obligation over
entailment"" principle, has been challenged.
problems
(and
The principle, Piii, used in the argument,
reverse order.
what
of
Other variations will emerge in the discussion.
but
The argument is valid,
on
mass
Thus
concerning ’huge destruction of lifestyle of uninvolved or not
clause
directly involved creatures’.
attacked)
in
of
lifestyle
nonhumans and humans alike that an LN war will bring is sufficiently evil.
suitable
of
killing
about the worst thing that can happen (after the killing of police).
is
humans
set
particular
a
notion
of
involvement;
linked to paradox-free entailment
20
But the problems
derive
from
with a tighter Involvement connective,
, the problems disappear, and Piii stands.
Page 11
As against Pii, it may be
legitimately
argued
against
directed
nuclear
that
military
targets.
wars
can
encounters
be
But given the character of
nuclear weapons, LN wars could in no way be confined to such targets.
merely the likelihood that many missiles explode off target.
not
the other effects of large-scale nuclear bombings, for example
down-wind
fallout
There
is
There are all
the
radioactive
military targets, which in the case of US and European
from
targets especially will effect large concentrations of people, Including therein
perhaps uninvolved countries such as Canada.
There may be an attempt to avoid the problem of massive civilian casualties
by
appeal
to such dubious principles as the doctrine of double effect (or side
21
effect)
If missiles were characteristically
was
which
intended
only
to
destroy
an
reliably
underground
unmanned
unfortunately went off course and destroyed a large city, it
the
that
Such claims should be rejected:
not
wrongness
lessened
could make a difference;
for
firing
the city.
the
and
one
missile silo
could
be
claimed
mass destruction is legitimised under the double effect
(unintended)
principle.
target,
on
the action would be wrong, and
by the given intention.
the
Nonetheless the circumstances
for they may mitigate attitudes to
those
responsible
missile, since it was not as if they had deliberately aimed at
The double effect principle confuses [diminution of]
the
allocation
of responsibility for an act with the [diminution of] wrongness of the act.
As against Pi, and as regards the middle term of Pi
argued
that there is an important equivocation.
the bracketed term,
killing
’deliberate’.
While it will
and
Pii,
it
may
be
The equivocation is induced by
be
that
admitted
deliberate
of genuine innocents is impermissble , it will be contended firstly that
they
noncombatants, insofar
as
innocent,
directly
many
being
are
distinguishable,
involved
in
are
by
no
means
all
military effort, whether just as
Page 12
taxpayers or as suppliers of goods
farmers
or
services
used
innocent.
second
The
point
Because Pii so amended in less defensible, and/or other reasons,
discussed.
leave
to
out the ""modifier"" ’deliberate’.
of
the perpetrators.
it
What is important for the
present purposes is the moral status of what is done, not that
motives
e.g.
military,
a much narrower - and less defensible - version of premiss Pll already
concerns
best
the
and secondly LN wars do not involve the
or bootmakers or entertainers;
deliberate killing of those properly excluded as
is
by
mixed
with
the
So ’deliberate’ is out, equivocation is avoided,
22
Pii stands, and so does
Pl.
For
not
does
Pi
’deliberate’, or ’intentional’ or the like.
require
the
qualification
Admittedly also ’noncombatant’ is a
fuzzy term, but none the worse for that, and there
is
no
problem
serious
in
marking out a class of clear noncombatants, people who are not directly involved
in the command and action chains.
practice,
deriving
from
There is, moreover,
Catholicism,
of
no
need
to
the
adopt
stating an initial version of Pi in
terms of innocents - at least as problematic a class as that of noncombatants to
try
to characterize - and then endeavouring to make the difficult transition to
noncombatants.
Not only can arguments against the premisses of the argument be met,
art
arguments
for
the
premisses, though for the substantive moral premiss Pi
they are of the characteristically nonconclusive moral sort
vary somewhat with the underlying ethical theory.
and
will
tend
seriously
understate
the
point)
minimal respect owed to them as persons
doing
so
23
The argument from historical requirements on just wars
from
convergence.
conclusion
that
fails to treat them with the
§4.
The
to
For example, one argument for
Pi, and for objecting to the killing of noncombatants, is the Kantian one,
(to
there
that
and
the
argument
LN wars cannot be justly waged - and
Page 13
accordingly are unjustified - is not merely something dreamed up by contemporary
opponents
The same conclusion falls out of various traditional requirements, worked
etc).
out
America or of the capitalist State (and communistically inspired,
of
times
mdeieval
in
just
for
variant on the key argument (1KA).
was
justly
that
not
it
be
One of the requirements gives but a
wars.
For a necessary condition for fighting a war
the
that
case
noncombatants are bound to be killed (cf.
numbers
large
[innocent]
of
Barnes, p.775).
A just war requires just means, that the war should be
fought
morally
by
which
implies in particular that there is no indiscriminate
killing of noncombatants.
The implied principle was escapsulated in a principle
legitimate
of
means,
(between combatants and others) which ’prohibits all actions
discrimination
directly Intended to take the lives of
p.312)
24
civilians
and
of
(PL,
noncombatants’
LN wars, where not only military installations are targeted, violate
.
U.
.
25
this requirement
Overlapping the requirement of just means is that of
proportion being that of net evil to net good):
’the damage to be inflicted and
costs Incurred by the war must be proportionate to the good expected
up
arms’
(PL,
p.312).
disproportionate
to
moral
goods
proportionality requirement is
criterion
of
by
the
which
achieved
in
doctrine
""improvement"" through war :
not
are
of
that
nationally
way.
confined,
overall
consequences
of
abstaining
improvement ""puts wrongs to rights"":
""ameliorative""
conditions
and
war
according to the first,
justly
the
’X wages war
bad,
from war’ (Barnes, p.72).
’A nation wages war
are
Entangled with the
justly upon y if the overall consequences of war are better, or less
the
taking
is not difficult to see that LN wars violate this
It
the damage and costs,
requirement:
(the
proportionality
only
than
Similarly
if
the
for that nation or the wronged nation it is supporting have a decent
Page 14
chance of being better after the fighting ends’ (Wakin, p.20).
way
LN war can in no
satisfy these conditions, as scenarios depicting the aftermath of such wars
reveal.
Some of the lesser requirements for a just war are infringed
wars;
LN
It seems that there can
for example, that of reasonable expectation of success.
be no reasonable expectation of success in an LN
by
war,
the
whatever
prospects of success with more limited nuclear exchanges.
(limited)
What is less clearcut
is the question of whether LN wars conflict with the requirements of just
cause
or due fault and of right intention.
For this depends on the sensitive issue of
the weight assigned to what are seen
as
basic
rights
human
and
fundamental
values, and the extent to which just wars can be ideologically justified.
the
mainstream
justified
position
and
wars
definitively excluded
however,
in
puzzling
of
medieval
""humanitarian""
by
the
over
decisive against LN wars.
theory
wars
(cf.
traditional
was
opposed
to
While
ideologically
Barnes, p.778), these were not
theory.
There
is
merit,
little
dubiously effective requirements, when so many are
Finally, these arguments from historical requirements
do not violate prescriptive requirements:
the argument is not a simple argument
from historical authority, but also
premisses
uses
requirements imposed (and used) were justified.
the
to
effect
that
the
As they are.
In the Christian tradition there were two main strands of reflection on the
moral
rightness
or
justness
of
wars
9A
,
the
just
war
theory
and a rival
pacificist strand, prominent in early Christianity, but submerged from Augustine
on until contemporary times.
Both exclude nuclear wars, one strand because they
are inevitably unjust, the other because they are wars and
This
is
the
involve
violence
beginning of the convergence argument against nuclear wars:
such wars are excluded from all ethical perspectives, once
expediency
is
27
that
duly
Page 15
The detailed argument
They are morally wrong however you look at it.
removed.
is an exhaustive case by case one, from each type of moral theory.
can
details
For deontological and contractual theories lead back
be shortcut.
to requirements for a just war,
violate.
Fortunately
which
it
has
already
shown,
been
In fact conditions for just wars were sometimes arrived at or defended
through principles of such moral theories, so that a good deal of the
work
argumentative
already
has
brand
utilitarian
of
finally accomplished;
for
such
and
is
adopted,
not
is
far
to
have
effect
in
shown
pleasure,
reason
The
wars Involves such massive
that
this
dominates
genuine alternative to LN war is better
or
28
outlined
against
overwhelming moral case against such wars.
wars
LN
do
not
exhaust
the
For there are other moral principles
(derivative in some of the theories just considered) which the waging of
war would violate.
in
are accomplished in utilitarian fashion, so that any
they
The arguments given
LN
that
utility maximisation is
however
seek:
infliction of pain and colossal removal of
however
others
requisite
latter point holds also as
LN wars are excluded on utilitarian grounds.
convergence
assessments
The
done.
been
regards utilitarianism, where Lackey
whatever
wars
LN
an
LN
Among such principles are conservative ones, that we have an
obligation to maintain the earth in proper shape and not
degrade
its
systems,
that we have a responsibility to future generations, to whom we are accountable,
to ""pass the world on"" not in substantially worse condition
it"".
Such
conservative
principles
than
we
""received
- however they are finally satisfactorily
formulated - are bound to be violated in the event of an LN war.
§5.
The shift to
nuclear
lobby
nuclear
arguments
deterrence:
to
its
immorality.
The
has a way of halting, and if not defeating, certainly deflating,
arguments against
the
immorality
of
LN
wars,
namely
there
is
no
actual
Page 16
such
any
In
engagement
wars.
different from engagement in
war:
LN
being done is, it is claimed, quite
is
What
is
deterrence
indeed
important
most
precisely in preventing such wars from ever occurring, as well as in maintaining
(other) fundamental [Western] values.
obtaining
desiderata.
both
is
deterrence
pronouncements,
claims
The
reasons:- A first reason is that
Indeed it is the only
there
are
is
much
for
more
than
deterrence can account neither for
strategy
military
Western
disarmament to
expected
be
On
deterrence.
29
the
despite
For if it
and sometimes even a drive for superiority.
this,
actual
nuclear
of
In fact there has been a
were ""sufficiency"" to deter would be an adequate goal.
quest
that,
evidence
the - the only - military goal.
not
way
dubious, for several
decidedly
too
practical
nor
weapons
for
Pure
orthodox
Nor has deterrence set in motion the process of
.
to
armaments
reduce
""its""
under
contrary,
to
levels
impulse
there
sufficient
has
for
been almost
unlimited acceleration in building arms (PL, p.318, quotes inserted).
