Gwen could you fine tune this a bit? It seems very broad, and I am not really positive what it is that you are asking. Cost-benefit analysis seems, in itself, an ethically neutral appraisal technique. Do you mean "Is it immoral for a nation to fail to implement needed environmental laws due to the cost involved?" or does your statement about uncertainty mean that the question of whether such warming is anthropocentric in nature ought not to be settled by default (that is, by simply presuming that it is) because it is such an expensive proposition? What context are you asking this in? Is it an academic debate sort of question or are you thinking in terms of a business arena where the theoretical will quickly be left behind for the practical?

Bill, thank you for pointing out the ambiguities in my question. The question is being asked from the standpoint of a Business Ethics professor who is charged with giving business students a set of ethical guidelines or principles for decision-making in the commercial realm. Thus, most useful for me would be responses from the field of “applied ethics” rather than responses that are mainly theoretical or philosophical. So, as you suggest, I am indeed thinking of Utilitarianism (loosely interpreted as a “costs/benefits” analysis) as an “ethically neutral appraisal technique.” Nonetheless, can it sometimes be unethical to resort to a costs/benefits analysis? In the real world--where economic arguments carry the most currency-- might it be immoral to give equal weight (or any weight at all for that matter) to the economic burden of obtaining a particular benefit for humankind? I used the ecological example because frequently decisions about whether or not to enact tougher environmental laws are put on indefinite “hold” because opponents of those tougher laws present a thorough and convincing analysis of the heavy economic costs in terms of a nation’s economy or to its important industries of such laws.

Gwen,

What do you think of restating your question this way: “Ought we to always do whatever is legislatively and practically necessary to prevent global warming and to reverse its negative effects upon the environment, regardless of cost?”

I am intentionally wording this in a provocative manner because it seems as though that will get right to the heart of the debate and will immediately reveal whether the disputant is more concerned with the environment or with financial stability.

By the way, I had meant to use the word “anthropogenic” in what I wrote above, rather than “anthropocentric”.

Thanks for the suggestion, Bill. However, that is not the question that I am asking. I am specifically interested in how useful Utilitarianism is as a principle for ETHICAL decision-making. Since a costs/benefits analysis is the most prevalent tool for decision-making in the business world, my students tend to gravitate toward a utilitarian resolution to the ethical dilemmas that I regularly posit in class – or, more accurately, they use utilitarian arguments to justify taking self-interested courses of action (such as off-shoring production to an LDN with no laws to protect labor or the environment) in response to ethical dilemmas rather than grappling with the moral quandary. In short, when I cover the ethical principles segment of my Business Ethics course, the teleological or consequence-based approach (“…in the end, the bottom line was enhanced”) wins the minds of my students hands-down over the deontological (duty-based) or Aretaic (virtue-based) approaches. Of course, I would like NOT to be responsible for training more Enron-type executives and, therefore, would find it useful to have credible and logical arguments as to why resorting to utilitarian justifications should not be the automatic default choice when making business decisions. Bill, perhaps this is similar to the challenge presented by your question regarding finding a non-religious (or non-spiritual) argument supporting the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Okay Gwen - Sorry, I still wasn’t understanding what you were asking until you put it that way. I have found that by inductively letting my students see the situation specific applicability of Utilitarian, Deontological, and Virtue thought, they tend to naturally sort out where each one is best suited to the problem at hand. I think there are two paths through your difficulty.

The first is to deal in terms of net happiness or pleasure. Regardless of the form of Utilitarian thought you are using, it is the overall happiness or pleasure in the long run which one is concerned with. The difference is one we ought to have learned from how Epicurus reacted to Aristippus and the Cyrenaic hedonists. They were very short-sighted and concerned themselves with what their immediate pleasure (preferably sensual pleasure) was in an act. Epicurus showed the foolishness of pleasure today which causes pain tomorrow. If your students look beyond today’s bottom line to tomorrow’s price tag for trying to do damage control and repair, they will see that the picture is much more complex than mere dollars and cents right now.

