Future Generations and the Good Life

W. Russ Payne

In this paper I argue that our obligations to future generations can only be evaluated in light of a substantive theory of the good life.  I consider how the interests of the current generation is weighed against the interests of future generations according to economic theory and the conception of human welfare it employs and I argue that this approach is ethically inadequate.  I also respond to the objection that appeal to a normative theory of the good life in thinking about our obligations to the future will be paternalistic.

The ethics of obligation is concerned with evaluating actions and practices as obligatory, permissible or prohibited.  Traditional contract theory, Kantian deontological ethics and utilitarianism, for instance, are theories of obligation. Much of the literature in environmental ethics is devoted to extending traditional theories of obligation in various ways.  Notably, we find environmental ethicists extending obligations to future generations to address problems of resource depletion. The theory of the good life is easily neglected in this discussion.  But the failure to address the theory of the good life makes it impossible to grasp whether and to what extent the interests of people now present conflict with the interests of future generations.  Here I will argue that given obligations to the future, the ethics of the good life has a legitimate role to play in assessing the demands of those obligations.

A difficulty for the notion that we have obligations to the future is that it is hard to see how people that do not now exist and may never exist can have any claim against people who do currently exist.  The quandary is sometimes framed in terms of a hypothetical situation where everyone on the planet agrees to be sterilized.  It is then asked whether they violate any moral obligation by agreeing to this plan.  Perhaps they do not.  But I am fairly confident that people would diminish their lives if they agreed to the sterilization scheme.  I am fairly confident of this because I think that being a link from past to future generations is essential to leading a good life.  This is not intended merely as an endorsement of parenthood.  Even the childless person participates in relationships with juniors and the lives of the final generations would be diminished for the lack of this.

The notion that we have obligations to future generations fairs much better when we start from the highly plausible suppositions that there will be future generations and that they will be affected, for better or worse, by our actions in the present.  However, there are interesting issues to address in defending this initially plausible claim.  For instance, there is probably no one group of people that will be either benefited or harmed by which policies we accept because who gets born depends to some degree on what those policies are.  I will not pursue this issue, but I will take the view defended by Annette Baier[1] and Mary Anne Warren[2] that we can be held responsible for impacts on the quality of life of future people resulting from present day resource depletion whoever those people turn out to be.

Recognizing obligations to the future raises several complex issues.  First, there are ethical questions concerning what level of sacrifice our obligations to future generations can demand of us.  Presumably we have a clear obligation to adopt practices that would spare future generations likely significant harm if doing so would not significantly undermine our own interests.  But sparing the future likely significant harm might not require that we suffer a greater degree of harm.  Other sorts of obligation are similar.  Your obligation to save a drowning person’s life does not require you to put yourself at significant risk.  Your obligation here is that you must offer help, unless doing so requires a great sacrifice or risk on your part.  The case of climate change is instructive.  The impact on future generations of our depleting the atmosphere as a sink for greenhouse gases (GHGs), mainly CO2, may turn out to be mild, moderate or severe.[3]  What level of genuine sacrifice we are obligated to make on behalf of future generations will be a function of the probability and severity of the potential damage to their interests.  I will assume there is nothing problematic in these ethical intuitions about the sort of balance we ought to strike between the interests of present and future generations.  But, as is the case with climate change, we can face difficult problems in applying these intuitions.

