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Green Votes not Green Virtues: Effective Utilitarian Responses to Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2013

JOACHIM WÜNDISCH
JOACHIM WÜNDISCH*
Affiliation:
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, [email protected]
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Abstract

Implementing strategies to address climate change confronts us with an enormous collective action problem. Dale Jamieson argues that in order to avoid large-scale defection and, therefore, the collapse of any cooperative effort to curb climate change, utilitarians should become virtue theorists. As a tool to combat climate change, virtue change faces severe obstacles. First, the non-contingent green virtues envisioned by Jamieson are highly implausible. Second, even if such virtues could function, their inculcation would take too long to make the approach viable. Third, given its inherent inflexibility, virtue change is ill equipped to deal with the great scientific uncertainty created by climate change. To combat climate change utilitarians are well advised to look elsewhere: green votes and state sanctions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 192 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 For recent developments see the anthology Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future, ed. A. Thompson and J. Bendik-Keymer (Cambridge, 2012), and in particular Jamieson, D., ‘Ethics, Public Policy, and Global Warming’, Science, Technology & Human Values 17 (1992), pp. 139–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jamieson, D., ‘When Utilitarians Should Be Virtue Theorists’, Utilitas 19 (2007), pp. 160–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an application to environmental ethics more generally also see Sandler, R. L., Character and Environment: A Virtue-Oriented Approach to Environmental Ethics (New York, 2007)Google Scholar, as well as Environmental Virtue Ethics, ed. R. L. Sandler and P. Cafaro (Lanham 2005). A succinct overview of important works within environmental virtue ethics is offered by Sandler, R. L., ‘Environmental Virtue Ethics’, International Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. LaFollette, H. (Oxford, 2013), pp. 1665–74Google Scholar. For an early but to this day particularly well-known and influential work of environmental ethics see Thoreau, H. D., Walden (Boston, 1854)Google Scholar.

2 Driver, J., Uneasy Virtue (New York, 2001), p. 108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also quoted in Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 171.

3 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 167.

4 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 172.

5 For Aristotle's conception of phronesis see Aristotle, Rowe, C. J. and Broadie, S., Nicomachean Ethics: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar, book 6, esp. ch. 5.

6 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 167.

7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, esp. chs. 6 and 13. The idea that virtues are advantageous for the virtuous is also common within environmental virtue ethics. For examples see Carson, R., The Sense of Wonder (New York, 1965)Google Scholar and Thoreau, Walden.

8 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 10, ch. 8.

9 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 179. For a supporting opinion see Schuessler, A. A., A Logic of Expressive Choice (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar.

10 Jamieson, ‘Ethics’, p. 151. Jamieson offers similar virtues in Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, pp. 181–2.

11 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 172.

12 For an analysis of these heterogeneous impacts see, for example, Mendelsohn, R., Dinar, A. and Williams, L., ‘The Distributional Impact of Climate Change on Rich and Poor Countries’, Environment and Development Economics 11 (2006), pp. 159–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See, for example, Gardiner, S. M., ‘Ethics and Global Climate Change’, Ethics 114 (2004), pp. 555–600CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Interestingly, proponents of two-level theories pay scant attention to this transition problem. For example see Feldman, F., ‘True and Useful: On the Structure of a Two Level Normative Theory’, Utilitas 24 (2012), pp. 151–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 172.

16 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 175.

17 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 175.

18 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 175.

19 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 175.

20 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 175.

21 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 174.

22 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 174.

23 Jamieson's theory is reminiscent of R. M. Hare's distinction between the critical and the intuitive level of morality. See Hare, R. M., Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point (Oxford, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 175.

25 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 181.

26 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 181.

27 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 182.

28 Jamieson recognizes this point and believes that the virtue of mindfulness is therefore difficult to acquire; however, inexplicably mindfulness remains the one virtue he proposes to create.

29 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 182.

30 For a dissenting opinion see Kagan, S., ‘Do I Make a Difference?’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 39 (2011), pp. 105–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a critique of that position see Nefsky, J., ‘Consequentialism and the Problem of Collective Harm: A Reply to Kagan’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 39 (2011), pp. 364–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Jamieson, ‘Virtue Theorists’, p. 170.

32 Previous versions of this article have been presented at Göttingen University and at Konstanz University. For comments and suggestions special thanks are due to Vuko Andrić, Frank Dietrich, Christoph Fehige, Sebastian Odzuck, Rudolf Schüßler, Holmer Steinfath, Eva Weber-Guskar, Ulla Wessels and an anonymous reviewer.