Ethics is about values, about living a good life, a life worth living. Different people think differently about values. Some look to religions for guidance. Others follow their instincts of empathy. Yet others read the works of philosophers. Most of us uphold some values that we were taught as young children, without spending much time questioning them. Whatever our value system, most of us care about ethics or morality in some form. Many if not most people consider themselves moral.
So how moral are we? Earth’s population is currently overspending resources by more than 60%. In 2023, Earth Overshoot Day is on July 27. By that date, humanity has consumed all the resources that it can sustainably use for that year. Overshoot is an environmental science term for resource use beyond regeneration. Overspending money or resources creates future victims. Climate change is a consequence of producing more carbon dioxide and other climate gasses than can be processed by the biosphere. Declining fish populations can result from overfishing. Land may turn into a desert when water is extracted from the ground unsustainably. Humanity’s overuse of resources is comparable to that of a person who spends their annual budget of $50,000 by late July and goes on to run through more than $80,000 for the full year.
A person who spends 60% more than their income has a problem. The difference in money must eventually come from somewhere. If the person defaults on a loan, the creditor will hardly praise their morality. Family members may suffer when credit runs out. The future self of the overspender may regret their choices. Indefinitely spending $80,000 on a $50,000 income is rarely possible. When overspending fails there are victims. Those victims are bound to question the value system that guided the overspending.
The situation is paradoxical: Based on the calculation for Earth Overshoot Day, humanity victimizes future people at an alarming rate. Creating victims should make us skeptical about our morality. In fact, the difference between actual and allowable consumption is much higher in the developed world than in developing nations. For the United States and Canada, Overshoot Day happens in mid-March. That is the equivalent of a person with a $50,000 income spending $250,000 per year. In these countries, even someone who is extraordinarily careful to conserve resources would still use more than is sustainable because of public services they depend on.
Even college courses on ethics often ignore Earth Overshoot Day or the ecological footprint concept that underlies it. Being less than 30 years old, the concept is much younger than most sources of moral guidance. It may be understandable if introductory courses focus on more established concepts and thinkers. The question of subject domain may also matter. In moral philosophy, environmental ethics is considered to be a separate focus area. William Rees, the senior author of the ecological footprint work, is an ecologist. His doctoral student and first author of the book “Our Ecological Footprint”, Mathis Wackernagel, graduated in community and regional planning. Their contribution was intended to be in the domain of policy-making, not moral philosophy.
Explanations are not justifications. The distinction between environmental and other forms of ethics is ultimately meaningless. Each of us depends on a land area much larger than the dwelling we live in. We need food, clothing, and the waste we produce has to be absorbed. In their original work, Wackernagel and Rees asked the reader to imagine placing a dome over a city. That dome should include the entire area needed to support the city. The extent to which a region can support people is called its biocapacity. The ecological footprint quantifies the ratio between our resource consumption and Earth’s biocapacity. Humanity depends on an area that is more than 60% larger than Earth.
Even in the wild, it is not uncommon for a species to consume more than is sustainable. Foxes may eat so many rabbits that the rabbits can no longer adequately reproduce. The lack of reproduction will be felt in the future when the foxes go hungry and die. Humans have experienced local overshoot scenarios for centuries. To improve harvests, wells may be drilled and fields irrigated. The irrigation allows feeding larger families. However, the wells lower the water table. With lowered water tables, crops no longer grow without irrigation. Eventually wells run dry. There is less to eat and more people depend on what little there is.
Technology may solve any particular problem, but its side effects can create larger problems in the future. One could compare the situation with the parable of Achilles and the tortoise (see https://annedenton.substack.com/p/the-paradox-of-the-downward-leading). Technology progresses slowly like the tortoise, with side effects far behind comparable to Achilles. Any time the side effects catch up, it may appear that technology is already ahead with a new innovation. However this logic can break down eventually. We know Achilles will overtake the tortoise because of our basic understanding of his speed. Ecological footprints can be viewed as broad estimates of the speed with which overuse of resources catches up with technological progress.
One may, of course, ask if the ecological footprint model is dependable. This question is discussed in scientific publications. Science knows no “dogmas,” and some flaws have been found in the original methodology. The policy role of the Ecological Footprint has further complicated matters. Policy-making requires continuity in calculations, which goes against the scientific wish to improve the accuracy of the model. More specific environmental footprints, such as water footprints, have clarified some ambiguities. Others, like carbon footprints, have been used to subvert the footprint idea. More on that later.
The quality of estimation of environmental footprints matters, but few scientists doubt that humanity is using more resources than our planet’s biocapacity. The changing climate and its consequences like increases in wildfires and severe storms support such claims. These arguments do not depend on predictions of the future. Yes, some things are difficult or impossible to predict. We cannot know the weather a month from now with any kind of certainty. Dynamic systems that determine weather can be highly sensitive to initial conditions. The technical term for such systems is “chaotic.” The mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz explained the problem intuitively by suggesting that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly might affect the formation of a distant tornado. Weather is one example of a chaotic system. The stock market is another.
No matter how unpredictable the stock market, some financial predictions are relatively dependable. It is perfectly possible to say that someone who earns $80,000 per year and spends $50,000 is less likely to see their life uprooted in the future than someone who earns $50,000 per year and spends $80,000. The prediction is not perfect. The person who lives within their means may have a heart attack and die the following year. The person who overspends may receive a financial windfall and pay off debt easily. Positive outcomes are less probable for the person who overspends. What matters in the overshoot discussion is that there is a threshold and we are exceeding it. It also matters that our resource consumption has increased despite efficiency improvements at the level of individual vehicles, houses, appliances, and machinery. Collectively our consumption is still increasing.
Why then do we not discuss this as a moral problem? Sustainability is a topic in some conventional moralities. It is so among indigenous belief systems more commonly than in modern religions. Earth may be viewed as a Mother who feeds and supports humans and deserves reverence. The idea that we should consider the impact of decisions on the seventh generation is also credited to indigenous beliefs.
Ironically, there exists a sector of the economy, in which environmental footprints are popular, in particular carbon footprints. That is the oil industry. It may be counterintuitive that the industry that most centrally profits from the overuse of fossil fuels would embrace any type of environmental footprint. The key to understanding this situation is to see that legal changes normally have a larger impact than the actions of individuals. Placing the burden of change on consumers draws focus away from political pressure that could change legislation and help the climate while hurting the industry.
The tools of natural sciences only go so far in understanding the future. Environmental footprints assess where we are going. As such, climate scientists are certain that humanity is faced with an extremely serious problem. How to change human behavior is a different matter, one that is not normally considered to be part of science. Prediction of the actions of billions of humans is difficult. It is not entirely impossible. Advertisers in the oil industry know why promoting carbon footprints works in their favor.
Science can assess the overall impact of its past innovations on climate metrics. It could attempt to seriously ask questions of impact early in the process of funding new research. Arguing that the tortoise will have moved on by the time Achilles reaches it, is not a scientific argument. Most scientists know the results of environmental footprint computations. Arguing that technology will have moved on by the time its side effects catch up is not scientific.
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Absolutely brilliant comparison between finance and earth resources! Love it!