We must have reasonable expectations about the long run consequences of our current practices to determine the degree of hardship we ought to bear in the interests of the future.  In spite of the most extensive scientific investigation in human history, it is likely that we will have to make policy decisions regarding climate change in the absence of firm probabilities regarding what kind and degree of damage to the future of ecosystems, economies and human populations we should expect.  Even if we had good reason to set a goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations at, say, double pre-industrial levels, there remain difficult questions about what policies we would have to adopt to hit that target.  Answers here must be based on assumptions we make about the rates of economic growth in the developed and developing countries, what technologies they employ, population trends and so forth.  These are difficult questions for climate change scientists and economists.  It is on these issues that policy debates over climate change tend to get stuck.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that we have only useless speculation to go on.  Our ethical intuitions about how to balance the interests of present people against those of future generations are connected to rational choice theory and the notion of expected utility.  But we should resist the urge to draw in this body of theory in a more formal manner. Not every reason to act in the face of uncertainty can be given in terms of specific probabilities.  We do know that increased concentrations of CO2 and other GHGs in the atmosphere cause additional energy to be retained in the earth’s systems and that energy must go somewhere and do some work.  Our economy is highly adapted to the relatively stable ways climate systems have functioned throughout human history.  The consequences of significant change to those systems could be severe for our successors.  At some level of increased atmospheric concentration, we can expect that GHG emissions will impose burdens on the future in the form of economic costs of adaptation and human suffering due to stressed agricultural systems, changes in hydrological systems, spreading of tropical diseases and so forth.  But the matter of determining what harms are imposed at what level does not have to be resolved first.  We need not have firm views about what atmospheric concentration of CO2 would be hazardous to consider the level of sacrifice we would bear in adopting this or that policy aimed at curbing CO2 emissions.  Our results in considering this issue may ultimately make precise answers to the scientific questions less crucial to our policy decisions.  We can assume that at a minimum, we are obligated to curb CO2 emissions to the degree that doing so does not significantly undermine our own our prospects for leading the good life.  Given this, a broad range of CO2 abatement measures might be justified on the grounds that the sacrifices to our interests are just not very significant.  Ethical considerations together with current knowledge can guide many policy decisions without further detailed resolution of scientific questions about the likelihood and severity of the potential consequences of climate change.

Though I will discuss a few possible policy changes for illustrative purposes, I will not be arguing for any specific package of policy changes.  The issue I will be concerned with here is how we should evaluate the impact on ourselves of proposed policy changes.  Whether or not we are obliged to pursue a package of policies regarding resource depletion depends not only on the risk and severity of potential harm to the future, but also to some degree on what hardships that policy would impose on us.  It is only in light of a substantive view about human well-being that we can evaluate the sacrifices involved in adopting a given policy as somewhat, very much, or not at all significant.

In evaluating the sacrifices the best available policies would entail, we ought to evaluate the measures called for in terms of their impact on our well-being.  And this can only be done in light of a theory of the good life for humans.  Holding a poor conception of the good life may explain a person’s failure to meet their obligations.  But it does not justify their actions.  For instance, some people hold a poor conception of the good life in disproportionately prizing material wealth over having a nurturing relationship with their children.  This would explain but not excuse or justify the neglect of their children.  Likewise, if the members of our society predominantly hold poor conceptions of the good life this may lead them to regard acting in the interest of future generations as requiring unjustifiably burdensome sacrifices.  But the sacrifices may only appear to be unjustifiably burdensome in light of poor but widely held conceptions of the good life.  In light of a better conception of the good life, acting in the interests of future generations might be judged not so burdensome or even not at all burdensome.  This shows how the failure to properly appreciate the nature of the good life can lead us to fail to meet obligations to others.  And again, our poor conceptions of our own interests can explain, but not excuse or justify, our failure to meet obligations to future generations.

So, in estimating the degree of sacrifice we would make in adopting a given CO2 abatement policy, we need to consider how doing so would affect our genuine well-being in light of a well developed philosophy of the good life.  We are not justified in putting the future at significant risk because we perceive the sacrifice to be too great based on standing preferences that reflect poor conceptions of our genuine interests. I will consider how this issue is addressed in economics and explain why the economic approach is not ethically adequate.  And I will briefly consider how one traditional theory of the good life, Aristotle’s, compares.  But defending the Aristotelian conception in detail is beyond the scope of this paper.  My aim here is just to show that the theory of the good life ought to figure in a certain way in the evaluation of environmental policy with regard to obligations to the future.  If this argument is successful, then defending a normative theory of the good life and applying it in detail to evaluating policy will be a further and more extensive project.