Another
of
deterrence
reason
for
the
type
serious
that
is
doubt
being
concerns
other reasons also, connected
with
pure
deterrence
The reasons include the
for
nuclear
war
and
with
to
For
original
(its
threatening
posture
deterrence
for, the propaganda that must be promulgated to maintain credibility with
a population whose interests are being
etc.
conditions
the ""cold war"", the probability of a LN war has increased considerably
in the last 30 years.
calls
factor:
to that extent, at least, enhanced its prospects of occurring.
and
setting)
probability
practised, which involves full-scale
preparation for nuclear war, has prepared the
occur,
the
The
""sacrificed""
for
objectives,
situation has now been reached where many theorists think there is a
high probability at least of an LN war this century, i.e.
certainly
military
be
before 2000.
It
can
argued - though there seems no way to make any such a probability
argument at all tight, and it may be demonstrable that it cannot be made tight -
Page 17
that there is a non-negligible probability of an LN war before 2000.
If it is wrong that X should occur, then it is also wrong that
Cl.
be
But
highly
probably
that
should
it
X occur, and it is wrong to increase the probability
that X occur.
This is the first
several
of
connecting
doxastic
mapping
principles
moral
considerations against LN war into arguments against deterrence of LN war by the
perverse practice of preparing for it and thereby helping ""to
the sense of raising the probability).
(in
it
bring
about""
But like most principles in ethics,
Cl requires complication to avoid defeat by counterexamples.
The second part of
Cl encounters apparent trouble where clash of principles occurs.
Thus it may be
argued that it is permissible to increase the probability that X occurs to avoid
a
greater
Consider for example the pilot who increases the probability
evil.
that the passenger plane he is flying crashes in order to
aircraft
troubled
does
not
make
hit city apartment buildings
30
.
sure
Such a defeating
condition does not apply in the case of nuclear deterrence where
is
there
(though
of principles) wrongness of a practice is not offset or removed by
clash
a
the
that
its role in avoiding greater evil.
It can be argued that it is;
argument
from
the
previous
such is part of
success
of
the
deterrence.
point
of
the
popular
This inductive argument
deserves little more credence than the racing driver’s argument, perhaps from
similar
that because he hasn’t had a fatal crash yet (despite some
base,
time
a
close calls), he won’t.
There are, furthermore, reasons for concluding
continue
to
work.
of
will
not
One is the deterrence depends upon judgements regarding the
other side, which may be mistaken:
perception
deterrence
that
what
strategy
’each
is
is
at
rational"",
the
mercy
what
kind
the
of
of
other’s
damage
is
Page 18
one
""unacceptable"", how ""convincing""
Not
p.313).
threat
side’s
other’
the
(PL.
as
rational,
regards
limited
but there must be severe doubts as to whether rational principles
war,
As to the last consider, for example, the
are operating effectively.
idea
to
is there evidence that one side (the USA) has misjudged the
only
other side’s (the USSR’s) perception of what is
nuclear
is
(already
erroneous
to, as held in high places of power) that LN war can be
alluded
survived in rudimentary shelters, and also won.
Deterrence consists in preventing something (often some wrong) by
threats
including
31
OED) .
(cf.
fright
For most
people
without
not
Immoral
destruction of New York.)
deterrence,
that
is
his graphic descriptions
But though deterrence per
deterrence
from
suchmeans is of course not immoral.
publishing
in
them
LN
expense, trouble and wastage of preparing to
enormous
And deterrence by
engage in them.
was
the
all
or
scenarios
vivid
portraying the horror or LN wars would serve adequately to deter
wars,
fear
by
complete
se
is
the
of
(Schell
nuclear
permissible,
war
preparation of the object to be
prevented, is not, where this object Itself is not
permissible.
The
argument
for this is through the principle
C2.
If X is wrong then complete preparation of X is wrong.
Hence since LN wars are wrong and war-deterrence implies
of LN wars is wrong.
war—deterrence
X is just as bad as doing X:
Y.
preparation,
It is not being claimed that preparing for
Y and Z may both be wrong and Z (much) worse
than
, 32
What is wrong is by no means uniformly evil
Principle C2
principles:
a
part
is
way
succeeds
or
down
the
line
in
a
series
of
connecting
principle of the same sort that it higher in the series is that
connecting X with attempted X:
X
complete
not
33
.
But
if X is wrong then attempted X is wrong, whether
the
series
ends;
it cuts off well before mere
Page 19
intentionality, contrary to the claims
example,
it
does
various
of
religious
For
positions.
not follow that if X is wrong then the contemplation of X is
wrong or that mere non-action-oriented consideration of carrying out X is wrong.
The
applies
point
nightmares.
or
war,
equally
sexual fantasies, power fantasies, and nuclear
to
In particular there is nothing
reflecting
upon
it,
as we are:
wrong
nuclear
nuclear wars, even if their horrors
don't bear thinking on, are not unthinkable, and in
thinkable.
contemplating
with
some
senses
are
all
too
Indeed one of the reasons why the connecting principles hold is that
each involves decidedly increased probability of the evil
outcome
it
connects
Accompanying the increased probability are certain sets of reprehensible
with.
these are not those
attitudes tied to the action the evil outcome involves;
mere passive contemplation
of
34
this
War-deterrence involves not only war preparation, but announcement of
accompanied by threats and a threatening posture.
For some party, the potential
enemy, has to be frightened, if deterrence is to succeed.
This aspect of (war-)
deterrence yields a further connecting principle,
If X is wrong then threatening X is also wrong.
C3.
is
wrong
to do ...
then
the
declared
Intent
put
to
that
Intending to do wrong is wrong, and so also is
favourable
circumstances
for
one’s
alternatively be argued semantically:
(e.g.
into
Intending
position
committing
35
.
rape)
The
is
practice is also wrong.
to
prevail.
if a world with X
'What
Ramsey:
is wrong to threaten ...’ (quoted in Walzer p.272)
reason is that if putting something into practice
wrong
Thus too
is
do
wrong
The
never
unless
point
ideal
can
then
neither is a world in which X is only conditionally blocked, in which X may well
occur.
Page 20
By detachment from the connecting principles - one sound one would
but
logically,
defensible
three
ones is good measure - nuclear deterrence by
preparation for and threat of LN war is
This
wrong.
also
reveals
suffice
Deterrence
wrong.
of
this
type
the suggestion that the morality of the whole
why
deterrence thing depended on war itself never occurring was so bizarre:
connections between war and war-deterrence.
the
out
is
it left
War-deterrence should not
be practised any more than nuclear war itself should be engaged in - unless
directions can be drastically changed (e.g.
its
at least limited, per impossible in
the case of nuclear, to purely military targets).
There are other concomitant reasons for
the
Firstly,
with
dissatisfaction
deterrence.
it has provided (nuclear peace, as there is no shortage of
peace
small-scale conventional wars) is at least a tenuous peace, which is not stable,
liable
but
upset at any stage by a range of factors, including error (both
to
It does not offer genuine peace, of the sort required for
human and technical).
a
international life, but only a fragile ""peace of a sort"" (PL, p.316).
stable
Secondly, there is enormous cost, the
because
on
expenditure
it
moral
excludes
Bishops put their point in a surprising
opportunity
urgent
other
by
Marxist
cost
of
deterrence,
The US
moral priorities.
way:
in
terms
of
’the
between what is spent for destructive capacity and what is needed
contradiction
for constructive development’ (PL, p.316).
§6.
The
and
super-states;
arguments to
persuasive
prudential
practical,
the
the
resulting
arguments
(that
have
war
persuaded
justifiability of nuclear war preparation in
basic
argument
is
simply
an
elaboration,
build-up
nuclear
situation.
moral-fix
nuclear
of
immorality
to
argument
Not
preparation;
many
the
or
theorists)
present
of
the
only are there
there
to
are
the
circumstances.
also
moral
The
state-uplift, of that for the
Page 21
escalation of weapons at the local level, for acquiring a gun or for stocking-up
the
armoury [and every bit as doubtful as that argument].
neighbourhood
that nuclear preparation,
first
danger:
of
nuclear destruction.
blackmail,
’so we have
been
told,
against
guards
all atomic blackmail and foreign domination;
The two
together,
go
since
if
did
we
double
the
and second of
not
the
fear
we might adopt a policy of appeasement or surrender and so avoid the
destruction’ (Walzer, p.273).
In fact it is supposed to guard against more than
there is a crucial third element, namely, loss of basic rights (freedom,
these;
equality, etc.) and fundamental values (preservation of
etc.)
and
ways of life integrated with these.
truth,
dignity,
human
This further set of elements is
linked to the danger of foreign domination - which is really a separate
from
It is
risk
blackmail.
of
element
Though foreign domination need not imply the loss of
most basic values it does imply the loss of at least of one, self-determination,
freedom
to choose various national objectives;
conversely loss or infringement
of basic values can occur without foreign domination, e.g.
of
by
internal
change
government or governmental approach, by the increased security and control a
nuclear state demands, etc.
values,
through
Nuclear destruction can also involve loss of
destruction
but the converse does not hold.
basic
of the material base of the cherished life-style;
It should be observed that not all
the
values
concerned are equally fundamental:
one of the main values of deterrence theory,
the resistance to and
of
containment
""communism"",
is
questionable
this
in
regard.
The theme is, in short,
NA.
Because of multiple (connected)
states)
which
have
nuclear
dangers
from
another
state
(or
other
weapons, a state - any state that is too large to
rely upon other states - is obliged to invest in [matching] nuclear weapons.
Page 22
Hence, by detachment, a nation-state, such as USA, ought to
order
the
of
nuclear
armoury
that
it
something
have
in
has, or, weakening the theme to meet
objections concerning excess, ""overkill"", capacity, at least a solid core of the
nuclear
devices
it
has.
out whether the obligation is a moral one,
Sorting
because for instance of the character of the values supposedly being
merely
or
one
protected,
of prudential reason - it is presumably somewhat more than mere
expediency - can be set aside for the present.
On the
same
basis
it
can
be
argued that unilateral disarmament against a dangerous nuclear opponent would be
prudentially irrational.