The second way is to show that Utilitarian thought seems best suited for large scale societal decisions which are really questions of the lesser of two evils. Environmental health is not necessarily a lesser of two evils type choice. Arguably, in terms of deontology, we owe a duty to the generations to come. Were the matter of the environment only an immediate concern then Utilitarian thought might be appropriate, but this is a multigenerational concern, and the issue ought not to be how to steer between a Scylla and Charybdis of great expense and irresponsible environmental stewardship, but rather one of what duty do we owe to those who will come after us?

A friend on RG has pointed me towards Hans Jonas’ The Imperative of Responsibility. He makes this second argument very well. You might want to check his book out. I have found it to be excellent.

I question the definition of ethics being applied here, and whether the assumptions being made are correct at all. The source link from Harvard states that "The data, he explained, show pronounced increases in greenhouse gas levels in the United States during the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s as well in the 1950s, when there was a postwar manufacturing boom."

However, this is a very shoddy argument to make, as correlation does not imply causation. Other factors which could be contributing like cyclical solar warming, deforestation, and growing global population could likewise (and in some cases probably did) increase during this time span and be greater contributors than greenhouse gases. That anyone would so quickly adhere to this line of argumentation indicates to me an unquestioning lack of critical thinking.

The Climategate controversy has shown a serious lack of ethical practice in the global warming community, concealing evidence that would support cyclical warming, and cherrypicking results to support greenhouse gas-caused global warming.

I think the following quote by Ms. Alexis also telling: "with no laws to protect labor or the environment"

Her definition of ethics involves a lack of support for laws protecting labor or the environment.

However, this is a very one-sided approach, since labor can be equally at fault with business. While one would not wish to excuse business with their off-shoring of U.S. jobs or golden parachutes for fat cat executives, one would be remiss in not likewise holding labor to the same standard. It was for example excessive union benefits described by the New York Times as "gold-plated" that drove the Detroit auto industry bankrupt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/business/economy/18sorkin.html

And the environment? It seems rather ridiculous that environmentalists just assume the leaders of their movement have no monetary incentive and are just idealistically seeking to protect the environment. Al Gore and others have made billions off the green energy subsidies provided by the U.S. government.

What I never hear environmentalists mention is that the biggest tax-dodging company of all (and it's not close) is General Electric, who got a $159 billion bailout from the government, and received a $3.3 billion refund from the IRS in 2010 alone due to green energy tax breaks. Whereas the oil industry gets a $4.4 billion tax break each year, alternative energy is getting a $7.3 billion tax break, and most energy subsidies actually appear to go to alternative energy. It would be easier to take environmentalists seriously if they held their own side as accountable as they seek to hold the other side.

http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive_excess_2011_the_massive_ceo_rewards_for_tax_dodging

http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive_excess_2010

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/07/news/economy/energy-subsidies/index.htm

With all due respect to Ms. Alexis, I think she is portraying a very one-sided approach to her students and is seeking to sway them to her own activist viewpoint.

Wow, Joshua, thank you for your spirited response to my question which I feared was "dead in the water". Your answer should certainly generate some new responses and that was my desire; i.e., to generate discussion.

Gwen

I would like to add my apologies if I came across as somewhat hostile, but it bothers me that advocates of global warming so often try to portray this an open-and-shut case in spite of the recent evidence that the science involved has been anything but objective, fair, and scientific. I agree with you that outsourcing is a serious problem, and that utilitarian theories such as invisible hand and trickle down are unethical. I suppose I took more exception to the examples mentioned, particularly the global warming issue, than perhaps I should have, and if so extend my apologies.

Joshua, there is no need to apologize. You performed a service by crystalizing the two sides of the debate. So, now let's just sit back and enjoy the dialectic which will hopefully follow. Gwen

I am always a bit concerned with cost benefit analysis as both costs and benefits can be manipulated. In addition the time frame for both costs and benefits can be dramatically different. This does not mean we ignore climate chage, but that we carefully consider what can be done NOW!!!

Just out of curiosity, does "carefully consider[ing] what can be done now" include evaluating the relative effectiveness of the available courses of action?

Thanks for your request for further elaboration, Kim. I believe your question is directed to John; but for my part, I would say that if one is taking a costs/benefits approach then that entails at least weighing the effectiveness of a course of action along with its cost at the initial stages of the evaluation process. Gwen