Environmental Economics

Of the standard approaches in environmental ethics, environmental economics comes closest to addressing questions of the good life.  Environmental economists accept the basic theoretical framework of neoclassical economics and attempt to address environmental problems within that framework.  Neoclassical economics is concerned with maximizing human welfare through the efficient allocation of resources. Welfare here is conceived of in terms of preference satisfaction.  It is assumed that individuals are the best judges of what is and isn’t in their best interest.  The interests of individuals are then to be read off of their preferences measured in terms of their willingness to pay for this or that good.[4]  The welfare economist’s notion of efficiency has it that an allocation of resources is efficient, or Pareto efficient, when no further reallocation of resources would improve anyone’s welfare without worsening another’s welfare.  States that maximize human welfare in terms of preference satisfaction will be Pareto efficient states. We should note that at best Pareto efficiency maximizes preference satisfaction only relative to initial distributions of resources. The concept of Pareto efficiency does not address matters of equality.  A distribution in which one person owns everything and others own nothing, for example, meets the criterion of Pareto efficiency.

It is generally accepted that under the basic assumptions of neoclassical economic theory, a free market will maximize efficient allocation and lead to a Pareto efficient state.  The tendency of free markets to attain Pareto efficient states can be easily seen from the case of a simple two-person economy.  There is efficiency to be gained whenever a potential buyer is willing to pay more for some good than a potential seller is willing to accept for that good.  So, suppose I have a car that I’m willing to sell for $1000 and my neighbor needs a car and she is willing to pay $1500 for my car.  If we negotiate a deal, any price we agree to between $1000 and $1500 will result in a state of affairs that is advantageous to one or both of us and disadvantageous to neither of us.  Overall welfare in this two-person economy is thereby improved.  If we work out similar deals on all of the goods we have where the potential buyer values that good more highly than the potential seller, then we will eventually reach a state where no further transfers of goods or services will improve the welfare of one of us without diminishing the welfare of one of us.  This would be Pareto efficient state.  If we are each fully informed and perfectly rational and there are no costs involved in negotiating and making trades and our welfare is not affected by any goods other than those we have as property, then our negotiations will result in an efficient allocation of goods between us.  That free markets will achieve a state of Pareto efficiency under these assumptions seems to be not merely true, but analytic. 

However, the assumptions of neoclassical economic theory seldom, if ever, actually obtain in real markets.  Economic theory assumes that agents are rational in the sense that given full access to information, they will act so as to maximize their own interests.  Economic theory also assumes zero transfer costs.  That is it assumes that there are no costs like advertising or commissions associated with the buying or selling of goods and services.  And it assumes well-defined property rights over all resources. 

But then agents are not rational maximizers of their own interests.  Transfers do have associated costs.  And some resources do not admit of well-defined property rights.  Neoclassical economic theory fails to describe any real functioning economy.  It is clearly an idealization in several respects. But many would argue that this is generally true of our best scientific theories.  What matters is that the theory is useful as a guide to policy.  Economists in general accept the framework of neoclassical theory as a powerful tool in designing social policies with the aim of maximizing welfare, where this is conceived of in terms of preference satisfaction.  There are a handful of understood ways in which actual markets deviate from economic theory known as market failures (it is curious that such cases are not called failures of theory).  Economists study market failures with the aim of improving overall market efficiency, and thereby improving welfare conceived as preference satisfaction, by compensating for market failures through various kinds of intervention in the market.

Historically, the sort of market failure that has occupied the lion’s share of attention from environmental economists are those that result from the impossibility or impracticability of defining property rights over environmental resources.  We cannot, for instance, define property rights to clean air or a stable climate. In an unregulated market, individuals do not pay for their use of public goods and as a result, those goods tend to be depleted in ways that fail to maximize long-term efficient allocation of resources.  This sort of market failure is known as the problem of public goods, or, in Garrett Hardin’s classic treatment of the problem, the tragedy of the commons.[5] 

Hardin introduces the notion of the tragedy of the commons with a tale about the fate of herdsmen who share a pasture in common.  Each herdsman notes that if he runs one more animal on the commonly held pasture, he will get the full benefit of that animal’s value when he takes it to market, but since the pasture is held in common, he will bear only a fraction of the cost of raising the animal.  As a result, each herdsman runs an additional animal on the pasture, and then another and another until the finite commonly held pasture is depleted to the point where it of no use to anyone.  A similar tragedy of the commons is inevitable whenever self-interested individuals have free and unlimited use of a finite commonly held resource.  Similar stories can be told about fisheries, air pollution, climate change and public forests among any number of further cases.  The only way to avoid a tragedy of the commons is to prevent one or another of the conditions that give rise to one. Perhaps we cannot expect individuals to consistently refrain from acting on their own interests.  But there remain the possibilities of limiting access to commons, expanding the commons infinitely, or not having a commons at all.