It can be freely admitted that what is prudentially required is,
like
the
common strategies of the prisoners’ dilemma situation and of certain competitive
games, a suboptimal strategy;
sufficient
trust,
that a
superior
strategy
for
adversaries,
if
etc., could be achieved, would be a cooperative arrangement.
Joint agreement would be better not merely in removing the moral dilemma, but in
a
range of other respects:
it would be much less risky, expensive, draining of
resources and destructive of the environment, etc.
However for the present
and
the foreseeable future the prospects of cooperation appear, so we are repeatedly
told, unfortunately rather remote:
or
the only sure insurance is nuclear
if one is a smaller nation, a larger ally who has an arsenal.
force
(Here a level
of trust is called for which is far from foolproof, and which contrasts strongly
with
the
lack of trust displayed elsewhere.)
The nuclear theme for a middling
or lesser power is a bit different from NA and ends rather as follows:
MA.
Because ..., a state that cannot rely on
obliged
ally.
its
own
nuclear
resources
is
to accommodate the nuclear installations and facilities of a protecting
Page 23
Principle MA is not very plausible, nor are the
for
substitutes
obvious
Not only MA but also NA, is now coming under question by disarmament
it ° .
who
groups,
more
challenge
the
basic
assumptions
of
the
underlying
general
retaliatory model that
Safely lies in weapons, and
1)
More weapons imply more security
ii)
37
Certainly, for more isolated states, such as New Zealand,
lies
attack
submarines).
more
of
a
in
excluding
nuclear
facilities
from
safety
nuclear
(including visits from nuclear
Europeans are arguing in a similar way, that the present system is
risk
[liability] than a protection (p.251, Thompson);
nuclear installations, Europe cannot be the
envisaged
and without
for
theatre
a
limited
nuclear war it is now seen as by US (but not Soviet) strategists.
Once i) and ii) are questioned, other assumptions of the retaliatory
model
and its variants come up for examination, namely
iii)
iv)
Whether the proper response to danger is armament, in particular
Whether the proper response is through nuclear armament, as
opposed
to other military responses (such as conventional arms),
and generalising on part of Hi),
v)
Whether military approaches/procedures (through armaments, etc.)
the
proper
is
method, or should be the method, of conflict resolution
at the international level.
It is plausibly argued against military procedures that at no ordinary level
do
we set about meeting danger or settling disputes by acquiring lethal weapons and
threatening to use them - except perhaps
warranted,
frontier
ethics.
But
on
an
out-dated,
and
never
really
this takes us into the issue of alternative
defence systems, an important matter beginning to
obtain
the
contemporary
38
explanation it deserves, but one that already anticipates subsequent questioning
Page 24
While the state system is intact,
of the framework of nation-states.
not
and
exceptional
inevitable:
according
military
to
is
are
to
be expected and are likely
permanent place
in
the
procedures
’force has [a] ...
force
nation-state
system’
Ramsey (p.xv) who uses this as part of his case for a nuclear war
doctrine.
far
Assembling the arguments so
to as the nuclear fix:-
referred
hereafter
developed
engage
to
sections)
it
is
and
immoral,
in war-deterrence, for prudential reasons (as argued using NA
This dilemma is no idle construction
and MA).
dilemma,
deontic
States both ought not to engage in
war-deterrence, because (as argued in previous
ought
the
yields
(concocted
to
demonstrate
of paraconsistent logic), but a serious real-life dilemma, the outlines
virtues
of which are repeatedly encountered in texts on nuclear war and its aspects
The nuclear fix is in part simply a more intense
dilemma
beyond
produced
purely
by
itself^,
war
military
typically
transport,
(since
targets
rely
on
or
version
of
deontic
the
civilian ones).
e.g.
arrangements,
military
rail
The main dilemma arises from a
War is
required
for defence of the state and values it upholds (or pretends to uphold);
also involves immoral acts and evil consequences.
also
seen
be
’some
The doctrine
""just
of
justifications
of
war
evil
alm
are
consequences
to
morally
war’
(Walls, p.260).
dilemmas, e.g.
most
difficult
war""
the
aegis
War and preparedness for war also generate subsidiary
a severe tension between freedom and
problems
justified.
show that actions deemed normally
forbidden by moral mandates are now permissible when performed under
of
but war
as attempting a reconciliation by trying to show that under
certain circumstances these really
Thus
39
at least war which spreads inevitably
combination of the retaliatory model with the features of war.
can
the
of
war
Involves
authority:
defending
a
’one
of
the
free society without
Page 25
destroying the values that give it meaning and validity’ (PL, p.324).
The essential feature of a moral dilemma is that both A and the negation of
A
are
well
essential role of moral dilemmas is not widely or
literature
41
The place and
(or differently, obligatory), for some suitable A.
wrong
.
positions
Moreover
understood
utilitarianism
like
cannot
ethical
in
at all easily
accommodate moral dilemmas or the data which gives rise to them - but then
such
positions do not really offer reportive accounts of wrong and obligation anyway.
Contrary to utilitarian perceptions a dilemma
does
not
any
have
necessarily
moral solution, though there may be better and worse ways out.
Reactions and responses that are characteristic of
the
from
nuclear
moral
dilemmas
There is an unsteadiness, an uncertainty as to what to
fix.
do, which way to proceed, which principles in watered-down form to
temporary
Thus,
crutch.
for
world’
best""
42
as
a
of
way
""morally
never
our
exercising
moral
, that is in a morally-strapped world.
ethical
Bishops who
the
of
’strictly
conditional’
moral fix.
Deterrence has a strictly temporary role
but
can
be
responsibility
a
shift
""morally
in a fallen
to
a
’moral
""second
acceptability’
try to escape ’the paradox of deterrence’, i.e.
while
acceptability,
good"",
A similar
deterrence
we
as
(as from good to acceptable) is made by the US Catholic
functor
speak
grasp
example, the Bishop of London contends that the
possession of nuclear weapons ’while
acceptable""
emerge
the
object
must
and
strictly
be to move beyond deterrence,
of
from the
conditional
’towards a
world free of the threat of deterrence’ (PL, p.317), out of the nuclear fix.
To make matters worse the nuclear fix
is
is,
not
furthermore,
a
fix
of
(more
something they happened into, by
affluent)
states’
accident.
The initial nuclear involvement was deliberately chosen, primarily by
USA,
and
the
own
making.
It
escalation has by and large also been deliberately chosen, again
Page 26
In these respects the situation is like that
often by the USA.
who
person
deliberately lets perself to be involved in two incompatible relations, and
that
currency,
of
adoption
nuclear
is
the
that
nuclear
build-up.
The recent (1980)
programme is to be in addition to existing
are
(which
Soviet
USA Initiated nuclear armament, and has frequently led
escalation, and apparently still does.
resources
some
weaponry, and nuclear build-up, in North
America occurred on a defensive basis in response to
fact
with
It is a myth, though one
builds up conflicting obligations thereby.
The
the
of
generally
United
strategic
be already in excess of
to
agreed
States’
Russia’s, and which always have been so) (Thompson, p.21).
The present dilemma is then a direct outcome
advanced
of
state
policy,
especially
by
capitalist nations, and not merely a response to the Soviets (or state
socialism).
There is a two-way connection between world political arrangements
and
nation-states
the
nuclear
fix.
On
the
one
hand,
situation
increasingly
is
political arrangements
/ Q
;
seen
political
these
arrangements are an evident source of the dilemma with the result
through
that
nuclear
as indicating the inadequacy of present world
on the other, the nuclear fix tends to lock political
arrangements into the statist form (into statist arrangements of an increasingly
centralist cast).
peace
The espoused purpose of nuclear weapons may be
to
keep
the
(!) and to defend national interests, but there are other reasons such as
perpetuating the system of sovereign states and politically
confrontation.
The
argument
to
the
theme
that
advantageous
the very nuclear situation
arising from the statist arrangements and interrelationals (economic
conflicting
rivalries,
ideologies, etc.) tends to, and is used to, lock the world into the
present arrangements of sovereign states and zones of interest, is
practical
state
one.
Consider
first,
the
matter
from
a
piecemeal
the Soviet side where the
Page 27
pattern of national control and military economic reorientation is clearer.
The threat from the West, whether it exists
or
not
(and
in
Soviet
perception it certainly does), has become a necessary legitimation for
the power of the ruling elites, an excuse for their many economic
and
social failures, and an argument to isolate and silence critics within
their own borders.
In the West we have
controlled
carefully
...
and
...
selective
release of ’official information’ (Thompson, p.20).
Secondly, there is evidence of entrenchment of the arrangements,
by
the
SALT negotiations:
of
rules
not
regarded
as
threatening
US
in
place
by
The Soviet
invasion
interests"", and so the US is not
""vital
What was different, what
particularly worried about Afghanistan and its people.
it
held
penalty for breaking the rules is the threat of annihilation).
(the
Thirdly, there are cases, such as the Afghanistan example.
is
shown
there are fixed superpowers and a (growing) nuclear
club of nations all governed by a negotiated set
deterrence
as
was worried about and made nuclear threats concerning, were adjacent Western
these lay within the US zone of interest.
oil supplies:
44
and complicates other dilemmas
The nuclear fix enhances
contemporary
sovereign
state, in particular the deep tensions between national
security and the operation of liberal-democratic arrangements (e.g.
liberty,
popular
control of institutions, etc).
personal subsidiary dilemmas, as for example the
obligations
to
a
nuclear
conflicting obligations
the
by
induced
as
state,
a
or
doctor
It also spotlights other more
extent
role-induced
or
a
individual
nuclear
of
(political)
one’s
dilemmas
armaments
such
as
one’s
processor
or
researcher (the question of political obligations is considered in Appendix 2).
§7.
Ways out of the moral dilemmas:
[initial]
political
fall-out
from
the
Page 28
conclusions.
ethical
all the ways are ways of limitation, and they
Virtually
all Involve in one way or another limitations on nuclear arms or
are
limitations on the powers of states.
and
deployed
the
they
way
The limitations may be
45
reached by agreement and negotiation and more or less voluntarily
agreed
,
to
or they may be imposed, or worst of all, they may emerge from an initial war.
As with other fixes produced by
are
there
suggested
structure
there
and
relations
power
and
extra—state
approaches.
