If there is one thing that my engagement with the psychological literature is leading me to think, it is that people are not very good at being consequentialists. They recognise a huge difference between acting and failing to act, they are very particular in deploying their empathy, and in many situations they are terrible at calculating best outcomes and strategies. More controversially, it seems to me that ‘moral licensing’ occurs more commonly in cases where people have an opportunity to improve outcomes rather than cases where people may obey or break rules – that is my impression from the literature anyway, yet to be fully tested (but relevant to my thinking in what follows).
But now it seems that even consequentialist philosophers can be not very good at being consequentialists. Luke Elson in ‘How a moral philosopher justifies his carbon footprint’ argues in favour of paying for carbon offsets. He writes:
“In moral philosophy, so-called “consequentialist” theories say that when it comes to the rightness or wrongness of some action, the consequences are all that matter. If any ethical theory vindicates offsetting, it is this.”
Not really: first we need a story to explain why consequentialism can even recognise a difference between an offset payment and a different, non-offset, payment to the same organisation. If giving money to (say) a NGO produces a good outcome, why only (or primarily) do so when you’ve just produced a bad outcome? Why, at least, if you are a consequentialist?
The question is compounded by the price difference between a polluting flight and a carbon offset payment. Elson gives the figure of £13 for an offset payment – almost any trans-Atlantic return flight (his example) is going to cost many, many, times this. When the effort required for a good act is so small, why be satisfied with only one? Why not save money on flights to make a much bigger donation to a carbon-reduction charity?
I think the problems here may begin with another function of traditional mortality which act-consequentialism gives us little help with – classifying people into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories. Consequentialism explicitly offers us one path to being a good person: maximising good outcomes throughout one’s lifetime. Practically no one chooses that path. But it implicitly offers us another too: just refrain from behaviour which is clearly harmful, and you’ll be normal like most other people, and they can hardly criticise you for that. This is not a very ambitious line of thought, but it is much more in keeping with a combination of actual moral practice and the application of consequentialist thought. And this, along with reduced interest in other sorts of moral practice, is probably the predictable consequence of the uptake of consequentialist ideas by the general (non-academic) community. (The accounting trick of combining the flights and the offsets into a single act is yet another departure from philosophically rigorous consequentialism, but never mind.)
Is this a sustainable attitude? We have no reason to think that it will be. In fairness to Elson, he could be read as aspiring to a personal goal of carbon-neutrality, not just carbon-normality, but the theme throughout the article is fending of the accusation that the flights were ‘wrong’ or that he is a ‘a climate change villain’. Unless there is a substantial piece of the argument missing here, the message seems to be: as long as you’re not a consequence-outlier, you’re doing ok.
But this sort of ‘ok’ does not seem to be sustainable at the moment…
[Image of a plane wing over Ontario, thanks to Elese Dowden]
The ArachneanMetaxion Point 