In the case of climate change, there is no possibility of eliminating the commons by privatizing the atmosphere.  The atmosphere as a sink for CO2 can be enlarged through carbon sequestration.  But it is hardly clear that we can expand the commons without limit in this manner.  The only way to avoid a tragedy of the commons is through limiting the use of the atmosphere as a sink for CO2.  From the economist’s point of view, our obligations at least are clear.  What we ought to do is maximize efficient allocation of the atmosphere as a resource over the long run.  Insofar as regulating CO2 means frustrating people’s present preferences for burning fossil fuels, this will inevitably involve some short-term market inefficiency.  In determining what will be an efficient allocation of use of the atmosphere over the long run, and therefore what our obligation to curb CO2 emissions will be, the economist’s method is to weigh the preferences of people today for emitting CO2 against the preferences of future generations for our not exhausting the atmosphere as a sink for CO2.  Of course the economist is not in a very good position to do this since he cannot readily produce reliable estimates of the costs to future generations of our CO2 emissions.  But the economist may estimate the opportunity cost to people today of reducing CO2 emissions. That opportunity cost is equal to whatever we would be willing to pay to avoid limiting our CO2 emissions.  For instance, if it would take a one dollar per gallon tax on gasoline to curb CO2 emissions to some desired degree by getting people to either drive less or drive more fuel efficient vehicles, then the revenues that tax would generate can be taken as equal to the opportunity cost of limiting emissions to that degree.  That is, the hypothetical tax measures what people would be willing to pay to avoid curbing CO2 emissions.  It is important to understand that the opportunity cost in this estimate is not some amount of money that somebody would have to pay or even some dollar amount by which the overall size of the economy would shrink if the tax were enacted.[6]  The tax on gasoline might be offset by income tax reductions thus producing no overall increase in the level of taxation.  Some people would drive less or more efficiently and the transportation sector of the economy would shrink accordingly.  But assuming the fuel tax is offset by tax reductions elsewhere, those who cut their consumption of fossil fuels as a result of the policy would have extra funds to spend in other sectors of the economy.  Of course some people might just drive less and work less instead of diverting their unused transportation funds into, say, their entertainment budget.  This would reduce GNP.  I will take up such macroeconomic considerations shortly.  But the point here just that the estimation of opportunity cost I’ve described says nothing specific about the effects of a gasoline tax on the overall level of economic activity.  The notion of opportunity cost is simply a metric for gauging the degree to which standing preferences would go unfulfilled.  It measures no material sacrifice.  Rather, on the economists conception of human welfare, the actual sacrifice is just that of standing preferences going unfulfilled.   This is measured in terms of hypothetical, unearned and unspent dollars.  What I want to challenge here, however, is the notion that preference satisfaction provides the appropriate metric for estimating the sacrifice we would have to make in curbing our CO2 emissions.