""realistic"",
attempts
All
to
cow,
as unilateral disarmament.
is
it
states
the
or
alter
the
remove them altogether,
allegedly
familiar,
the
seriously
do
which
and
""practical""
nuclear problem - e.g.
disarmament by
they do not tamper with that
- are inter-state;
But in fact there is nothing very sacred
not
even
a
very
long-standing
arrangement, nor, as a matter or empirical fact, is
one.
states,
of
and the same goes for less ""realistic"" proposals, such
the state;
nation-state;
arrangements
which
ways
are
of
resolve
neutral arms limitations, etc.
sacred
structural
out which do not interfere with these arrangements,
ways
inter-state approaches,
the
it
form
about
the
political
of
particularly
a
stable
We are certainly free - in more liberal states, it should be everywhere -
to theorise as to its demise and replacement by alternative arrangements.
Extra-state approaches take one of two
routes,
the
way
up,
to
genuine
46
power, or the way down, through fractionation or deunionisation
international
of states.
not
to
The ways up and down are by no means one and the same;
necessarily
world
government
Were
law-courts.
remedy, namely
intra-state
incompatible.
the
through
to
Some of the important machinery, for the way up
operate,
courts
legal
but they are
is
assigned
action,
already
there
sufficient
that
medieval
the
international
authority
and power, the
in
theorists
saw
to
all
disputes could be extended to interstate disputes, and the just war
Page 29
between states S and T superseded by the just case of S versus T.
one
statist,
more
legalistic
of trying to get to grips with the nuclear
way
problem, and accordingly is often mentioned, though
dismissed
47
in
,
orthodox
The Way Up is
mostly
passing
in
strategic texts on thermonuclear war.
It is however
beginning to be much more sympathetically considered by those who take
rather than strategic viewpoint.
moral
a
There is a renewed emphasis on world order, in
reaching ’towards a morally integrated international system’;
element
be
to
and ’the
missing
of world order today is the absence of a properly constituted political
The Way Down - though, like The Way
authority’ (PL, p.320).
by
Up,
no
means
new, turning back to the anarchist positions of a century ago - is, by contrast,
scarcely mentioned in the orthodox discussions, but is making an
appearance
(a
which
is
comeback) in some more radical discussions.
A main argument for The Way Up is
to
supposed
underpin
statist
just
arrangements
a
repetition
in
first
the
argument from (generous) variations upon the Prisoners’
that
of
place, namely the
Dilemma,
the
as
such
Tragedy of the Commons, that authority and coercion - in the form of the state are requiried to ensure best solutions,
ecological order.
especially
regards
of
part
the
sort of super-state.
of
the
""tragedy""
is
destruction
when
to
assume
in
fact
assumptions
48
of
a
commons by nuclear war, the solution is now said to be some
Of course, this begins to undermine an earlier application
argument,
since
states
will
lose
their sovereignty, and
political obligation to states will be correspondingly weakened.
is
and
order
So with the ""tragedy of nation-states"", where the players are
not herdsmen but nation-states, and one of the prospects
good
public
But
all
this
that these ""tragedy"" arguments are good ones in the first place,
they
are
not
but
are
only
sound
under
quite
restrictive
Page 30
There are many problems with the Way Up, both theoretical and
practical.An
theoretical hitch is that the Way Up merely repeats statist arrangments
initial
at a level up, by way
contingency,
of
super-state
It
arrangements.
only
is
through
a
of there being no rival Intelligent civilisations nearby, that the
problems of interstate relations
not
are
repeated
level
a
The
up.
major
practical hitch is that there is no prospect at all of getting such a ""solution""
to work in time to serve its intended
interstate
future
the
For
purpose.
ideological differences, including especially differences as
to how political arrangements should be effected, exclude
world
operative
hostilities.
government
of
prospect
any
an
or world legal system capable of resolving nuclear
In some ways, perhaps, this is just
World
well.
as
government
be extremely monolithic, would entrench bureaucracy with all its damaging
would
features, and could easily tend to totalitarianism.
on
nuclear
foreseeable
the
It would
impose
certainly
an exploitative economic system which would do immense damage to
world
many remaining natural systems.
The Way Up thus presupposes an unlikely,
undesirable,
level
ideological,
indeed
requisite
unity
of
political
paradigmatic,
cannot
be
and
and
expected
unity
economic
separation
with
some
in
of
nuclear
main
crucial
respects,
Moreover,
given the
Northern
cultures,
deadlines.
When not even
nuclear weapons limitations can be worked out how much less likely
much
more
sweeping
sovereignty, could
be
agreements,
negotiated?
Involving
genuine
There
an
is
is
limitations
almost
endless
that
it
of
state
series
of
blockages and deadlocks in the way of such state reconciliation.
The nuclear fix emerging from nation-state arrangements - combined with the
apparent
impotence
of
interstate relations to alleviate the situation, indeed
with the ability only to push the world further into the situation and nearer to
Page 31
nuclear
now
is
-
""brink""
taken
to
indicate (from yet a further angle) the
inadequacy of nation-state political arrangements, and has given new impetus
resolutions.
extra-state
other
of
consideration
to
The thesis that the nuclear
problem indicates the radical unsatisfactoriness of national sovereignty and the
present
system
namely in Schell.
’full-scale
nation states has even reached the best-seller book stands,
of
According to Schell the nuclear situation should
they operate' ...
which
himself
avoids
these
reality
and in ’workfing] out the practical steps by which
'awesome
(III,
p.92).
Schell
However
urgent tasks, which, imposed on us by history,
constitute the political work of our age’^9,
history
consonant with the global
can reorganise its political life’
mankind ...
a
of the foundations of political thought’ required to
reexamination
make ’the world’s political institutions ...
in
to
lead
So, not feeling the
pressures
of
overimpressed by the realities of (unstable) nation-states, do most
or
political theorists.
But, having rashly ventured this far, we can hardly
avoid
some of these tasks.
The central argument arising from the nuclear fix, for questioning
political
arrangements
and
seriously
current
considering changing them (in theory at
least), takes the following shape:-
H1.
Political arrangements should answer back to certain requirements and
justified
in
terms
of
doing
so.
are
These requirements include such things as
enabling good and meaningful lives for those who operate under the arrangements,
at least where (as certainly in the West) the basic material conditions for such
lives are met.
H2.
these
Because of the nuclear fix, nation-state arrangements have ceased to
requirements.
For
guarantee the prospect of
arrangements.
nation-states,
good
and
at
meaningful
meet
least in the North can no longer
lives
to
those
under
their
A life's meaningfulness is certainly diminished if it ends before
Page 32
its prime in a nuclear disaster;
yet there is a non-negligible probability that
many such lives may terminate, less than fulfilled, in this way.
Therefore,
Nation-state arrangements have forfeited their justification,
H3.
should
and
be changed.
There is enough evidence that power brokers who control states,
both
more
powerful states and lesser states (sometimes with some claim to popular mandate,
often without), have lost sight of - or worse don’t care about -
the
point
of
political arrangments, of what justifies or is supposed to justify their states.
The situation has been reached where ’nuclear powers, or
higher
value
This is already illustrated
by
states in nonnuclear military situations:
have
much
forfeited
of
what
claim
Vietnam
Israel,
many
and
the principles of just warfare
have been blatantly violated repeatedly, as have many
states
put
statesmen,
on national sovereignty than they do on human survival’ (Schell’s
conclusion, p.76).
other
their
they
Such
principles.
other
had to external respect or
internal political obedience.
It could just be, of course, that there are no alternatives, or no possibly
better
But
alternatives.
alternatives there are, as we have seen, though but
little work has been expended on working out the range of alternatives or
features (except perhaps for the option of world government).
As to whether all
such alternatives can be dismissed, for instance as lacking feasibility,
difficult
to
be all sure without being dogmatic:
operate,
once
adjusted,
very
far
on
organising
is
humans,
for
under substantially different arrangments.
But, once again, nuclear deadlines do not appear
proceed
it
alternatives have been given
very little opportunity to work, and we know very little about how
instance,
their
to
give
sufficient
time
to
and trying out alternative arrangments, even
those of the more accessible Way Down.
Thus alternative
political
and
social
Page 33
while theoretically feasible and certainly a longer-term goal, do
arrangements,
not presently offer a satisfactory practical response to the nuclear fix.
There is no need to insist upon a
dilemma
to
single-track
the
of
out
nuclear
We can not only
quite the contrary.
exclusion of all others:
the
way
afford to be fairly catholic about ""second best"" approaches pursued and
whatever
to be working or looks like helping, within reorganised ethical
seems
Indeed,
(and other) constraints:
situation,
methods,
should
we
as
such
urgency,
the
the
of
direness
the
and
nondemocratlc
very
(and
down
certainly
negotiations on arms limitations between main nuclear states.
The direction of most hope
is
given
be fairly catholic and not inflexibly commited to narrow
bogged
unrepresentative)
direction
embrace
for
especially new.
not
has
progress
however
come
into
view;
the
The political means of the Way Out are what
they have been on almost every larger liberal or
that
issue
humanitarian
has
from outside state governmental apparatus by organised pressure from
mattered;
within or without upon it, characteristically Bottom-Up
Such
Top-Down.
familiar
and
practically
never
considerations are but part of the more general, and
very effective, case against reliance upon states for a range of things they are
now
supposed
required,
to
more
supply,
effectively
but
can almost Invariably be obtained, where
which
and
less
expensively
without
(and
them
their
monopolies).
In the case of security it is states, with very few exceptions,
that
have
imposed, or acquiesed in, military solutions involving nuclear installations and
The
nuclear weapons.
frequently
from
across nations.
installations
opposition
local
and
the
to
neighbourhood
These groups have been
and
establishing,
for
escalating
groups,
successful
the
time
nuclear
fix
has
come
some of them now federated
in
blocking
being,
some
some
nuclear
nuclear-free
Page 34
The patchwork grass-roots movement against nuclear is strongest
neighbourhoods.
in
which
Europe,
- as the movement realised, and what gave it impetus - a
is
leading theatre, on US
American
touching
thinking,
strategic
American nuclear installations in Europe will make it a
contrary
it
probable
seems
nuclear
limited
a
war
that
Europe
safer
much
become
will
place:
safer
on
the
if
the
anti-nuclear movements succeed in having these installations removed and
rendered nuclear-free.
not
is extremely doubtful that increasing NATO and
It
shores.
for
Europe
The chances of grossly immoral conduct will thereby also
be considerably reduced.
