• Pollution, values, justice
• Three examples of pollution
• William Baxter, People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974)
  • what is the natural state of the atmosphere? of lake water?
  • what is the objective, the goal, the reason for limiting pollution?
  • human activity requires resources:
  • four factors for human organisation
    • freedom: "every person should be free to do whatever he wishes in contexts where his actions do not interfere with the interests of other human beings"
    • efficiency: "none of those resources, or labors, or skills, should be wasted—that is, employed so as to yield less than they might yield in human satisfactions"
    • fundamental equality (right wing): "Every human being should be regarded as an end rather than as a means to be used for the betterment of another. Each should be afforded dignity and regarded as having an absolute claim to an evenhanded application of such rules as the community may adopt for its governance."
    • genuine welfare (fairness): "Both the incentive and the opportunity to improve his share of satisfactions should be preserved to every individual. Preservation of incentive is dictated by the "no-waste" criterion and enjoins against the continuous, totally egalitarian redistribution of satisfactions, or wealth, but subject to that constraint, everyone should receive, by continuous redistribution if necessary, some minimal share of aggregate wealth so as to avoid a level of privation from which the opportunity to improve his situation becomes illusory."
  • only humans can meaningfully participate in community decision-making
    • penguins and salamanders can't vote
    • who can legitimately and faithfully represent other life forms in the deliberation?
    • the question "what ought we to do" is not a question asked by pine trees
• How do we decide what's worth preserving?
  • what aspects of the environment or nature do we want to preserve, and why?
  • whose values determine this?
• Values affect behaviour [ch. 20, Deborah McGregor]
  • different communities have different values, different ways of carving up the world
  • what one community values, another can belittle or despise
  • values can be in conflict
  • it might be more constructive to look at and be critical (not necessarily negative, but reflective and evaluative) of our values so we can better understand those whose values differ
  • need to move past stereotypes created and reinforced by other (usually dominant, but not always) cultures
  • need to understand the past history of interactions between cultures
• Pollution as a cost
  • we produce waste in the transformation of resources into goods
  • capturing the waste is an additional cost
  • if we don't capture the waste, we have pushed the cost of containment and remediation on to someone else
    • this is an externalised cost [ch. 19, Wesley Cragg and Mark Schwartz, p. 310]
    • or if the problem is too big, even government walks away
• Costs are losses of things we value
  • can be as small or large, like a home or farm
  • can all costs be monetised?
  • Cragg and Schwartz, pp 312-14, referring to Ontario Hydro's redevelopment of generating stations on the Mattagami River
    • terms of reference for environmental assessment and impact
    • don't line up with First Nations's values
• pollution and development have costs, and avoiding them also has costs
  • if we value sustainability, how far do we want to take it before we suffer?
• global context [ch. 24, Peter Penz]
  • does pollution know any boundaries?
  • pollution is cheap disposal
    • what doesn't migrate by natural processes, we export
  • one aspect of justice is to address the relationships between persons, groups, and states
    • but in a global context of one "heterogenous mega-society", the internal rules of that society apply
    • problem: we're making them up as we go
    • how do we share rights and duties? harms and benefits?
    • this comes back to values
    • can there be environmental justice, where the environment itself has rights?
      • back to Baxter: who speaks for the environment? how are the representatives chosen?
      • perhaps if we limit human use of nature
        • Penz, p. 391: refrain from imposing foreseeable international environmental harm
    • includes culpability and compensation for accidents or negligence
• Review questions:
  • In what ways can pollution be seen as an externalisation of costs?
  • What ethical considerations influence the decisions about how much pollution can be tolerated? Consider both consequentialist and rights-and-duties perspectives.
  • How might a decision to pollute or refrain from polluting be understood as an expression of values? What values could they conflict with?
  • Is pollution a justice issue? Why or why not? Give reasons and an argument for your answer.