Economists do not endorse any specific conception of the good life.  For this reason economic theory is sometimes touted as value free.  But, the assumptions of economic theory do presuppose a suspect meta-ethical position on the theory of the good life. The economist’s conception of human welfare assumes that individuals acting autonomously will maximize their own interests.  This assumption is not merely neutral with respect to the various conceptions of the good life.  Economic theory takes individuals to be authoritative concerning their interests and assumes that the interests of individuals can be read off of their preferences.  The good life, according to economic theory, is merely the life of having one’s preferences satisfied, whatever these might be. As preferences are subjective, economics takes a meta-theoretical stance of subjectivism regarding the theory of the good life.  It does so in taking the good life to be indexed to the subjective states of individuals.  Given that economics understands welfare in terms of preference satisfaction, it is bound to estimate the burden of curbing CO2 emissions in terms of standing preferences going unfulfilled.  Of course, as anyone who knows a spoiled child can attest, merely having one’s preferences satisfied is a non-starter as a theory of the good life.  We often fail to prefer what is best for us.  Even subjectively, we are often unsatisfied with what we prefer.  The view that preferences track interests fails in the all too common case of addiction.  We might think of addictions as just limiting cases of intemperance.  But the meta-theoretical view that the good life for an individual is indexed to his or her preferences denies the very possibility of intemperance.  Given the philosophical implausibility of the meta-theory of the good life assumed by neoclassical economic theory, economic analysis fails to tell us whether or not the best policies for curbing CO2 emissions would have a seriously detrimental effect on the well-being of people today.

I’ve said nothing so far about the macroeconomic effects of curbing CO2 emissions.  I have not, for instance, addressed the effects of curbing CO2 emissions on growth, productivity or unemployment\.  Estimating the marginal cost per ton of CO2 abatement is a hot topic in macroeconomics.  But estimated cost functions vary widely and no benchmark figures have emerged.  Energy efficiency measures as varied as passive solar design and using compact florescent light bulbs are already cost effective.  Where this is the case, CO2 abatement can be had at negative cost.  Where the costs of abatement are positive, they are cheaper in some areas than in others.  CO2 abatement in some poor countries, for instance, may be had cheaply by paying poor farmers to plant new forests rather than allowing them to continue cutting and burning forests for subsistence farming.  In wealthier countries that have already pursued energy efficiency measures, the marginal cost of CO2 abatement may approach the cost difference between generating electricity with coal or with photovoltaic (PV) solar technology.[7]  Yet the poor country may find its cheaper CO2 abatement opportunity more of a burden given its limited ability to pay.  Since it makes no difference where on the globe CO2 is emitted or abated, this suggests that a coordinated international effort that allows wealthy countries to invest in abatement in poorer countries first will be the least cost route.  But then having the wealthier countries pursue abatement by investing in PV solar technology, while more expensive in the short term, would bring us closer to substantial economies of scale for PV technology and thereby provide developing countries with affordable alternatives to fossil fuel driven economic development.  The short term least cost CO2 abatement opportunity may not be the long term least cost CO2 abatement opportunity.  The macroeconomics of CO2 abatement is quite complex.  And there is a good deal of valuable research to be done in identifying the least expensive long run means of abating CO2 emissions.  But the macroeconomic details are tangential to the line of argument offered here.

Our concern here is with how to understand human well-being.  The links between the macroeconomic properties of economies and the microeconomic conception of welfare in terms of efficient allocation of resources is not entirely clear to economists.  Many take it as obvious that economic growth contributes to welfare as it represents increases in the total stock of resources available for satisfying preferences. However, it is not so obvious that economic growth measured in terms of GNP reveals much about improvement in human welfare.  GNP is simply a measure of the total dollar value of trades made.  But activity is not necessarily achievement.  Economic activity may represent the development of resources.  But sometimes it merely represents depletion of resources as when timber is harvested at unsustainable rates.  One can move lots of dollars either by running a thriving business or by lavishly spending one’s inheritance.  Measuring economic development in terms of GNP ignores this difference.  So growth is not unambiguously good even on the economist’s conception of welfare.  But I want to urge that the ethicist should not rest content with the economist’s conception of human welfare.  From an ethical point of view, we want to think about policies aimed at curbing CO2 emissions not in terms their effects on the total dollar amount of transactions, but in terms of their impact on the quality of people’s lives.  Before considering CO2 abatement in the light of a substantive theory of the good life, I want to address an objection to invoking any normative theory in the evaluation of policy. This is the issue of paternalism.

Paternalism

Perhaps the assumptions of economic theory should not be taken as a serious philosophical commitment to skepticism or subjectivism about normative conceptions of the good life.  One might argue that the neutrality about the good life embodied in economic theory is justified in the formulation of public policy because, although some conceptions of the good life may be objectively better than others, it would be objectionably paternalistic to incorporate these into the formulation of public policy.