What the movements must press for is accordingly clear
it
is
in
broad
outline:
what they have been pushing for, nuclear reduction and disarmament.
But
the argument also makes it clearer how far this should go, namely all the way to
nuclear
unilateral
disarmament
if
necessary,
certainly to local disarmament
across progressively larger parts of the planet’s surface.
is
its
demoted,
importance
and
the
necessity
of
For once
the
state
its maintenance properly
downgraded and reliance on its decision-making diminished in favour of localised
decision-making
(say)
-
once
all
that
happens or is allowed for, one major
component in the nuclear fix is removed, namely the worry about
sovereignty.
the
of
that
sovereignty
has
of
been assigned a mistaken
weakest links in the moral fix structure.
In the weigh-up that should
occur in charting a way out of moral dilemma, much more Important elements
features
state
The state, and accompanying features such as misplaced nationalism,
importance.
are
Maintenance
loss
than
the state are those things the state is supposed to safeguard such
of
as individual and local welfare and autonomy, but they are better ensured by the
removal
of
nuclear
weapons.
The
nuclear circumstances threaten the loss of basic values,
autonomy,
for
in particular,
main reasons are familiar;
such
as
welfare
and
many creatures and regions, and the potential loss is in general
Page 35
much greater than in a nuclear-free situation (even should
party
remain
armed
with nuclear weapons).
for example, the production
(because
of
nuclear
another
ideological
There are also subsidiary reasons;
weapons
reduces
local
both
welfare
of the opportunity costs of weapons manufacture) and autonomy (because
of the accompanying security measures).
Thus the nuclear fix is resolved, theoretically at
loss
of the state.
any
rate,
by
risking
But, although that is the best way out at least cost in the
circumstances, it will be strongly resisted in practice, since
those
who
hold
power hold it, in one way or another, under the auspices of state.
FOOTNOTES
1.
The US Catholic Bishops make the point forcefully:
’Nuclear weapons
...
and nuclear warfare ... are new moral issues ... There exists a capacity
to do something no other age could imagine: we can threaten the
created
order ...
We could destroy [God’s] work’ (PL, p.312). While the analysis
offered in what follows has a great deal in common with the
Bishop’s
position, it differs significantly in removing the religious backdrop and
associated features and, it is hoped, in bringing out the logical structure
of the argument more clearly and sharply (the paper was Initially drafted
independently of PL).
To illustrate the differences that emerge with
removal of the religious backdrop and its acoutrements, consider two
examples from PL, p.323:- Firstly, peace is possible without religious
enlightenment if it is possible with it: religious enlightenment is not an
essential condition as there implied. Secondly, violence does not take all
the forms the Bishops try to give it, e.g. sexual discrimination is hardly
a form of violence, pornography can operate without it, etc.
It is a
serious mistake to try to heap so many diverse and independent issues
together under the one head (forms of violence) as if they stood and fell
together, e.g. abortion and nuclear war.
2.
Another dimension of variation concerns the sequence of the war, especially
the type of strike involved. Though the sequence is important for the moral
assessment, for example of the main actors, it is in no way alters the
immorality of LN wars, as will emerge.
3.
’The overwhelming probability [is] that a nuclear exchange would have no
limits’,
(PL, p.314). Hence a major argument against limited nuclear wars:
that any such war risks, indeed renders highly probable, an unlimited war,
and risk is far too large to take.
The point in fact follows by
straightforward application of decision theory, multiplying the massive
undesirability (moral and otherwise) of an LN war by its probability given a
Page 36
limited nuclear war. Given the character of weapons development and present
communication arrangements, the idea of a purely nuclear exchange between
the superpowers, perhaps in the European ""theatre"", is really a myth.
But
limited wars are not the present focus.
4.
There was a substantial element of sport (and connected features of prowess)
in traditional wars that has been eroded in modern technological wars.
Nuclear wars are not just unsporting, in that no notice is given, etc. They
are unjust in a much deeper way.
5.
There are interesting sidelights concerning even the etymology of the term
’war’, which was derived from a term meaning ’confusion’. In particular,
’it is a curious fact that no Germanic nation in early historic times had in
living use any world properly meaning ’war’’.
(OED)
6.
But of course there can be something quite analogous to war between clans,
multinational firms, even nature, etc.
(To this extent, a strict definition
of ’war’ is being insisted upon.) So the diffusion of power structures has
to extend beyond just the break-down of states.
7.
Thus the ubiquitous war against Nature of modern times, which features just
as large in marxists as in capitalists. As could have been guessed, someone
- it was James - suggested chanelling all war into ""war"" in the metaphorical
sense against that unarmed and nonaggressive ""opponent"", Nature. James
proposed as a substitute for war proper, conscription of the youth for a war
against Nature (see Wasserstrom, p.12). What it boiled down to, however,
was that youth was to be channelled into all the dirty work, in that way to
acquire manly virtues military activities ""rightly"" instil, especially
discipline, but also service, devotion, physical fitness, constructive
exertion, responsibility, and order. Another less diabolical substitute for
wars proper is through war games and other games of competitive cast. Again
specious arguments enter for bringing out the ""best"" in human males.
8.
War can be seen as a structural problem of state arrangments, to be removed
along with these (otherwise defective) arrangements.
Wars arise from
political organisation of states - a situational fix.
9.
Thus Aquinas and Grotius for example (see Barnes, p.776, top). The argument
presupposes rather a lot, Including a neat public/private distinction. Put
Aquinas’s way, it looks as if it could be readily transferred into an
argument for international government, or at least effective law-courts.
Yet all Christendom was supposed at that time to be one state!
10.
There is however the degenerate idea of war as annihilation or extinction,
and of winning a nuclear war as annihilation of the enemy while not being
entirely annihilated oneself: the side that somehow ""survives"" is said to
""win"".
But this is an extremely tenuous sense of winning. Moreover any
such war is radically unjust, because of violation of the traditional
requirement of proportionality, and for other reasons developed in the text.
Recent talk about winning or even surviving a nuclear war must
reflect a failure to appreciate a medical reality: Any nuclear
war would inevitably cause death, disease and suffering of
pandemonic proportions and without the possibility of effective
medical intervention ... (PL, p.313).
Page 37
Unfortunately as documented in Scheer, significant officials who are
responsible for the nuclear destiny of the U.S.A. - and so of the world think that the devastation of nuclear war can be survived and that a global
nuclear war can actually be won!
11.
In practice they often were not, they drained limited economies, they layed
waste countryside (though to a minor extent by nuclear or chemical or modern
mining standards), impoverishing Inhabitants, etc.
12.
For as Nagel contents (early on), there are moral restrictions on the
conduct of warfare which are not legalistic only and which are neither
arbitrary not merely conventional nor a matter of usefulness. These themes
run entirely counter to the classic theory of war of Clausowicz - a theory
outlined in Walzer.
13.
As Nagel remarks.
14.
The progressive escalation argument is an incremental
Sorites. This is part of the so-called ""logic of war"".
15.
As Walzer argues, p.24.
16.
The severe limitations of those
also come from the failure
person from inside the homeland
which excessive applications of
17.
Thus the differences between Nagel on the one side, and Brandt and
the other, in Cohen et al.
18.
The pattern of moral argument has much in common with procedure in anarchist
political discussion.
19.
There are other arguments against two (or
Routley and Plumwood.
20.
For details see Routley and Plumwood.
21.
According to the doctrine, which is one concerning responsibility, we are
responsible
only
for
the intended effects or consequences of our
freely-chosen actions, and not for other (side) effects or consequences,
even
if
these are forseen and/or intimately tied to the intended
consequences. The doctrine is pernicious allowing those who adjust their
intention
suitably to escape responsibility for evil they knowingly
perpetrate. Thus, for instance, a Russian supreme command which intended
only to take out US military targets would, under double effects,
effects have no
responsibility for the resultant effect on American and Canadian cities!
22.
Despite Nagel’s suggestion (pp.158).
23.
Of course there are counterarguments too, and not merely from military in
the case of small numbers of obstructive noncombatants. One is a variation
of the Bald Man:
there is no clear line between
combatants
and
noncombatants.
However as Nagel argues (p.20) there are distinctions
between them, firstly in terms of their roles, e.g. in carrying or using
argument
like
the
lesser virtues, nationalism and patriotimsm,
of replacement - try for example swapping a
by one from outside as regards treatment patriotism can engender.
multiple)
morality
Hare
lines:
on
see
Page 38
arms or directing those who do, and secondly in terms of their harmfulness,
the threat they offer. See also PL, p.312, where a simple and effective
paradigm case argument is applied.
24.
The principle can be argued to in various ways.
One (not entirely
conclusive) way is Nagel’s way, from the requirements of directness and
relevance in combat, the underlying principle being that, ’whatever one does
to another person intentionally must be aimed at him as a subject, with the
intention that he receive it as a subject’. (p.15)
25.
The situation with limited nuclear wars where the targets are essentially
military ones, and noncombatants are unaccountably killed ""indirectly' is
different. Such wars are not however excused by the pernicious doctrine of
double effect.
For such wars remain unjust on several counts, e.g. they
inflict disproportionate damage, e.g. on life systems. As Zuckermann says,
’It is still inevitable that were military installations rather than cities
to become the objectives of nuclear attack, millions, even tens of millions
of civilians would be killed ...’ (quoted in Thompson and Smith, p.14 where
the Italics are added).
26.
Throughout the OED equations,reflecting common usage, of just with
right or correct, and unjust with morally wrong, are adopted.
27.
These alternatives are not as far removed practically as may appear.
For
the aim of just war theory is not ’to legitimize war but to prevent it.
The
presumption is against the use of force’ (PL, p.312).
And most types
of
wars are ruled out by the theory.
However not all wars or violent
revolutions are excluded, and that is enough to guarantee the distinction
between the alternatives.
In particular, defensive wars are allowed - at
least for the defending side, though from a wider viewpoint these too may be
condemned - ’the classic case [of the just war] ... was the use of lethal
force to prevent aggression against innocent victims’
(PL,
p.311).
Under
Twentieth Century international law defence, narrowly construed, is the only
legitimate basis for war; Roman law was only slightly more generous, in
allowing for the restitution of goods (see Barnes, p.780).
28.
An argument of this sort is developed in more detail, though not in complete
generality, in Goodin.
29.
