Please consider at least 2 major environmental dilemmas that face your generation from 3 different perspectives: utilitarianism, egoism, altruism.

International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge

José Thomaz Pereira

Please consider at least 2 major environmental dilemmas that face your generation from 3 different perspectives: utilitarianism, egoism, altruism (which all can be read about in your textbooks in the Chapter on Ethics, as well as googled for further information)."

As soon as I think of two environmental dilemmas that face my generation, I instantaneously think of Global Warming. Although Global Warming, in a whole, is a very broad issue that leads to several sub-topics that are what cause or at least are said to cause Global Warming. The dilemmas that I am going to analyse are the clearing of the Amazon Forest and the excessive use of energy extracted from fossil fuels. In order to successfully analyse the ethics of these two dilemmas, we should analyse them in three ethical points of views, which include utilitarianism, egoism, and altruism. These three are ethical ways of seeing issues, which vary from person to person, thus it is very hard to define if something is ethically correct or not. As it varies from culture, religion education among other examples.

In order to analyse in depth each environmental dilemma we have to first define each of these three different perspectives. Utilitarianism is the idea that an action is determined only by its overall contribution to what it was designed in the first place, in other words its utility. So basically it can be summarized by the quote “the ends justify the means”. Meaning that any action taken to reach a moral mean is worth it no matter the way you achieve it. History has given us many examples of this type of ethical perspective, as in the French revolution, when even though the revolutionaries achieved their main goal that was to abolish the monarch system, several people got killed and France during some years was in an absolute chaotic state, such as in the “Reign of Terror”. The other two perspectives are at the same time differing and relating to each other. Altruism is the perspective where we should perform selfless acts that in theory are beneficial to others, while Egoism is the perspective where we should perform selfish acts, thinking on our own sake before anything else, having opposite definitions. Nevertheless, these two concepts overlap, as for example in politics, Lula right before the 2006 elections he increased the minimum wage. This was designed with the intention of helping less fortunate who do not have enough money to sustain themselves, yet at the same time he did this because he wanted popularity to be re-elected president. Hence it is very hard to find a pure altruistic action, therefore in ethics we have to be aware of the reason that a person has in mind, in order to reach a reliable assessment.

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The Amazon Rainforest clearing, has become a dilemma. As the fact that they are clearing out has been bouncing along the newspapers headlines every week. And in fact, it is being cleared, as the Amazon has a deforestation rate of 22,392 km² per year, 18% greater than it was five years ago. So if we firstly see that people are cutting down trees for their own sake this leads us to perceive in an egoistic perspective. So if we put ourselves in the position of a lumberjack. A lumberjack lives with the income he receives when he cuts the trees, therefore if he suddenly stops cutting trees he will have no money to sustain himself and his family. An altruistic perspective of this same situation would be if this same lumberjack saw that instead of cutting the trees down to earn his money he would go around the Amazon encouraging other loggers to stop cutting down trees ignoring the economic issues involved with this considering we are already facing an economic crisis. Now if we consider a situation where thousands of lumberjacks are fired because the government has prohibited the cutting down of trees in the Amazon. This is apparently a Utilitarian perspective, as there is a situation where literally the “end justifies the mean”, as the end is that the Amazon rainforest will not be deforested, although the mean is that thousands of people who work in this type of industry will loose their jobs. The government is usually the one who takes these decisions, and as I have shown, politicians live through their popularity; therefore they try to act in a way where they will satisfy most of the people. Hence acting in this Utilitarian perspective they tend to satisfy most of the people although, let some others dissatisfied. Therefore acting in a Utilitarian perspective, people tend to, through reasoning, see if the end outweighs its means. This kind of perspective is used in economics, as if something is giving more profit than another, the market shifts its resources to produce other goods that will give higher profits, even though there are consequences involved.

The second example to consider is the extraction of energy by the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are very used, as they are very cheap, and easy to handle with, although there are implications with its use, such as that it produces greenhouse gases, that lead to “Global Warming”. Countries as China rely vastly in fossil fuels, as they provide 43% of all the energy used in China. If we see this dilemma in a total egoistic perspective, we can say that people in China should be able to burn fossil fuels as they rely enormously on energy from the burning of fossil fuels and banning them would result on energy shortages. At the same time we could have an altruistic perspective where a person burns fossil fuels in order to bring light to some small islands in the pacific that do no have no electrical energy, such as the Solomon Islands. We see that both of these perspectives still result on the production of greenhouse gases, so in order to finish with this environmental dilemma, a more Utilitarian thought could be considered. So a Utilitarian could come from one of the countries that have signed the Kyoto protocol, as the Chinese government would not like to jeopardize its own energy resources. Where, even though, China owns the fossil fuels, and burns them in her territory, this automatically inflicts in an international problem, as later on when “Global Warming” strikes it will not only strike on China, but yes on the whole world. Therefore a Utilitarian perspective on this issue, would try to cease or reduce China’s burning of fossil fuel, even though China could have serious electricity rationing problems. This relates to an event in History, in the Vietnam War. Where the United States of America used chemical weapons as Napalm and Agent Orange in order to attack the Vietcong, although at the time it did not think of the consequences that it could inflict in the future, and the result was that even thirty years after the War there were still babies being born with malformations. Moreover, this concept of Utilitarian perspective is also seen in economics, where externalities force governments to impose taxes or subsidies in order to reduce or increase the production of such good.

Thus we see that, even though each individual has his own ethical perspective on different issues. When it comes to environmental issues, it seems that there is a common want for change, which will always favour to the side that theoretically tries to save the world. Even though, our innate feelings are mostly egoistic, however as the government is the one in charge of taking the decisions, we happen to respond in a Utilitarian to these environmental dilemmas.

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