It is one thing to argue that people might be mistaken about what sort life is best for them, but quite another to argue for social policy that coerces individuals to lead more becoming lives. Gerald Dworkin defines paternalism as coercive government policy justified solely on the grounds that it is in the best interest of those coerced.[8]  Paternalism is roundly rejected by philosophers in the liberal tradition from Mill to Ronald Dworkin.  According to Mill, “... a man's mode of laying out his own existence is best not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode.”[9]  As Ronald Dworkin has more recently put the point, “My life cannot be better for me in virtue of some feature or component I think has no value.”[10]  But is invoking a substantive conception of the good life in the evaluation of environmental policy in the manner I have described paternalistic?  In fact I do not think it is paternalistic at all.  The role I’ve described for the theory of the good life in the evaluation of the environmental policy is not justificatory.  Obligation to future generations is the sole the reason offered for curbing our CO2 emission.  The theory of the good life plays a role only in determining the level of sacrifice various policy proposals would require.  But this only informs our deliberation.  It is the nature of our obligation and the severity of the risk to future generations that justifies adopting this or that the policy.  The argument here has been that we ought to weigh our obligations to future generations in light of the actual sacrifices we would have to make, not the perceived sacrifices.  Economic theory only estimates perceived sacrifices.  The actual effect on our well-being of a proposed policy can only be estimated in light of a defensible normative theory of the good life.

The Good Life

My aim so far has been to delineate and motivate a role for a normative theory of the good life in the evaluation of environmental policy.  In this concluding section I will depart from this programmatic mission to consider how one historically esteemed conception of the good life might serve better than the economist’s conception of welfare in evaluating the sacrifices called for by potential environmental policies.  Discussions of the nature of the good life often begin and end with Aristotle, and so it will go here.  But the programmatic argument offered above does not hinge on the acceptability of Aristotle’s general conception of the good life.  Perhaps there is a better approach to the philosophy of the good life and perhaps it ought ultimately be employed in evaluating environmental policy.  But at this point, in this widely neglected area of ethics, Aristotle’s general approach provides as good a starting point for dialectic as can be had.

Aristotle begins his Nichomachean Ethics[11] by commenting that we should not expect greater precision in our theory of the good life than the subject matter admits of.  He later offers a conception of the good life that is far too specific and ultimately representative of the conventional views of his own time and place.  Aristotle’s vision of the magnanimous man, for instance, is with good reason regarded as objectionably elitist and sexist today.  Nevertheless, I think there is much to be said for the more general features of his view of the good life.  We can start with his observation that we evaluate things in general as good or bad in terms of how well they perform their function.  A good tomato plant, for instance, is one that functions well at producing sweet ripe tomatoes.  Here we have a naturalistic conception of the good in terms of functioning well, or in the case of animate things, flourishing.  Of course, flourishing for a tomato plant is not the same thing as flourishing for a person.  A conception of the flourishing life for humans must be given in terms of functions that are unique and essential to human beings.  The capacity for reason is the characteristic Aristotle finds unique and essential to humans.  So he takes the good life for a human to be the active life in accordance with the human capacity for reason.  Being an active life, the good life requires external circumstances that will afford ample opportunity to exercise the human excellences or virtues.  Just what sorts of circumstances are called for must be considered in light of Aristotle’s theory of human excellence or virtue.

Aristotle identifies intellectual virtue with wisdom acquired through education.  But there is more to the good life than being well educated.  Aristotle also recognizes moral virtues that pertain to functioning well physically, emotionally and socially. The view he takes of the moral virtues is that they are states of character lying at the mean between extremes of excess and deficiency.  A state of character can be thought of as a stable set of psychological dispositions to respond to one’s circumstances in act and feeling.  States of character are acquired by habituation, according to Aristotle, not by nature.  Not all states of character are virtues.  Many more states of character are vices.