As to the first point, there is not only overkill capacity and the drive for
superiority (often represented via ""negotiating"" strength) but the matter of
counterforce weapons which are offensive weapons.
As regards the second
point, US policy has been decidedly expansionist with regular intervention
in other nations; there have been repeated US threats to use nuclear
weapons, especially to deal with revolutionary activities in the third
world, but also in Europe in ""limited"" nuclear war;
and in official
military strategy no sharpline has been drawn between conventional and
nuclear weapons: on these and other related points see further Lackey 82,
p.l91ff., and also Thompson and Smith.
30.
The example was supplied by D.
31.
Deterrence also commonly includes elements of
mendacity,
deception,
misinformation.
There is a grain of truth in the claim that ’deterrence is
primarily about what the other side thinks, not what we think’
(Pym quoted
morally
Johnson.
Page 39
in Thompson, p.19).
simply
32.
Nor are degrees of wrongness required:
ordered as regards worseness.
33.
Can this be done semantically in terms of closeness/worseness
The attempted X world is close to the X world?
34.
There is a need for further clarification here.
Passive spectatorship of
evil events where one is in a position to make a difference is quite another
thing, from contemplation of other worlds where evil occurs.
35.
It is this principle especially that forces Ramsey, a Protestant theologian
who is a nuclear hawk, into the tight position he ends in, which as Walzer
explains, really leaves no room to move. For in virtue of C3 it must be
allowed that the threatened wars are permissible to carry out. Ramsey tries
to limit these to military exchanges. But to be effective as a deterrent,
the exchange permitted must both threaten and also, in view of C3, not
threaten nonmilitary targets, collateral non-combatant populations.
It
appears that Ramsey’s position, if worked out, would be inconsistent.
wrongs
can
be
partially
of
worlds?
Principle C3 is also invoked by the US Catholic Bishops:
see PL, p.316.
They put the point both in terms of threat and of declared intent to use
nuclear weapons, which they pronounce morally wrong.
36.
As is widely known, inadmissible considerations of expediency frequently
enter into reasons why states allow foreign nuclear facilities upon their
territories, e.g. economic considerations such as trade or local revenue
and jobs.
37.
Cf.
38.
It was considered long ago in China by the
alternative systems, see especially Sharp.
39.
Thus Green, along with many others, ’find[s] nuclear deterrence ...
the
best of practical policies available to us now ... given the realities of
world politics’ but ’still demurfs] because of moral qualms’ (p.xil). Green
also represents both Morgenthau and Halle as having ’rather agonisingly
presented a ... case for a deterrence strategy, even while asserting that
the strategy is morally indefensible according to the traditional ethical
codes’ (p.252). Walzer ends in a similar dilemma (he is committed to a
stronger and less qualified form of it than he sets down):
’... though it
[deterrence] is a bad way, there may well be no other that is practical in a
world of sovereign and suspicious states’ (p.274) (an indictment of the
state system that Walzer does not pursue).
the last article in Thompson.
Mohists.
For
contemporary
Similarly the Catholic Bishops present the situation in terms of a moral
dilemma:
they speak of ’the political paradox of deterrence ... the
dilemma of how to prevent the use of nuclear weapons ... (PL, p.313).
40.
Situations in war are also a major source of moral dilemmas.
See Routley
and Plumwood where several examples are given. A general logical account of
and theory of moral dilemmas is elaborated therein.
Page 40
41.
There are exceptions of course, e.g. Sartre; and Nagel’s final example is
very instructive.
For a full theory of moral dilemmas see however Routley
and Plumwood.
42.
Reported in The Economist; reprinted in The
1983, Weekend Magazine p.2.
43.
This is no longer a radical theme but is widely promulgated.
The source of
the nuclear problem comes from state arrangements: it is ’... a world of
sovereign states ... which brought the world to the present dangerous
situation’.
(PL, p.313)
44.
It is not alone responsible for these other dilemmas.
Large-scale nuclear
power and other types of warfare and security arrangements also contribute.
45.
In principle it would be relatively easy for states to agree to settlement
of their disputes by less damaging and expensive contests than military
ones, e.g. by contests of selected representatives, and not just through
fighting in some form but by contests of footballers, singers, dancers,
lawyers, or etc. In practice, however, such more civilized alternatives are
never considered. Animals, by contrast, are smart enough to settle disputes
by means much more like these.
46.
Americans, for example, tend to forget that their State (like USSR) is a
union, of fairly recent origin; and that a State of the Union message could
consider the dissolution of the union.
47.
Thus for example, Kahn, where such a ""solution"" is quickly dismissed as,
impractical,
etc.
Hardly necessary to say the Way Up has won most favour
with the legal fraternity, and from more authoritarian organisations.
48.
See further Routley and
especially Griffin.
49.
Schell does not make it clear whether he is thinking of the Way Up or the
Way Down, but some of the names he drops suggest the Way Up. So can some of
what he says, e.g.
’Thus the peril of extinction is the price that the
world pays not for ""safety"" or ""survival"" but for its [sic!] insistence on
continuing to divide Itself up into sovereign nations’ (p.76, III), as if
the natural or original state were an undivided one?
Routley
and
Australian,
material
referred
February
to
12-
therein,
13
and
Page 41
APPENDIX 1; Remarks on J. Schell’s THE FATE OF THE EARTH.
Schell’s book is an important and influential document, which is
significant
having
a
and
urgently
needed effect in shifting attitudes towards nuclear.
It is especially
valuable
for
aftermath
example
defects.
is
Some
exhibits,
also
it
just
nothing else that we undertake together can make any
sense
...’
the
of
both
for
rubbish,
a world-wide program of action for preserving the [human]
’without ...
species ...
moral
scenarios
horrifying
Unfortunately
severe
philosophically and factually,
and
vivid
attack.
nuclear
of
its
(p.104,
Humans
rearranged).
however like rabbits in
are
Australia, virtually beyond human power to extirpate.
or
practical
The claim presupposes two
of the major defective assumptions of the book:
51.
That nuclear war will eliminate life, human life, at least, on earth
total extermination assumption);
(the
and
52.
That very many notions, not only those of morality and value, but those of
time
and
space,
make
no sense in the absence of humans, or, to put it into a
more sympathetic philosophical form, in the absence of an actual
context
human
(the anthropocentric assumption).
The frequent applications of S2, which
philosophical
depth
and
induce
give
the
book
some
of
its
apparent
suitable puzzlement through their paradoxical
without total extermination
aspects, depend essentially on SI;
there
will
be
humans, about to make past and future, good and evil, go on making sense!
Now although the factual assumption SI is
possibility,
unlikely.
example,
it
appears
in
Schell’s argument
on
an
unjustified
no
means
ruled
out
as
a
light of present (inadequate) knowledge most
the
to
by
SI
is
extremely
extrapolation
from
Hemisphere, but for the most part it does that very
flimsy.
It
depends,
for
the Northern to the Southern
North
American
thing,
of
Page 42
the
contracting
North
to
world
(All that matters, all worthwhile
America.
civilization, is in USA, or at least, to be more charitable,
and
Europe,
also be wiped out, i.e.
will
which
eliminated in the nuclear holocaust).
the
example
out of date.
America
North
its human population will be
Some of the data Schell relies upon,
for
of nuclear explosions on the ozone layer, is significantly
Other effects than ozone destruction transfer even less well
South.
to
North
effect
in
from
A factually superior study of nuclear disaster that Schell’s,
Preddy and others, indicates that parts of the Southern Hemisphere, New
Zealand
and Southern Africa and America could escape relatively unscathed even from most
massive northern exchanges.
The penetration of human chauvinism as in S2 is not something
Schell
but
product
a
is
of
truths
necessary
mathematics
of
and
in Wittgenstein ’s philosophy, where even the
are a product of human conventions and would
In Schell human chauvinism is dished up in a particularly
vanish with humans!).
powerful
obnoxious
Kantian
Thoughts
form.
tenses, values and morality, all depend in the
and
propositions, time and
presence
life-giving
of
human
- past or future or merely potential humans are not enough, persons that
beings
are not humans are certainly not enough.
’...
e.g.):
Thus according to
(II,
Schell
p.74,
the thought ""Humanity is not extinct"" is an impossible one for a
rational person, because as soon as it is, we are not.
In imagining
any
other
we look ahead to a moment that is still within the stream of human time,
event,
...’.
right
to
philosophy especially, which is still
European
unfortunately alive and well (e.g.
peculiar
The thought is however perfectly possible for humans;
now.
Though
we
(p.74)l.
’...
outside
can
have
it
no doubt have it falsely a later rational creature may
well be able to have it truly.
""later""
we
the
Schell erroneously denies
human
tenses
of
past,
that:
there
is
no
present, and future ...’
Human extinction eliminates ’the creature that divides time into past,
Page 43
present
future’:
and
so annihilation cannot ’come to pass’ (p.77).
simply false that the tenses are human:
the
tenses
depend
on
But it is
time
local
a
(perceptible to many creatures other than humans, but not depending at
ordering
all on perceptibility for its viability) relating other times to the present, to
now
(also
a
human-independent location, evident to other creatures, and borne
witness to by such sequences as the passing seasons).
too
easily
come
And annihilation may also
to pass, for many humans in the North at least, as it came to
pass in recent geological times that humans began to exist upon
that there was a time before there were any human beings.
earth.
Before
Here as elsewhere the
human chauvinism is mixed with other distorting metaphysical assumptions of
Western
our
heritage, verlficationism and Implicit ontic assumptions (to the effect
that there are severe difficulties in talking about what does not exist).
Thus,
for example, Schell takes over dubious metaphysics from Freud, according to whom
""it is indeed impossible to imagine our own death;
do
so,
we
(p.77/4?).
In
can
perceive
that
we
are
in
attempt
and whenever we
fact still present as spectators""
The second clause goes a good distance towards refuting
first.
the
fact there is no great problem in describing counterfactual situations which
undermine both Freud’s claims.
chauvinism
into
one
of
The same goes for Schell’s extensions
human
of
its main traditional strongholds, value theory:
the simple and basic fact [sic!] that before there can be good or evil,
or
to
service
harm, lamenting or rejoicing there must be life’, human life (p.103).
are no facts, but entrenched philosophical assumptions which have
been
’...
These
exposed
2
and criticised elsewhere .
Another obnoxious theme, which Schell repeatedly infiltrates, is
the
Pogo
theme, which
S3.