Virtuous states of character are those that dispose us to act and feel in ways that will contribute to our flourishing.  Aristotle recognizes humans to be creatures of habit.  We tend to take the greatest pleasure in those things we are habituated to doing. If we are habituated to acting in those ways that best contribute to our flourishing, we will naturally be inclined to continue acting in those ways and we will take the greatest pleasure in acting in those ways.  And this is just what virtue requires.  Vices are just habitually acquired tendencies to take pleasure in acting in ways contrary to our well-being.

Aristotle's “the doctrine of the mean,” is the view that the virtues lie at the mean between extremes of excess and deficiency.  The virtue of temperance, for instance, has to do with moderation in consumption.  The temperate amount of food for a person will be enough to maintain vigorous health.  But to eat so much as to induce lethargy or obesity or so little as to impair health in other ways is to suffer the vice of intemperance.  What amount a food is temperate for a person depends on their capacities.  But the mean of temperance can be nurtured by the right dietary habit or destroyed by overindulgence or malnourishment.  The temperate person has an appetite conditioned by habit to maintain a healthy diet.  The intemperate person has desires conditioned by habit that are destructive to their health.  On Aristotle’s view, desires are not assumed to reflect interests, as they are in economics.  Rather, our desires can and often do deviate from our critically considered interests.  This is the very nature of vice.  This difference is significant in evaluating our obligations to future generations.  The Aristotelian theory of the good life recognizes preferences as malleable and subject to change for the better or worse.  One may or may not prefer what is beneficial to one.  But one’s preferences can be molded by means of habituation.  The economic view, by contrast, takes preferences to track interests infallibly.  This does not rule out changes in preferences.  But the economic model does not have the resources to account for preferences changing for the better or worse.

How might we apply the loosely Aristotelian conception of the good life in evaluating the effect of curbing of CO2 on our welfare?  Cutting our CO2 emissions essentially requires reducing our consumption of fossil fuels.  From an Aristotelian point of view, our current energy consumption habits are arguably grossly intemperate.  Any number of different policies might bring us to use fossil fuels more efficiently.  And there is ample reason to think that some would turn out to beneficial to us from an Aristotelian point of view.  Of course, some would not.  The government could simply mandate the use of public transportation, mandate lower thermostat settings and so forth.  People would find this painful.  They would also be offended by the restriction of their liberty and their lives would arguably be worse for this.  Further, it is not clear that people’s lives would be any more intellectually, physically or socially active as a result.  Present day welfare would likely suffer under this policy on an Aristotelian conception as well as on the economic conception.

A less painful and ultimately more effective policy would integrate more efficient and sparing use of fossil fuels into the design of communities in the normal course of redevelopment.  For starters, an effective CO2 reduction policy would involve a number of measures that would not significantly diminish or enhance human flourishing, like mandating passive solar design, high efficiency appliances and increased fuel economy standards.  Measures that would more noticeably affect people’s lives might include strict restrictions on new development at the outskirts of cities, and requiring “human scale” community design that favors travel on foot over travel by car.  This could be achieved by integrating shopping, business, and residential zones, mandating building designs with relatively small per person footprints (building up instead of out) and restricting motorized transportation to the perimeters of communities.  Insofar as people’s preferences for living in rambling suburbs and getting around by car are frustrated, redevelopment of this sort will be economically inefficient.  But in terms of Aristotle’s conception of the good life, the result of this sort of redevelopment presents no apparent sacrifice at all.  Rather, it offers some appealing benefits.  Walking is good for people.  The sedentary lives most Americans lead are at odds with Aristotle’s conception of the good life as an active life.  There are socially beneficial effects to designing communities for pedestrians rather than cars.  Behind the wheel, people are merely life threatening obstacles to each other. On foot, people converse.  I see valuable opportunities for revitalizing the peripatetic tradition in the simple measures that would most effectively reduce CO2 emissions.  From the standpoint of a philosophically defensible normative theory of the good life, the sorts of policies that would most effectively address climate change could well turn out to be beneficial to human welfare.  There is no guarantee of this, of course.  But that human flourishing is compatible with respecting the interests of future generations should come as no surprise.  We are, after all, highly adapted to the sort of environment we have occupied throughout our history.  Given this, it would seem surprising if the good life for humans were not compatible with maintaining a healthy environment for future generations.

Notes