Distributes responsibility for
the
present
really) onto everyone, every human in the world.
nuclear
situation
(fiasco,
An especially blatant example
3
Page 44
the world’s political
runs as follows:
menace
leaders
...
though
the earth with nuclear weapons, do so only with our permission, and even
at our bidding.
theme
At least, this is true
elsewhere
elaborated
is
’...
for
democracies’
pay
4
we are the authors of the destruction .
while for the peoples of the non-nuclear-armed world it
sense
to
an
argument
of
all
The moral cost of
only
true
in
the
sensitivity
nuclear
of
representative
And again ’...
we
is
it
armaments
that
of us underwriters of the slaughter of hundreds of millions - ’.
And again ’[as] perpetrators ...
is not sacred but is worthless;
be killed’ (p.88).
vote
the
against
of the populace they allegedly govern.
many
are potential mass—killers.
makes
is
that they fail to try to do anything about the danger)’ (p.87).
But this is more of
government
since
extinction and support the governments that pose the threat of it,
for
negative
The
III).
(p.106,
(For the populations of the superpowers this is true in a positive sense,
we
now
they
we convey the steady messsage ...
it ...
that ...
Little of this is true.
that
life
is acceptable for everyone to
Those who campaign against nuclear,
against nuclear-committed parties so far as is possible, and the like, are
certainly not the authors of potential destruction, and responsibility
nuclear situation does not simply distribute onto them.
- or the unlikely opinions as
to
worth
Schell
everyone - fall on those who have done less.
for
the
Nor does responsibility
illegitimately
attributes
to
Responsibility for decisions taken
in ""liberal democracies"" even by representatives (in the unlikely event of
this
happening in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be traced back
to those represented, since among many other things, a
representative
of
a
party
is
only
which offers a complex and often ill-characterised
package of policies, and a voter may vote for zero
package.
representative
or
more
policies
of
this
Only in the (unlikely) event of a clear single issue referendum, which
is adopted, can responsibility, still of a qualified sort, be sheeted
home,
to
Page 45
those who voted for it, not every one in the community.
When however the Pogo assumption is disentangled from the
following
theme
what results is decidedly along the right lines:
The controllers [not to be confused, in Schell’s fashion, with all of
S4.
have failed to change our pre-nuclear institutions.
The sovereign system is out
HI)
(p.51,
of step with nuclear age, the one-earth system, etc.
earth
us]
(the
whole
Unfortunately Schell often loses sight of this important theme.
theme).
S4 forms part of Schell’s critique of the state which is, by an large, scattered
and
fragmentary.
As
we saw, in §7, Schell arrives at the conclusion that the
nation-state has outlasted its usefulness, and that new
institutions
political
more ’consonant the global reality’ are required as a matter of urgency.
evades what he admits is the major task, making
viable
out
But he
alternatives.
most he makes some passing suggestions, some of which point to the Way Up.
he remains clear about are the serious defects of the state and
the
At
What
frequently
immoral purposes for which the state is used.
At one stage he contrasts what he calls Socratic-Christian ethics with that
of
state,
where ’the end [state] justifies the means . .., the raison d’etre of
government, is the basis on which
themselves
to
commit
crimes
of
governments,
every
in
sort’.
anything whatever in the name of [their] survival’.
that
all
So
times,
licensed
’states may do virtually
Schell then argues however,
extinction nullifies end-means justification by destroying every end;
that argument is far from sound, and depends again on extreme
(S2)
have
combined with ontic assumptions.
under system SI) ends could remain, e.g.
human
but
chauvinism
Even if all humans were extinguished (as
for nonhumans (actual or not).
Page 46
As to the part of the state and (state) sovereignty in war,
in
us
Schell
leaves
A sovereign state is virtually defined as one that enjoys the
no doubt.
right and power to go to war in defence or pursuit of its interests (III, p.51).
War
from how things are:
arises
jealous nation states (p.51).
and
sovereignty
from the arrangement of political affairs via
Indeed there is a two-way linkage between
On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell
capacity to wage war.
contends, necessary for people to organise for war.
is impossible to preserve sovereignty.
it
war
transparently clear as they stand.
having
On the other side,
without
Neither of these contentions is
Now that the state system in entrenched,
it
however easy for conservatives (in particular) to argue from the ""realities""
is
of international life, which include self-interest,
is
It
on
basis
this
that
peace
arrangements
aggression,
readily
are
hatred.
fear,
dismissed
as
unrealistic, utopian, even (amusingly) as extremist.
Schell’s further theme that nuclear ""war"" is not war threatens to undermine
his
case
erroneous
an
sovereign
characterisation
nation to achieve an end’ (III,
sufficient
for
p.52):
war as ’a violent means employed by a
of
but
neither
considerations
but not all wars or games are won).
It
they
fail
(even
on one side being defeated
on
a
But in nuclear ""war"" this doesn’t happen, ’no one’s strength
But what these sorts
contribute to showing is not that nuclear wars are not wars,
but that they are not wars of certain sorts, e.g., not just wars
because
nor
LN
falls until both sides have been annihilated* (III, p.52).
of
necessary
if
is also claimed that war depends on weakness;
by arms.
is
But nuclear attacks can certainly have ends
cannot be won in the older sense:
decision
this
It is then claimed that war requires an end which nuclear
war.
""war"" does not have.
wars
state based, for example, on its nuclear war
But the not-war theme needs much qualification, and starts out
making capacity.
from
the
against
on
such
criteria
as
reasonable
when
LN
wars
prospect of success and
Page 47
improvement, not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on.
wars
nuclear weapons have also ruined ""conventional"" wars, and
that
demise
the
war
of
not
just
on
his
connected
the
mistaken
has
removed
been
proposition
The
(p.52).
concerning
the
conventional war and the mistaken proposition that war of some sort
the
theme
has left no means to finally settle disputes between
nations, for the final court of appeal
depends
conventional
nuclear times does damage to Schell’s argument that
into
persisted
have
That
theme
demise
has
to
of
be
""court of appeal"" between nations (for, as observed, there are other
final
types of contests that could serve, and there is also the
cooperative
behaviour,
e.g.
joint referenda);
possibility
of
more
it also imports the assumption
of Clausowicz (criticised earlier) that war has to proceed to the
technological
limit - as if war and violence were thoroughly natural activities independent of
recognised social settings (for winning, surrender, etc.) and ruleless.
wars
contrary,
are
parasitic
on
On
the
social organisations such as states and are
They are a social
governed by a range of understandings, conventions and rules.
phenomenon, with a rule structure if not a logic.
Much capital has been made from what is called ""the
and
the
""logic
logic
of
deterrence""
The message that is usually
of nuclear (strategic) planning"".
supposed to come through is that the massive nuclear arraangements the world
now
entangled
in
are perfectly logical, sound, reasonable, rational.
this represents little more than a cheap semantical
the
justifies
reasonable.
can
be
present
arrangements,
or
trick.
anything
in strategic planning;
values
no
in
way
in Jeffrey)
which
but is does not yield specific results
without desirability measures being assigned to alternative
without
However
like them, or renders them
There is a logic of decision (as presented e.g.
applied
Logic
is
being pumped in, extralogically .
outcomes,
that
is
There are varaious ways these
value assignments may be determined, to meet moral requirements or not;
but
in
Page 48
nuclear
planning
strategic
(Selecting the usual
expediency.
automatically;
is
have invariably been settled on the basis of
game
theory
setting
based
something
cover
strategy of’.
term
almost
Thus too the presumption in Walzer, p.277, that the logic of
on eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth assumptions.)
’logic of’ tends to be used very generously, as a word of general
to
this
to
sees
for it is then assumed that each player plays to maximize his or
her own advantage.
deterrence
they
like
In fact
commendation,
’rational considerations entering into the policy or
In these terms, Schell, who like others enjoys playing
with
the
’logic of’, should write of ’the illoglc of deterrence’, for he emphasizes
(III, p.80) the disparity between the supposed rationality of threatening use of
nuclear
weapons and the irrationality (even from a national interest viewpoint)
of actually using them should the threat fail:
doctrine
depends
irrational use.
deterrence
(e.g.
on
credibility
of
the
yet the
threat
of
of
success
this
deterrence
unjustifiable and
Indeed Schell wants to go further and locate a contradiction in
HI,
pp.67-8):
but the argument depends on an interesting
confusion of contradiction with cancellation, which deterrence
is
supposed
to
(etc.)
is
involve.
FOOTNOTES
1.
The appalling theme that humans create past, present and
repeated, e.g. p.104 top.
2.
See e.g.
’Human chauvinism and environmental ethics’ in Environmental
Philosophy (editor Mannison and others), Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National University, 1980.
3.
Another example of spreading the responsibility runs as follows (Schell
p.46, III): we plan to exterminate species in certain circumstance, though
we don’t quite admit this to ourselves, as sane or sensible (or rational?).
Further (p.55 III),
’the world ...
chose the course of attempting to
refashion the system of sovereignty to accommodate nuclear weapons’:
the
world?
Connected with this is the argument from defence of fundamentals
[ideology] - e.g. for liberty, the (USA) nation, and against socialism. In
the course of this yet another fallacious assumption is rolled out:
’The
means to the end are not limited, for the end itself sets the limits in each
future
Page 49
case’
[?]
4.
There is also, mixed in, a weaker more plausible claim that gives lie to the
stronger one, namely that we have some responsibility (the Nazi situation is
compared).
5.
There is however a simple solution to Schell’s problem of the missing
motive, namely an ideological one: remove the rival ideology from future
dominance.
Page 50
APPENDIX 2: Strategies and the Matter of Collective and
Individual Responsibility
What one does depends, naturally, on where one lives
and what sort of power it is.
responsibility
work
to
entirely
to
an
In present circumstances states have
and
states,
there
ends:
responsibilities
these
no individual, or (smaller scale)
is
collective responsibility to work out a policy or
people
on
stance
matters
such
as
While such a non-responsibility
nuclear and still less to act on such a stance.
(or opt-out) theme no doubt suits many
evident
There are however some persuasive
out their policies.
arguments that this is where the responsibility
accrue
one
means
what
as what strategy a state should adopt depends on where it is located
much
has,
and
—
many
for
some,
themselves,
especially more authoritarian power-holders, for others - it does involve opting
out of moral responsibilities, responsibilities acquired by virtue
of
being
a
person within the framework of certain social arrangments.
Now there is no doubt that individuals and a group can
out.
They can neglect their moral responsibilities;
in doing so.
being
this,
do
can
opt
but they are not justified
Against this claim, which is based ultimately upon
each
person’s
caught in a web of responsibility-inducing social relations, whether they
like it or not, there are some neat arguments which appear to permit opting out.
One goes as follows:
1.
The (ordinary) individual,
difference to what happens.
2.
Such
difference.
3.
individuals,
or
or
group,
has
no
possibility
of
making
a
make
a
Therefore
groups,
have
no
obligation
to
try
to
Hence
Such individuals, or groups, are not morally responsible, for instance when
things go wrong.
Page 51
There are two main assumptions
resisted;
this
in
argument,
both
which
of
be
firstly, a variant of the ought implies can theme , and secondly, the
assumption that individuals can’t make a difference.
cannot
individuals
competitive
highly
that
true
What an
individuals
do.
full of hopeful free-riders, a person may
communities,
encouter a familiar impasse:
is
on their own, together they can.
much
accomplish
it
While
individual can achieve depends on what sufficiently many other
In
should
that he or she acts M-ly (e.g.
against
morally,
nuclear arrangements, present destruction) at considerable personal cost with no
Such an impasse no
guarantee that others will also act M-ly.
longer
faces
so
many in the West at least as regards initial steps against nuclear arrangements.
The individual can cooperate with others in ways that do make a difference.
An
individual is not exonerated from responsibility by the argument.
While individuals can respond by joining organisations whose activities are
at
directed
difference, many individuals also have the option of
some
making
more individualistic action in such
disobedience.
important
An
forms
as
or
deployment)
Evidently,
various
or
parts
redirection
however,
work more effectively
go
slows,
political
form of individual resistance, already adopted in
Canada and north-western USA is refusal to pay
defence
boycotts,
thereof
of
such
(e.g.
taxes,
income
taxes
nuclear
for
directed
weapons
Instance
towards
production
to
peace
and
funds.
all these more individualistic forms of political activity
if
individuals
integrate
their
activities
since
the
impacts aggregate (and appear after a certain stage to exponentiate).
There are arguments of some weight that individuals are under some sort
moral
obligation
to take political action to disaffiliate themselves from what
contributes to the prospects of nuclear
depends
on
the
of
sort
of
state
war.
What
type
of
action
this
is
one resides in, e.g., whether it is a nuclear
Page 52
power, whether it provides nuclear
issues
complicating
as
or
bases
facilities,
and
such
on
kind of preventive action the state is likely to
what
One argument - it is one of a type
take in return.
etc.,
be
can
that
varied
from
making nuclear weapons to, for example, providing facilities for them - proceeds
from the wrongness of nuclear war to the position that it is
making
weapons
the
such
for
The
war.
argument
here
not
applies
principles (like that of §5), for instance that the manufacture
of such weapoons increases the risk of such war.
right
and
to
connecting
deployment
But if it is not morally right
to be making such weapons then those who live in a state that is doing so
to
disaffiliate
themselves
from
such
substantive
without
The argument is
but
the
assumptions
opt-outers
and
do-nothingers
assumption,
ought
defence production, and disaffiliation
2
includes not paying for such production through defence taxes .
not
be
morally
appear
reasonable and defensible.
Such arguments not only
insofar
as
they
put
to
contribute
national
for
those
3
take action, even limited action such as redirection of taxes .
in some fashion to moral obligations;
political obligations.
And
political
limited, by moral constraints.
are
already
answer
for then moral obligations override
obligations
are
already
significantly
The nuclear situation does not so much bring out
new limits on political obligation, as emphasize the
obligations
who
There is
however no dilemma under any theory which takes political obligations to
back
spot
the
objectives, they also raise serious
questions and perhaps dilemmas as regards political obligations
would
on
limited,
and
respects
in
which
those
introduce further moral considerations
against sponsorship of national defence arrangements.
Page 53
An obligation to try
war
does not commit one to more than this:
for
an
to an obligation, for example,
work
to
But
alternative national defence policy which avoids nuclear elements.
no doubt this would be a good thing to try to contribute to.
one
nuclear
spending part of one’s working life contributing indirectly to it,
not
by
to disaffiliate oneself from preparation for
attempts
depends
commitments, and
on
forth.
so
where
lives,
one
For
not
only
the
level
are
Once
of
again,
one’s pacificist
types
different
what
policy
of
appropriate for different nations and regions, but there are more
reorientation
superficial and deeper reorientations that can be worked out and promoted,
schemes
that
""conventional""
leave
e.g.
warfare apparatus more or less Intact, and
deeper (ecological) schemes that change that.
The US Bishops, for example, present a shallower set of goals for
such
power
as
the
USA,
which
includes
such
as preventing the
objectives
working
development and deployment of destabilizing nuclear weapons systems and
for
better
of already operational systems (see PL, p.317).
control
super
a
For those
whose very limited political Influence is exerted in considerably lesser
even
the
shallow goals may look quite different:
there are no weapons (except
perhaps those of another power planted on local territory)
better
control.
The
view
from
the
very
minor
to
in
or
redeploy
to
powers in the Antipodes is
furthermore different from that of the medium powers in Europe.
prospect
powers
is
There
some
the Antipodes of avoiding the more immediate effects of an LN war,
while there is little such prospect in Europe (cf.
Preddy and
others).
There
is accordingly some obligation - an obligation little considered and not grasped
by the power holders - on those in the Antipodes to make some effort to preserve
there
elements
of
what is valuable in world civilization.
Local and regional
self-interest would also suggest steps towards self-preservation that
been initiated.
have
not
Page 54
What is broadly required in the Andipodes is a
work
out
once
removal of American bases
alliance, which is in any case of questionable merit;
and
withdrawal
of
American
rightss for nuclear-carrying equipment to
access
ports, air bases and other facilities, so as to remove
pursuit
of
more
a
evenhanded
policy
targets;
nuclear
is
That much
easy,
in
principle.
difficult to ensure is that economic and cultural collapse does not follow
an LN war in the North.
independence
Secondly then the building of Increased
in the Antipodes is required.
sustainable
of
life
its
exercise unless combined with
and
Preddey
it
others
is
own.
’the region must also
other
desirable
objectives:
unlikely - the structural readjustment
aims
of
moving
for
example,
in
estimated that 25 per cent of GDP would have to be
included Australia the costs would be less.
desirable
have
For a small region that looks a very costly
diverted to build up New Zealand’s economic independence.
which
socio-economic
It is not enough to make the region
a nuclear-free zone not worth targeting militarily:
a
local
of nonalignment (something quite small
powers elsewhere have managed to achieve).
More
to
Firstly, withdrawal from the American
goals are glimpsed.
the
matter
straightforward
the
were
For a
larger
region
If, furthermore - what seems
combined
with
the
independently
whole region towards a multicultural conserver
society and diverting ""defence"" spending to connected self-management and
civil
be considerably lessened.
They only appear great in the
setting of an on-going consumer-defence socleity.
In any case where life itself
defence
goals,
would
is concerned, the costs do not appear excessive.
FOOTNOTES
1.
Any satisfactory deontic theory which takes moral dilemmas with due
seriousness is bound to reject this theme. There are also independent
grounds for jettisoning this Kantian theme:
see Routley and Plumwood.
Page 55
Seatie
2.
An argument of this type was deployed by Bishop
support of his refusal to pay defence taxes.
3.
This dilemma and option is now removed for most wage earners by Pay As You
Earn taxation schemes, schemes apparently introduced to give the state
interest on gross earnings, but obviously very effective in removing
taxation power from most workers, and so from individuals to the state.
4.
Given the power of institutions and the state one may be able to do little
more than try, without giving up one’s work and therby one’s ability to
contribute to other deserving causes. For example, it may be virtually
impossible for one to avoid contributing to a superannuation fund which is
investing in projects which one opposes and/or ought to oppose.
Hunthaassen
of
in
Page 56
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1979.
P.
M.
Cohen, Nagel, Scanlan
Princeton, 1974.
Country,
(editors)
Planet
War
and
Drum,
Moral
San
Francisco,
Responsibility ,
R.E.
Goodin,
’Disarming nuclear apologists’, typescript, 1982.
R.E.
Goodin,
’Disarmament as a moral certalnuity’, typescript, 1983.
P(hilip) Green, Deadly Logic: The Theory of Nuclear Deterrence, Ohio State
University Press, Columbus, 1966.
N.
Griffin, ’Lifeboat USA', typescript, 1982.
Ground Zero Organisation, Nuclear War:
New York, 1982.
R.
Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision
H.
Kahn, On Thermonuclear War.
What’s In It For You?
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(editor
D.P.
Lackey, ’Ethics and nuclear deterrence*, in Moral
James Rachels), Harper and Row, New York, 1979.
D.P.
Lackey,
'Missiles and morals:
a utilitarian look at nuclear
deterrence’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (1982) pp.189-213.
J.C.
Problems
Murray, Morality and Modern War,
T.
Nagel, ’War and Massacre' in Cohen et al, pp.3-24.
J.
Narvesen,
'Violence and War’ in Regan, pp.109-146.
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T.
Regan (editor), Matters of Life and
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R.
Routley and V. Routley,
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Page 57
R.
Scheer, With Enough Shovels:
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Schell, ’Reflections (Nuclear Arms - Parts I-III)’, The New Yorker,
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respectively. This series subtitled The Fate of the Earth, has now
appeared as a book with that title (Kopf, New York, 1982). References
in the text are to the original articles.
All references by parts
labels ’I’-’III’ are to these articles.
T.C .
Reagan,
Bush
and
Nuclear
Sharp, Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives, Boston, 1971.
T.
Taylor, Nuremburg and Vietnam:
R.W..
M.M..
M.
R.A.
S.
Random
Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Harvard University Press, 1980.
G.
E.P..
War,
Thompson and D.
New York, 1981.
An American Tragedy,
Smith, Protest and Survive,
Monthly
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Tucker, The Just War,
Wakin (editor), War, Morality and the Military Profession,
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Westview,
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Basic Books, New York, 1977.
Wasserstrom (editor)
California, 1970.
War
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Wadsworth,
Zuckerman, Nuclear Illusion and Reality, Collins, London, 1982.
Belmont,
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